How do families manage the cost of tickets?

[Nini]

We have extended family w/us (total: 9 adults & 7 children...one family is staying off site due to a time share deal) and we are staying at POP a "Value" resort.

Dh, myself & dd3 had airfare from last year to use so we rebooked for a trip to Disney! We still even have a credit on airfare...even w/change fee (we were going to go to Bahamas last year, but hurricanes were just too frequent to chance)! We just have to pay to park at LaGuardia Airport (we hail from CT) and get over the inconvenience of driving there...it's not THAT bad.

We all purchased the meal plans and 5 day hopper tickets. We didn't bother w/the no expiration as we will definately use the 5 days! We are planning on using the free Magical Express transportation to and from the airport as we are on a "participating airline"...that will save (relative I guess) the transportation cost.

We always purchase our package from our TA who has done MANY such packages for me in the past 7 years...Cheryl is EXCELLENT!!! I just like the peace of mind of having an individual to handle any and all problems (and belive me, they DO happen!!). On that note, I just feel the need to say that one incident that pops to mind (no pun intented!) that happened at Disney was that on an older meal plan (approx. 6-7 years ago?) we checked in and proceeded to the parks and were going to eat. However, there was NO meal plan (which we purchased and I had reciepts for) on our tickets! Well, it was straight back to the hotel where we were able to contact our TA through the disney front desk and found out that the problem was NOT with our TA OR Disney, it was with the "tour package co"...basically the middleman between TA and Disney! Needless to say, everything was corrected by dinner and while we were eating dinner the Manager came up to us and gave us new tickets AND reimbursed us for the cost of the days meals!

Back to the question...

We:

1. Used prior tickets for airfare.
2. Purchased Meal Plan.
3. Stay in Value Resort
4. Save like CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!

BOL!

 

[deejohn]

We always go for 7 days (Sat - Sat) and fly down, but I always got a 5 day pass, because the 1st day the kids only want to use the resort pool and the last day was a travel day. We are going in Dec this year for 7 days, but I only got a 4 day plus pass. This gives us 4 Parks and 3 other attractions (water parks, etc.). You may want to use the information on this site to plan out what you want to do and then use the Magic Your Way options to pick out the best plan. I saved about $600 from prior trips!!!

 

[pbharris4]

We go down for 5-6 days (not including the 2 days down and back). Right now, we decided to go to 1 park this year and 2-3 next year and keep it at 3. We switch it up between all the WDW parks and Sea World and Universal (which we haven't been to yet-well I've been to the one in CA-DH/ and kids haven't been at all yet). We love the parks but don't want to do them all every year, because we will get bored and well, we don't want to spend all that $$. Our favorite time to go is late Jan. and when we go again at that time we will go to more parks because we can go on almost everything and the longest line might be 20 mins, if that. So we get more for our $$ that way and no extreme heat.