Do you spend more money with each DVC trip you take or LESS money???

[edk35]

I think this trip might be a trip I will claim to have SPENT less on. It is funny how I am not that concerned with ADR's this trip.. because we will have our van and can eat off property a few meals. PLUS we are OVER spending 100 to 150 for over priced sit down meals. We buy less "STUFF" with each trip we take too. We have a couple of places we still enjoy but we don't have to HAVE an ADR every single day for any meals. I know some trips we would do a breakfast ADR and then a dinner on some days. I look back and think....WHY?!! I don't know if it is because we have been a lot since joining DVC 3 1/2 years ago or what. Just curious how others feel?

 

[JBx3]

We also buy less "stuff" now. We do however ever dinner ADR's and we do drop the same amount about as you mentioned but we are now trying to use the kitchen a bit more and that has helped. We are a family of 3 and part of oour deal for staying in a 1 br. vs. studio is that we would use the kitchen a bit more to help offset the difference in point upgrade expense and it has worked out great.

So yes we do limit our ADR to 1 meal per day at most.

 

[bookwormde]

Less per day, more per trip (they keep getting longer)

bookwormde

 

[JBx3]

Less per day, more per trip (they keep getting longer)

bookwormde

Hopefully everyone is a winner on that arrangement! We also are doing longer stays

 

[edk35]

Less per day, more per trip (they keep getting longer)

bookwormde

Well that is true....

Our first trips were both 8 nights each then our longest was 14 days and then a couple of 9 nighters. This one coming up we are splitting between a week at SSR and 4 at Vero..plus we tacked on two days at Shades of Green at the beginning of the trip. SO...we are staying longer too but we tend to spend less each day. That is a good way to look at it. Plus we are driving this trip...so that is a savings off of airfare for 5.

 

[wendydarling826]

I would say less because we don't buy as much stuff any more - I would if the stuff weren't so generic now - and because we plan a few special meals and the rest of the time eat inexpensive counter service meals. It may end up being just as expensive though because restaurant prices have gone up so much.

 

[tjhsr]

We have been spending less each trip and staying the same 9-10 nights. ADRs we almost never do too much $$$. But with the grandkids going i'm sure thats going to change shortly.

 

[Metsoskil]

We're spending less on our trips, but find that we've gone more often since DVC, so overall, the mouse gets more.

 

[crisi]

More with DVC. But that has to do with the change in our financial situation and taste.

Before we bought DVC we were newly married and struggling. My husband's first Disney trip was our honeymoon, our second was when we had $2000 a month in daycare bills and a 2 and 3 year old! There was no way we were going to fancy restaurants, or Cirque, or to play golf.... We've never been huge souvienier people one way or the other.

DVC came when our income got larger - drastically and quickly. And our kids are older. So now we enjoy Cirque and eating in signature restaurants. Our kids did Pirate Cruises and other special events.

 

[starbox]

Ugh - more per trip because the kids that were 6 and 8 became Disney "adults". I remember when we could do Disney dining with TWO child prices, and APs for two kids. Those were the days.

 

[DisneyTravelers2008]

We have gone both ways since we purchased....the first year we went and bought APs and got Dining Plan and did a lots of souvineer shopping...then we went again the next year (and got another week's use out of our AP's)...for that trip we cooked 95 % (literally) of our meals in the villa and held down all spending b/c $$$ was VERY tight ...the joy of DVC is that I know I can go to WDW again and it takes off the pressure of feeling like you have to DO EVERYTHING in one trip....

 

[dianeschlicht]

Our costs now are pretty much set. We have our airfare, cost of APs for the year, rental car and food. We don't really buy souveniers anymore, and we find we can save quite a bit by only eating one meal out a day and using the TIW card for discounts. We found the DDP just cost us too much more and resulted in more food than we could eat, so now our costs are pretty much set. We make a couple of runs to the grocery for breakfasts and light meals, and we pay for one sit down restaurant a day (usually a signature). We have a water filter, so we refill water bottles, and take our own fruit snacks in with us. We've been members long enough now, that we have it all down to a routine.

 

[jimmytammy]

We definitely spend less. Very seldom do we buy anything to take home as a momento, and though we still enjoy eating at WDW, we split meals lots of times, so that saves. We usually eat only one big meal a day there, eat breakfast in room.

 

[eliza61]

I would say it's been pretty even keel but the way we spend has changed. Like Crisi our kids are getting older so we don't buy souvineers but now we take the money and go to Cirque or Sea world where before we would not.

I don't like many sit down places at the world unfortunately the ones I do go to (Artist point, Shulas) tend to be more priceier places.

Generally we'll set a budget depending on whats going on in our lives and try to stick to it. In the next few years I'll have 2 college tuitions to have to pay for so I may be eating Ramein noodles, 3X's a day.

 

[Crystal_27]

If you are talking about the actual cost of the vacation (not the accommodations), we spend about the same, it's just that now with DVC we spend it all at the start of the trip and during, opposed to paying it off before the vacation when we book the vacation package. We've always done the dining plan and our souvenier budget is fairly fixed, so no big change there. However, factoring in accommodations, we come out way cheaper with DVC.

 

[londonderrydisneyfan]

We no longer do the dining plan so we're spending less per day, but like others said we're going for more days than we used to. We just bought more points so we're going to be spending even more time there in the future.

 

[culli]

Price per trip is WAY WAY lower! We buy Disney stuff at home from Walmart/Target etc and bring them with us to give the kids. We rarely eat out, I try to avoid it - just not for cost but it is a pain with kids. We might do one Character meal. We bring our own snacks and drinks so we buy very little at the parks. Heck Garden Grocer even brings me my BEER makes decompressing on the boardwalk much cheaper

However, we spend much more annually as we go more and have APs. Airfare and park tickets are what are killing us, longer trips really don't cost us too much more.

 

[Mickey'sApprentice]

OK, this is a little different.

We still spend on food and souvenirs, and do go to Disney much more.

However, we spend much less on accommodations per night because of DVC and spend less on tickets per day because of our APs.

We got new APs for our trip next week, but the next trip will be sooooo cheap. We'll have no oop expensive for rooms or tickets!!

 

[DenLo]

Hopefully everyone is a winner on that arrangement! We also are doing longer stays

I noticed that too. We never stayed more than 5 nights before joining the DVC and now we are staying 8 to 10 days per trip. And with that many days, I think the ADRs would naturally reduce per day but overall be higher in number. After a while eating that many large meals would get old at least for us. We do the same thing while on longer cruises. At first we eat normally and then for a few days we eat more than normal and then we over react and eat a lot less until we balance out and eat our normal sized meals.

 

[miksicnarf]

Hmm...I haven't kept track but I would guess overall we're spending about the same or less. In the early years we spent more on admission because the kids had to have access to the water parks and DisneyQuest; now that they've outgrown that we can make use of our DVC discount on APs and use them twice. We spent more on souvenirs in the past, but now we spend more on dining. We still take advantage of our kitchen, though .