Best Trip Ever - No Immediate Trip Planned. Still Disney Obsessed

[Frozen2014]

We had our first trip in October, and it was everything I was hoping...totally amazing. (Only snag was that I was quite sick for the first MK day, but otherwise, everything was perfect and lived up to what I was expecting).

I am now creating a photo book, but it's closed to finished.

But I'm still Disney obsessed. I'm on here all the time still and love reading posts. (And now that I've been I can sometimes give advice to others as they so helped me)

DH will make comments like 'when we go again' (yah...as this didn't seem likely before we went), but it wouldn't be for another few years as it's quite costly and we don't really vacation much.

SO what now? What do you all do in between trips? Are you still all on here just checking out the website?

 

[DanInMN]

First - we have learned how to make the WDW trips much less costly so that we can go more often! When returning from one trip we can start planning the next one!

- Travel in low season to get the best hotel rates
- Stay off-site and use "non traditional" methods to book a resort - like eBay or VRBO.com
- Eat some meals in the condo, never pay for the Disney Dining Plan, and only have a couple full service meals per trip
- A WDW annual pass will get you back more often!
- Keep shopping for car rental prices, they vary day-by day
- Use credit card points for free airfare
- Maximize your trip by flying to Orlando on Friday evening and staying through the following Sunday - 9 nights with just 5 days off from work

 

[Frozen2014]

First - we have learned how to make the WDW trips much less costly so that we can go more often! When returning from one trip we can start planning the next one!

- Travel in low season to get the best hotel rates
- Stay off-site and use "non traditional" methods to book a resort - like eBay or VRBO.com
- Eat some meals in the condo, never pay for the Disney Dining Plan, and only have a couple full service meals per trip
- A WDW annual pass will get you back more often!
- Keep shopping for car rental prices, they vary day-by day
- Use credit card points for free airfare
- Maximize your trip by flying to Orlando on Friday evening and staying through the following Sunday - 9 nights with just 5 days off from work

Yes, if we were to go again (no, I mean "when we go again"), we definitely wouldn't do it all like we did on our first trip. For example, we would not do
- DDP
- many character meals
- Memory Maker (loved it for our first trip!)
- MNSSHP
- BBB

Those in themselves would save over $500 + amount saved on dining plan.
I think we'd still want to stay onsite (but still a value resort) and still do one TS/day (as we enjoy the unwinding time)
We went off season (I think...third week of October...but unfortunately missed out on the Free Dining time) but our flight was still super expensive. I'm on the Canadian flight thread and see people get flights for much less so maybe we just had bad luck.

We did use CC points to save a few hundred dollars as well as on the car rental so this did help.

My DD keeps saying "Can we go on Monster again?" (meaning Haunted Mansion) and I hope in a few years we will be able to go again. Would even love to do Disneyland but the flight itself would double (we're in Ontario Canada).

So...in the meantime I just keep reading these boards and dream.

 

[JandD75]

Even a value resort is more expensive than a really cheap motel plus the rental car. In addition to the tips given, we take everything we are likely to need, so we don't have to buy anything at the Disney shops (because the items will be more expensive there than at home) we buy few or no souvenirs, eat cereal in our rooms for breakfast, bring our own sodas, trail mix and beef jerky for snacks, and usually have only one meal each day in the park. We do not park hop and often count our trip as a birthday or Christmas gift.