Frugal Vacation Tips for WDW?

[brunette8706]

Hi All!

Do you have any tips/suggestions to keep costs down while vacationing at WDW??

We are annual ticket holders go about 6 times a year, and would love to hear how everyone spends their money on food, various restaurant finds, shopping etc.

I'll start:

We have gotten $20.00 coupons for various restaurants at the Swan and Dolphin. (cheaper than Disney)

We have tried Sweet Tomatos offsit for a good and cheap dinner ($9.99 per adult)

Shopped at the Disney OUTLET! We have found GREAT finds! $1.99 Yacht Club picture frames, inexpensive shirts and souveniers!

 

[beansmom]

you'll get tons of tips here. Mine are pretty common...

we share table service meals...we can't eat a whole meal a piece.

we buy groceries/water/ tea for our room. We eat one table service meal a day then have breakfast and a light meal in our room.

we don't buy many souvenirs.

we wait for a good room discount and don't rent a car.

i use my mypoints to get gift cards for t-rex/yak and yeti. This trip we ARE rentng a car and we have a gift card for Steak and Shake also.

we keep and bring back our rain ponchos, mister fan, light up toys.

 

[brunette8706]

you'll get tons of tips here. Mine are pretty common...

we share table service meals...we can't eat a whole meal a piece.

we buy groceries/water/ tea for our room. We eat one table service meal a day then have breakfast and a light meal in our room.

we don't buy many souvenirs.

we wait for a good room discount and don't rent a car.

i use my mypoints to get gift cards for t-rex/yak and yeti. This trip we ARE rentng a car and we have a gift card for Steak and Shake also.

we keep and bring back our rain ponchos, mister fan, light up toys.

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Hi!

Oh GREAT tips! Where do you grocery shop without having a car? Do you do the grocery delivery? Thank you for your suggestions.

 

[pigletto]

I've used the grocery delivery. I believe it was 12 dollars or so for delivery but we got all of our breakfast stuff and a case of water which saved us a great deal of money over buying breakfast. Our other meals were free dining.
This trip I went one step further and packed breakfast things (cereal, fruit bars, granola bars) and bought milk and juice for the fridge in our room. Our airline didn't charge bag fees so we had extra room to do this. We aren't huge breakfast eaters so this was good for a quick bite to eat before getting to the park early.

 

[dyna]

We often stay offsite in a condo or a house with a pool an usually pay no more than 60.00 a night. Having a kitchen saves us a bunch of money by cooking cheap meals there. We always drive an usually I take several frozen meals or at least have my meat cooked.
Like the PP when we do eat in the parks we share a meal, we always eat breakfast in the room an maybe a sandwich for either dinner or supper. Not ate at a sit down resturant inside disney in years.

Our last visit in Sept we did not buy anything to bring home but we had been there 4 times already this year and was planning to go back just after Thanksgiving but our plans changed when DH decided to retire 3 yrs early and we found a deal on a house 30 mins from disney. NO more disney vacations for us....

 

[canopynut66]

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Hi!

Oh GREAT tips! Where do you grocery shop without having a car? Do you do the grocery delivery? Thank you for your suggestions.

We use Garden grocer.com I go online and oder from home tell them resort and when we will be there and if we are in the room they bring to room if not goes to bell services and they bring to us. Even with the $12 fee is cheaper than renting a car or taking a taxi

 

[brunette8706]

We use Garden grocer.com I go online and oder from home tell them resort and when we will be there and if we are in the room they bring to room if not goes to bell services and they bring to us. Even with the $12 fee is cheaper than renting a car or taking a taxi

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Oh cool! Thanks for posting this. So, everything is paid for and brought to the hotel room or bell services! What a brilliant idea. I have never used this service, but i may check it out. Yes, I'm sure with the delivery service, it still a LOT less than eating out at the Disney restarurants.

thank you.

brunette

 

[2disneyboys]

I have seen posts where people pack lunchs and bring them into the park with them..

We visit our local dollar store and buy glow in the dark stuff that comes out of my bag during parades etc.

instead of souviner shoping, we souviner SNAP... we take turns picking things to "snap" photos of and those pictures go into the digital photo frame in my son's room to help us "remember" the trip... works much better than normal souvineer's

 

[postage stamp]

I do online discount shopping for souvenirs before we leave and instead of buying things at the parks Tinkerbell visits our room and leaves things for us if we are good.

 

[pampam]

You don't say where you are staying, but you can buy a loaf of bread at the Pizza shop in Everything Pop food court. It costs about what you would pay at Publix- maybe 10 cents more. It's not on the menu, so you will have to ask for it. They will offer you a choice of white or whole wheat. I learned this from a cashier at the food court.

 

[Marionnette]

I try to do my saving before the trip so that I dont worry about money when Im there. So we go during the value season. And I try to get the best discount that I can for wherever we stay. I use our rewards credit cards to earn points to pay for the flights. And I use my disney visa so that I have spending money while Im there. We get ten day nonexpiring passes so that we can get two or three trips from one pass. And we stay less than a week since the weekend rates are higher for most of the resorts.

 

[2disneyboys]

another tip I have seen is to order a double cheeseburger, and pay for an extra bun.. then @ the table you can seperate it and have 2 cheeseburgers for the price of one and a bun (I'vd never done this but I think the other posters said it was like a dollar for the bun.

 

[timzagain]

A couple of the things we did to save money on our last WDW trip:-

1. Instead of buying soda or water in the park, we simply asked for a cup of water from the drink kiosks, QS places etc. Saved lots of money, no sore shoulders from lugging around water. Because we were drinking so much, we seemed to have less interest in snacking - more money saved
2. Limit the number of meals we ate in the parks or other restaurants. We bought dinner from the Walmart deli section a few times and could feed our family of 6 for less than a dinner for one at a moderately priced restaurant. One WM dinner comprised of a rotisserie chicken, potato wedges, salad, dessert and a gallon of juice! Not gourmet dining, but it did the job!
3. DD, then 10, decided to collect pressed pennies as her souvenirs - way cheaper than the usual Disney souvenirs
4. If you must buy Disney souvenir T-shirts, mugs, get them at Walmart. It's a lot less expensive.

 

[timzagain]

Forgot to add - DD, who was just 11 on our last trip, decided to collect pressed pennies from the parks as her souvenirs!

 

[SaraJayne]

I try to do my saving before the trip so that I dont worry about money when Im there. So we go during the value season. And I try to get the best discount that I can for wherever we stay. I use our rewards credit cards to earn points to pay for the flights. And I use my disney visa so that I have spending money while Im there. We get ten day nonexpiring passes so that we can get two or three trips from one pass. And we stay less than a week since the weekend rates are higher for most of the resorts.

Same here. But we also don't go 6 times a year.

 

[Maus]

I guess I would rather have a cheaper room than not eatin. The Yacht club is def. not the cheapest place to stay.

 

[brunette8706]

Same here. But we also don't go 6 times a year.

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Oh, yeah, we do have a summer home there too, which cuts some costs. We do rent it out at times. We stayed at the Yacht Club this past August and loved it! Of course we save for our vacations. Actually, we have a vacation fund that we put money into.

I love to hear about cost cutting especially for vacations. People do come up with some GREAT IDEAS.

 

[Marionnette]

Same here. But we also don't go 6 times a year.

Was this directed at me? B/c Ive never said that we do to disney that often. I dont where you would have gotten the impression that we go more often than once a year.

 

[SaraJayne]

Was this directed at me? B/c Ive never said that we do to disney that often. I dont where you would have gotten the impression that we go more often than once a year.

No, the OP said they usually go 6 times a year.

 

[disneyfan55]

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Oh, yeah, we do have a summer home there too, which cuts some costs. We do rent it out at times. We stayed at the Yacht Club this past August and loved it! Of course we save for our vacations. Actually, we have a vacation fund that we put money into.

I love to hear about cost cutting especially for vacations. People do come up with some GREAT IDEAS.

A way to add to the vacation fund is to use coupons for grocery shopping and make sure you save the amt. saved with the coupons. I have saved well over 1000/yr doing so. My husband used to laugh at me and one month I decided to tell him that we will save the amt of coupons each mo. I just transfer the amt each mo. to a savings acct. Saving change/singles for vacation.

We bring snacks/drinks/breakfast items. Use Disney Visa points. Visit WDW only with discounted rooms. Bring rain slickers/umbrellas. Make sure we bring medications/bandaids/personnal items (all very expensive to get at WDW) Use TIW for discounted meals. I'll probably think of other things we do-these were just off the top of my head.

For vacations other that WDW we travel on very discounted cruises (449 for a 7 day Canada/New England cruise last fall) We also visit National Parks with an annual pass for up to 4 adults costing $80/year.