How Do You "Save" While at Disney??

[Emme]

We are on the budget board here and I know most of us don't take $10,000 Disney trips (or maybe you do ) and I was wondering what do you do to economize YOUR Disney vacation while your there. In other words, I am staying on site and will eat breakfast in the room, and bring snacks and drinks from home to cut costs while we are there.

I am looking for some other ideas/tips as well. Anything you do that doesn't effect your trip significantly (like staying offsite) that you can share that brings your cost down a bit. I am looking forward to hearing what others do and what I can implement into my next trip. Thanks!!

 

[Kristi1357]

Like you mentioned, we eat breakfast in the room (cereal bars and fruit) and bring snacks into the park.

We bring our rain ponchos back with us each trip. As well as DS's light spinner - he's 2 and doesn't know the difference yet!

DH and I have shared counter service meals since the servings are usually huge. I have also been known to order a child's meal for myself since they are pretty generous as well (no flaming please - a CM told me I could do this).

We usually do our first shopping at WOD with the AP discount. That way we don't buy something at the parks that we could have bought at DTD a bit cheaper.

Kristi

 

[Grumpy's Gal]

we buy annual passes and go two trips on that pass -- once at the beginning of the year when we bought it and once right before it expires.

 

[aka-mad4themouse]

There aren't too many ways to cut down on the costs once you arrive on Disney property. That's because most of the big expenses involve hotel/transportation/tickets. Those are usually arranged well before the trip begins.

Some cost cutters that you may have not considered:

• Make sure you refill the rental car's tank prior to returning it. They charge an arm & a leg if you don't.
• Eliminate souvenirs and let your photographs be your souvies.
• If you have to buy a bottle of water in the parks, save the empty and refill it from the drinking fountains.
• Do fewer park days than there are days in your trip. Save the remaining days on your pass for the next visit. So, a 7-day vacation might have 5 park days and 2 days of rest. Just make sure that your passes have the "no-expiry" option!
• Character Meet & Greets are free, Character meals are over-priced. See the princesses at the Mickey's Toontown instead of at a breakfast. Mickey, Pluto, Chip & Dale are everywhere, so skip Chef Mickey's.
• Eat a late lunch and call it an early dinner. The lunch menus include the same entrées with smaller portions and prices.
• Get the kid's meal at counterservice restaurants. They usually have enough food to satisfy me and DD15. The guys need a little bit more.
• Bring your own light-up novelties (spinners, light sabers, tiaras, magic wands, glow necklaces) instead of purchasing them at parks.

I'd love to see some other ideas.

 

[HayGan]

We (well I have) have been pcking up cheap Disney stuff to take to give to the kids each day as souvineers (sure they will get more but this will help cut down). I've bought spinners on clearance at the Disney Store as well as glow sticks and stuffed Mickeys last year on clearnace at Walmart. I also ordered 2 of the Pal Mickeys from the Character Outlet for much much cheaper than they are in the parks.

Also, we split our stay between the Hilton DTD and the Poly. Right now I just couldn't afford spending 7 nights at the Poly so we get to experience the Hilton for $33 a night via a timeshare presentation. We also get the wonderful opportunity to stay at the Poly for a good bit of our vacation. We also went with the dining plan as that will be a huge savings for us! We also spent more this time for the no exipre MYW 10 day passes so we can go next year with less expense!

I have also been stopping by the Disney Store regularly and picking up Disney dollars. It helps me to save that money rather than spending it on some other stupid little impulse buy. Over the year I have managed to save about $800 in Disney Dollars. What we don't use can be refunded because I saved all fo my receipts.

Just a few of the things that we did to keep our budget in line.

 

[disneymom2one]

[QUOTE (snipped)
[*]Character Meet & Greets are free, Character meals are over-priced. See the princesses at the Mickey's Toontown instead of at a breakfast. Mickey, Pluto, Chip & Dale are everywhere, so skip Chef Mickey's.
[*]Eat a late lunch and call it an early dinner. The lunch menus include the same entrées with smaller portions and prices.
[*]Get the kid's meal at counterservice restaurants. They usually have enough food to satisfy me and DD15. The guys need a little bit more.
[*]Bring your own light-up novelties (spinners, light sabers, tiaras, magic wands, glow necklaces) instead of purchasing them at parks.[/list]
I'd love to see some other ideas.[/QUOTE]

I really disagree about character meals. My time is money. I personally think it's well worth the money to eat at a character meal and have the characters come to you. We never go to Toontown. It's just a zoo. We never wait in lines for characters. Yet we come home with rolls and rolls of film with the characters. It's also not that bad price-wise for us. We don't do counter service meals - ever. It's either in the room or at a table service place. So for a few $$$ more than a typical table service meal we get characters too. Well worth it in my opinion.

 

[aka-mad4themouse]

I really disagree about character meals. My time is money. I personally think it's well worth the money to eat at a character meal and have the characters come to you. We never go to Toontown. It's just a zoo. We never wait in lines for characters. Yet we come home with rolls and rolls of film with the characters. It's also not that bad price-wise for us. We don't do counter service meals - ever. It's either in the room or at a table service place. So for a few $$$ more than a typical table service meal we get characters too. Well worth it in my opinion.

Following the "time is money" logic, we would all fly to Orlando, rent cars instead of taking ME, drive from one park to the other and stay in the deluxe resorts because of their proximity to the parks.

The value of the character meals is certain subject to the opinion of the individual. However if I were looking to pare down my budget once I arrived at WDW, at almost $60 for a character breakfast for 2 adults & 2 children, it would be thing to go. Of course, if I planned to spend $60 to feed 4 people breakfast anyway, then I would choose a character breakfast over a regular sitdown meal any day!

 

[dvcgirl]

Following the "time is money" logic, we would all fly to Orlando, rent cars instead of taking ME, drive from one park to the other and stay in the deluxe resorts because of their proximity to the parks.

The value of the character meals is certain subject to the opinion of the individual. However if I were looking to pare down my budget once I arrived at WDW, at almost $60 for a character breakfast for 2 adults & 2 children, it would be thing to go. Of course, if I planned to spend $60 to feed 4 people breakfast anyway, then I would choose a character breakfast over a regular sitdown meal any day!

I totally agree with you mad4themouse. I think character meals are incredibly overpriced, especially the breakfast. And while ToonTown may be a zoo as far as character meet and greets, character meals can be very "zoo-like" in their own right.

We live in Orlando now, but when we vacationed at Disney we always had breakfast in the room. We always had a DVC studio with a toaster and so we'd make Starbucks coffee and enjoy a toasted bagel or something like that. We always detested the coffee at WDW and so having a great cup of coffee for a tiny portion of the price for a watery cup of WDW coffee was not only a savings, but way more enjoyable.

 

[MissBubbles]

I know I'm in the minority here, but we stay offsite. The motel we stay at runs anywhere from $25-50 a night (depending on when we visit) and pretty much, we're in the room to shower & sleep. I'd rather spend time in the parks. So that's my #1 cost saver.

The other big cost saver is to share meals. The portions, even at the counter service restaurants, are HUGE!

 

[Tinkerbell_Girl]

To save money I bring my own bottled water and snacks to the parks. It may not save a ton of money but I still save a little bit.

 

[tbelfonti]

We don't buy a lot of souveniers - on the last day everyone gets to pick out one thing: DH gets a shirt; I get my ornament; DD usually ends up choosing another one of those playsets of characters < $10. Thankfully DD isn't a "gimme" kind of kid who is asking for everything all the time. With her if there's a meltdown in the park it's because I won't buy her junkfood. :rolleyes

I pack healthy snacks for all of us to bring in the park.

We bought filtered waterbottles from a link on mousesavers and use them instead of buying bottled water. I'm a huge water drinker and a "water snob" at that so this was well worth it.

We share meals when possible.

We have the DDE card so that saves us 20% on our sit down meals.

 

[poohj80]

Personally, we don't worry about trying to save while at WDW. We save throughout the year to have enjoyable vacations and the last thing we want to do is count pennies instead of just enjoying our magical time.

 

[graygables]

1)Brita water bottles, although I'm shipping from Staples this year.
2)Annual Pass (with the changes, not such a great thing anymore, you have to do the math for yourself)
3)Disney Dining Experience (makes those pricey character meals more palatable!)
4)Bring cereal, bowls, fruit, granola bars, snacks from home (frees up room in the suitcase for souvenirs, too!)
5)Eat 2 meals a day (other than the light b-fast), so either a late "brunch", early dinner, or lunch, later dinner. Also, don't buy more food than you need. There are times that DD just wants a little mashed potatoes, so ordering her a whole meal is a waste. Don't be afraid to ask the server for just what you want...they can be very accomodating!
6)Have kids make "wish lists" of souvenirs, where they saw them, item # if possible, amount and give them a budget. At the end of the trip, have them choose what fits their budget and see what you can buy at WoD w/ AP discount, then re-visit the places to pick up any other "must have" souvenirs. This also gives you a list you can use for birthdays, Christmas, etc by ordering directly from Disney Merchandise. :grin:
7)bring your own ponchos
8)make your own t-shirts, so you're less likely to "need" one there
9) take LOTS of photos. Your scrapbook will be around a lot longer than your t-shirts/mugs
10)collect antenna balls! They are fun, relatively inexpensive and fun to add to for each trip, plus you can get extra "fixes" at the Disney Store between trips!
11)bring ears, hat, light up toys, anything like that you've gotten on previous vacations.

 

[Tinkaroo]

I'd echo many of these already posted - Brita water bottles, seeing if an AP (at least one adult in your party) could help bring down costs of room, food, and souveniers, etc.

One of the greatest things I learned before our spring trip was to order a double cheeseburger meal, and then an extra bun (I think it was about $0.69). That way, one CS meal fed both me and DH - and if we're not drinking water out of our bottles, we get a large soda to split.

Also, impulse control! We usually "shop around" the first few days - I write down things as we see them that we like - and then we narrow things down and go to WOD and get our AP discount on everything.

 

[skiingwife]

I'm planning to share some meals with my husband (neither of us want to overeat and gain 5 pounds while we're there anyway) or kids.

I'm not buying the park hopper option. I'm just going to plan wisely and go to one park per day. We'll be there 10 days so we can go to each park more than once, but not buying the hopper saves my family of 5 about $225.

I'm bringing the individual cups of cereal (found at Target), granola bars and poptarts for breakfast. I'm planning only 1 (maybe 2 character breakfasts). The rest of the days we'll eat in our room.

Instead of renting a car for a week, I'm renting it for one day on the day we fly in and one day on the day we fly out (from Sanford, so no Magical Express for us). I found good one day rates with Alamo.

 

[lisajl]

We are staying offsite this time around. I know, it's not a popular choice, but I would rather be there and offsite, than to be onsite and in debt or worse yet, not be there at all.

We took some breakfast foods with us last time. We ate in the room.

This time, the hotel offers free breakfast, so we will take advantage of that, and just eat small stuff in the parks.

We drive down, so we take a cooler full of stuff to eat on the way down.

We usually stop in GA at families places for a night.

Lisa

 

[challada]

We stay in a house offsite instead of onsite hotel (less in price than the cheapest Disney rooms and we get our own kitchen, pool, bedrooms, gameroom, etc) and doing this means I only pay for 1 meal in the park per day instead of 3.

We ALWAYS buy our souvenirs at the Outlets...check all of them as they have different merchadise at different ones. One year we found a special at one of them that had the men's golf polos (w/Mickey and WDW embroidered) on a clearance of 5 for $25 (so $5 for the shirts that were running around $55 in the park at that time). I've bought the beanie disney characters for dirt cheap here and have gotten DD's halloween costumes every year for the last 4 years at a park outlet.

As other's mentioned we bring our own water in....and I found that the Brita bottles for refilling are the best (can get water at the fountain free then).

We also use our Fastpass system to the fullest...I think keeping everyone moving from one activity to the next due to our windows opening, keeps my kids from asking for everything they see in the store windows!

 

[moniot]

We find that planning ahead as much as you can helps. Before we go I print off menus from the places we will most likely be dining. We generally know in the morning (after eating breakfast in the room were we will be having our late lunch/early dinner that day. We have four kids with so I hand out the menus so they can decide ahead of time what they are ordering. This saves the impulse ordering and you can plan ahead if you are sharing a meal so you can order dessert or if you just want a meal. Other wise you get there and they see all the fabulous options and everybody wants everything

We are however flexible and just because things start out one way in the morning doesn't mean they will be the same come late afternoon

Leah

 

[skiingwife]

I'm planning to share some meals with my husband (neither of us want to overeat and gain 5 pounds while we're there anyway) or kids.

I'm not buying the park hopper option. I'm just going to plan wisely and go to one park per day. We'll be there 10 days so we can go to each park more than once, but not buying the hopper saves my family of 5 about $225.

I'm bringing the individual cups of cereal (found at Target), granola bars and poptarts for breakfast. I'm planning only 1 (maybe 2 character breakfasts). The rest of the days we'll eat in our room.

Instead of renting a car for a week, I'm renting it for one day on the day we fly in and one day on the day we fly out (from Sanford, so no Magical Express for us). I found good one day rates with Alamo.

 

[lustergirl]

As I read everyone's posts I thank god my 2 sons are older now and they didn't need every disney thing they saw, lol. We enjoyed a beautiful trip to Disney this past september with the free dining plan- well worth it. For the 6 days that I was there I spent a total of little over 300 dollars on stuff. My sons chose one souvenir each, bought something for my mom, and my husband and myself bought a little something for each of us. I am already saving for next year trip as I plan on going again in the end of September. This time I would love to stay at the Poly. This past september we stayed at the All Star Sports and loved it including the price- $77 a night. But for the next trip we will be traveling in a group of 5 so I need the extra room.
A good way to save early is buy disney dollars, that is what I started to do- you can only spend them at the parks or in the disney stores. Also I got a part-time job at our local disney store to supplement my vacation savings!!!!!

Good Luck Everyone,
Lisa