I have been to Disney about 10 times in the past 12-15 years-- how do I do it?
First of all, my cousin is a cast member and is very dear about getting us whatever discount she can get us (rooms at Disney resorts, park passes). She will sometimes also accompany us to the parks in which case we get to go for free-- but we hate to take her up on this offer, as she has young nieces and nephews and a limited number of free admission days. Occasionally, she'll have a free pass for some reason and may give this to us. She also is a
DVC member and is always up for a trip to the beach when we are down. But of course, you are not eligible for these advantanges, so I will move on to my other strategies.
Second, we drive if we can to avoid renting a car. We even drove down when we were living in Maine. Even when staying on-property, we find the Disney transport to be slow, so we would rather drive to the parks.
Third, we hate crowds and would never consider going in any season but the lowest of the low. A pleasant side effect of this is lower hotel rates. We don't go to Disney (of our own volition-- family trips are different) unless we can get a room at a nice place for $50/night or less. Last time we stayed 10 nights at the Hotel Royal Plaza in a post-911 special, which was buy one night, get one night free and came out to about $60/nite including taxes. The hotel was not our dream hotel but it was very nice and entirely adequate to our needs. We are going for 10 days in late Sept/early Oct and got some of our night at the $20.03 rate and the rest at $49/night. With taxes, our stay will average out to $45/night. I usually spend quite a bit of internet time ferreting out the cheapest possible hotel rate-- it is kind of a game to me. We do sometimes stay in Disney hotels when traveling with family--then we pay more and have my cousin book the rooms, an we get a nice cast member discount (about 50%). We have also had three trips associated with various conferences, in which someone else paid for the room (but of course we were tied up with the conference all day).
Fourth, we usually eat breakfast in the hotel room. We bring a cooler and toaster and have juice, cereal, coffee, toast or something along those lines. This is partially a money saving device, partially because we can't manage three restaurant meals per day (just can't eat that much), but mostly a time-saving device. We aslo keep a bit of ham and cheese in our cooler, to make sandwiches if we are too tired to go out for dinner.
Fifth, although we appreciate a nice restauarant, we are in such "go-go-go" mode in the parks that we don't want to sit down for a leisurely meal and when we are done touring for the day we are too tired for anything too nice. so we tend to eat at pretty casual places like Chevy's, Jungle Jim's, or Denny's (or in the parks, at counter service or food carts-- we love those turkey legs!). Our tiredness saves us a bit on dining. We also don't like the priority seating thing-- not possible for us to say 90 days in advance how hungry we will be, what time we will be hungry, and even what park we will be at. So we naturally gravitate away from sit-down Disney meals. For this visit, we also learned that the 2003 Orlando Entertainment Book was on sale for $10 (paid $15 with shipping). There seem to be a good number of coupons in the book for restaurants in the Downtown Disney hotels and vicinity, so hopefully this will pay off.
Sixth, we are not big souvineer (sp?) people and don't have kids to convince us to buy a lot of "stuff." So our expenses are pretty much confined to meals, hotel, and tickets.
Seventh, for non-Disney tickets, we are not above suffering a timeshare pitch. Since we try to go to Disney for a long-enough time to have 2-3 relaxing days (water parks, marketplace, minispeed boat rentals, visits to Disney resorts), we'll get up early (not a problem for us), go to the timeshare pitch and be ready to start our day by 9:30 am. We can then zip over to a waterpark or even IOA (which doesn't open until 10AM in low season when we travel) and not have missed anything.
Eighth, since we go relatively often, we don't feel deprived if we miss something and figure we can always see it later. We've wanted to see Circ du soleil (sp?), but never have because of the expense-- oh well, we'll scheme our way there eventually! We've also never been to Disney Quest, but will probaly use the timeshare method to get 4 passes to DQ on this visit and save one pair for a future visit. We like the Disney dinner shows, but don't go to one on every visit. Not a big deal to us, because we'll be back.
Ninth, it is just my husband and I-- no kids, so all of our passes and meals are therefore cheaper.
I wouldn't worry if it seems like everybody else gets to Disney more than you do. It is of course easier for folks who make more money, live somewhere inexpensive, have a lot of time to take off work, have no kids, or have access to cast member discounts. I would never be able to go so frequently if I had to pay full price for everything...
Beatnik
that's DH's thing)DD gets new toys every week!! DS will too, but he's only 5mo! We do not have any credit card debt. We own our home, but pay a mortgage. Our WDW vacations are paid in cash, we never charge anything. I try to buy clothing on sale, it just never works out for me!! DH and I hardly go clothes shopping for ourselves, it's all for the kids. Sometimes we suprise ourselves with how we are able to "stretch" DH income and still live how we want. We have savings for kids college, big insuranse policies, 4O1K, and most importantly we are HAPPY and both agree on how we like to live and spend money.
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