Help me keep to my budget without my "crutch"

[aprilfoolwed]

Planning a 2015 post-graduate school trip for our family. Yay!

When we have gone to Disney in the past, we've always had some sort of financial "crutch" to help us make the budget easier. YES program, Convention-EARS tickets (traveling with my husband on business), etc.

We won't have any of those this time around.

Kids want to stay in a pool house again, so it will be on off-property trip (unless there is a REALLY good deal available for staying onsite). Hoping for a nice, long trip (10 days). Best place to get tickets? Any other tips for keeping within a reasonable budget (we will plan on eating breakfast at home each day, lunch in parks, and dinner either at home or off-site).

 

[hsmamato2]

I never thought of those extra savings as a crutch.... just as a big help.... sadly, those park tickets are going to get you without a special program,etc. (I know, b/c I am not getting one of those either this trip)
offsite= pay to park-just went to 17.00 per day
tickets just went up 2 weeks ago by quite a bit
the best you can do is either search for an onsite deal that includes tickets and food(maybe) or bite the bullet since those park tix are pretty set in stone- I don't know how big your fam is- but a sale at a value resort might work.... your other ideas help, cereal in the room, lunch at a park, dinner somewhere for cheap..... the best deal I could find at the moment on park admission is the orbitz/ebates 6% cashback deal....straight base tix, no park hopping,etc. there's another thread here about the 20% cashback, but it's 6% now..... and those are vouchers,so it involves a little know-how.... do you fly or drive?
If you fly, onsite could be cheaper to use their buses,etc.

 

[Marionnette]

Planning a 2015 post-graduate school trip for our family. Yay!

When we have gone to Disney in the past, we've always had some sort of financial "crutch" to help us make the budget easier. YES program, Convention-EARS tickets (traveling with my husband on business), etc.

We won't have any of those this time around.

Kids want to stay in a pool house again, so it will be on off-property trip (unless there is a REALLY good deal available for staying onsite). Hoping for a nice, long trip (10 days). Best place to get tickets? Any other tips for keeping within a reasonable budget (we will plan on eating breakfast at home each day, lunch in parks, and dinner either at home or off-site).

Best place for tickets used to be the UT link from the Mousesavers.com newsletter. You're looking at maybe $10+ off the gate price of an adult 10-day MYW base ticket by using that link.

If you're willing to work a little harder for your discount, Orbitz will charge you the very same price that Disney charges at the gate for a 10-day ticket but their "3-day + 2 free" (essentially a 5-day ticket) is almost $26 off of the gate price and you can get an additional 6.5% rebate of your total outlay if you go through the ebates.com link.

Here's what you can do:

1. Sign up for ebates if you're not a member. There is often a free GC bonus for new members.
2. Use their shopping portal to link to Orbitz and order your tickets under their "activities" section. You've already saved $26/ticket!
3. Get another 6.5% cash back from ebates. At 6.5%, that's another $20+/- per ticket! Total saved so far: $36 per ticket on adult 5-day MYW base tickets.
4. Get yourself some Disney GCs at a reduced price. Whether you buy them at Target using your REDCard discount (it's still good even though the Pharmacy Rewards discount no longer works) or at a warehouse like Costco, or through a grocery store that offers some sort of perks for GC purchases. You'll find out why you need these in a minute.
5. Redeem your Orbitz voucher at a WDW ticket window and use those tickets once for admission to a park. It's very important to use them once before you attempt to do the next step.
6. Take your discounted GCs and the now once-used tickets to guest relations at any park and ask to upgrade to the number of days that you want. The difference in cost between a 5-day adult MYW base ticket and a 10-day adult MYW base ticket is $53.15. Pay for the upgrade using your discounted GCs. In the case of GCs purchased at Target, you're looking at another $5+ savings per ticket. It will be even more if you are one of those lucky people who can get 5% back on grocery purchases with their CC AND awesome fuel perks at your local grocery store! Total saved = about $41 per ticket for 10-day adult MYW base tickets.
7. Multiply that by the number of tickets you need to buy and decide whether jumping through all of those hoops is worth the effort to save the money.​