Budgeting help for Halloween Trip

[DisneyFairytale]

So I tend to think I am a master at savings, however I still feel that their might be some places where we can save money, or things we have over looked. Here below is what we did to save money, please let us know if there is anything else we can do differently, or not do/change to save more money.

We had always flown down to LA, where as during our last trip, we decided to try driving instead. Here were the differences in costs, please let us know where else you think we might be able to budget better. During our last trip, we both purchased Premium annual passes because of the money we knew we would be saving by us coming back again for another 9 days, so this trip no ticket costs

Trip A (done end of January of 2011):
Flew $1,200-just over $575 round trip per person-includes GST)
Lemon Tree Hotel for 9 nights: $430
Blue Shuttle: $90 for both of us round trip to hotel and back to airport.
Food:To much! we bought groceries so only spent $5 every morning for a fresh loaf of bread in California Adventures-and brought nutella and ham with us for breakfast and lunch-always went out for dinner either in the park or outside at a restaurant-mainly Bucca de Peppo


Trip B(will be Halloween week of 2011)
Driving: $300
Super 8: $621 for 9 nights(quote only not booked yet)
Blue shuttle-none, but there will be fuel cost for driving our own car-however have the freedom of doing more tourist things!
Food:Thinking of doing the same thing so far. No ideas of what else to do

Now for food, other than grabbing fast food on the drive to DCA, once in Anaheim, the first thing we do is stop at the grocery store, to grab snacks and food we can make on our own for breakfast, lunchs and end up going out for dinner, which for 2 people turns out to be $40-$60 . Sometimes we will grab dinner near space mountain where we can both get our favorite plate of dinner for $8.00 each other than that I dont know what else to do. We bring our own water bottles, that we never buy drinks and we do not buy treats in the park.

Are there any other places you know of where we could stay for an affordable price around halloween? are there any other ways to cute the costs?

 

[Mom2micayla]

Not sure you're going to get a reasonably nice hotel for much cheaper than your Super 8 hotel in Anaheim. I often stay at Anaheim Plaza Hotel www.anaheimplazahotel.com when I'm going budget and really like it. It's closer than Super 8 and is almost the same price for your time frame in Oct. If you have an entertainment book, you might check out the Hojo's on Harbor.. they run 1/2 off deals with an entertainment book card, but they have limited availability.

I'd definitely recommend splitting meals at DLR. The meals at Red Rockett Pizza Port, Rancho Del Zocalo and Plaza Inn are all huge and can easily be split between 2 people. I had a friend who used to bring in pb&j and lunchables for meals to save money. I've never done it as eating out to us is a big part of vacation, but it's certainly doable.

 

[DisneyFairytale]

Not sure you're going to get a reasonably nice hotel for much cheaper than your Super 8 hotel in Anaheim. I often stay at Anaheim Plaza Hotel www.anaheimplazahotel.com when I'm going budget and really like it. It's closer than Super 8 and is almost the same price for your time frame in Oct. If you have an entertainment book, you might check out the Hojo's on Harbor.. they run 1/2 off deals with an entertainment book card, but they have limited availability.

I'd definitely recommend splitting meals at DLR. The meals at Red Rockett Pizza Port, Rancho Del Zocalo and Plaza Inn are all huge and can easily be split between 2 people. I had a friend who used to bring in pb&j and lunchables for meals to save money. I've never done it as eating out to us is a big part of vacation, but it's certainly doable.

Thank you for the info. I was actually debating between the Super 8 and the Plaza. Is the plaza close to the park entrance?