How much should I plan to spend

[tonkajax]

We are middle class family and we are going to Disney in about a year. We are starting to plan far in advance partly so we can save enough to really enjoy ourselves without having to worry about $ and being on too tight of a budget. It will be me and my wife and 4 year old son. We plan to go to magic kingdom once, Seaworld once, animal kingdom once and hollywood studios once and go downtown a couple nights. We don't need to buy everything we see but we would like to shop a little bit. My question is how much should we plan to spend each day including park tickets? Should we go with the disney dining plan and/or the magic your way passes? I know this is a tough question to give any one answer to but is there some sort of formula to come up with a good answer? Just trying to come up with a savings plan so in 1 years time we will be set.

 

[Tnkrbelle565]

We are middle class family and we are going to Disney in about a year. We are starting to plan far in advance partly so we can save enough to really enjoy ourselves without having to worry about $ and being on too tight of a budget. It will be me and my wife and 4 year old son. We plan to go to magic kingdom once, Seaworld once, animal kingdom once and hollywood studios once and go downtown a couple nights. We don't need to buy everything we see but we would like to shop a little bit. My question is how much should we plan to spend each day including park tickets? Should we go with the disney dining plan and/or the magic your way passes? I know this is a tough question to give any one answer to but is there some sort of formula to come up with a good answer? Just trying to come up with a savings plan so in 1 years time we will be set.

Hard to gage based on the information you are giving. How many days are you traveling? Where are you staying? Is there a reason that you are planning only one day at MK and no days at Epcot? IMO, you'll need at least 2 days at MK (if not 3- we always do 3) with a son that age. Also, you will not finish DHS in one day if you want to see all the shows. Downtown Disney does not cost anything to go to but unless you are going for additional days than the days you've listed at parks, you won't be able to adequately finish the parks to actually leave them to go to DTD

Ticket prices will increase in August of this year so you can better be able to budget tickets then

Are you planning to fly or drive? If you plan to go to Sea World, you'll need a rental car or to take public transportation. If you take that, don't forget to factor in gas, tolls, and the cost of parking at the parks.

Do you plan to rent a stroller or bring yours? At 4, even if your child doesn't use a stroller at home, you will probably need one at WDW. We go in Sept every year and it's really warm. DD still needs a stroller to take a break or she would have a HUGE meltdown. It costs quite a bit to rent a stroller at Disney so that's an additional cost to factor in.

The DDP is totally up to your eating habits. We use it because it's worth if for my family because we like to have a sit down meal/character meal at least once per day. I would suggest going through the menus on allearsnet and figuring out what you family may eat in a day and do a budget that way.

Spending money is a very personal choice. We go to Disney often so we don't really buy souvies. Last trip we went for 9 days and we spent under $300 (including souvies, adult beverages, and tips).

 

[brymolmom]

Keep in mind that (depending where you're coming from) travel costst to get there plus the first 3 days of park tickets can be the most expensive parts of the trip. So what I'm saying is that a 5 day trip might end up a much worse 'deal' than a 7 or 8 day....Just something to consider and price out.

Staying at a value resort will be about $90 per night without significant discounts. Park tickets are as per the link at the top menu states. Going to SeaWorld will be the biggest budget buster - ARe you going to have a car there? Transportation costs to SeaWorld plus the one day tickets there (which will likely be $50 - $70 per person for one day vs. adding another day to your WDW tickets which would be MUCH less).

To give you an idea - for our 8 nights this September (with free dining - which is an INCREDIBLE deal) for a family with 2 adults and 2 kids works out to be about $2500 - $2700 total (including tips and transportation costs to get there). We are staying at POP century, with base tickets and using WDW tranporation.

It's a great deal!

 

[Bill and Jen]

Going to SeaWorld will be the biggest budget buster - ARe you going to have a car there? Transportation costs to SeaWorld plus the one day tickets there (which will likely be $50 - $70 per person for one day vs. adding another day to your WDW tickets which would be MUCH less).

It's a great deal!

AS a piece of information I found out after my trip last year. You can Pick up a (Public) bus from DTD or TTC center that brings you to Sea World for a few dollars per person each way. It would have saved us over 50 dollars.

 

[crisi]

Because of brymolmom's point - seven days at Disney is almost as cheap as five, transportation costs go down, etc. - a lot of people here choose to do "Disney" vacations rather than "Orlando" vacations - i.e. they skip Sea World and Universal.

There is a big difference between an Orlando vacation that involves a few days at some of the Disney parks, and a Disney vacation. If you do an Orlando vacation - you are probably better off staying offsite, eating offsite, and renting a car. If you do a Disney vacation, onsite with the Dining plan, not renting a car and being dependent on Disney for transportation (assuming you fly) might make a lot more sense.

For budgeting purposes check out www.mousesavers.com.

 

[Darcy03231]

I took my niece last fall. It was just the two of us for a week. I bought a vacation package that included the on-site hotel, tickets and dining plan. While there I spent an additional $800. This included $200 for BBB, $100 for tickets to MNSSHP and $100 for a watch for me. The rest was additional food/snacks, souvenirs, photos, etc.

 

[HunnyPots]

Do you know that there is only a $5 difference between a three day ticket and a five day ticket? And no difference between a five day and a seven day ticket? Crazy, huh? Check out undercovertourist.com for your ticket options.
Tax is included and shipping is free.

Just curious, why not EPCOT?

 

[IDoDis]

You can't get the dining plan unless you are staying onsite. If you take a day to go to Sea World, but still stay onsite, you'll be losing those meals or trying to play catch-up.

Like others have said, if you look at how ticket prices break down, the difference between a 3 day ticket and a 6 day ticket might only be $20 or less, total! Adding more days after that is even cheaper (like $6 a day for the whole family). Sometimes the price of the 3 day ticket and a 4 day ticket is the same.

If you go to SeaWorld and have a Southwest Airlines frequent flyer card (it's free and you can sign up and print it online), then you can get Sea World tickets at the gate for 20% off. Of all the deals floating around, this was the best deal out there.

We just took a 10 day vacation in Orlando. We spent the first day at Sea World (tickets were around $250 with tax for the four of us -- we had to pay adult prices for our kids. If you buy a one day ticket, you can actually use it to come back one more day for free within 7 days of the first use. We didn't do this though. We stayed in a hotel 1.5 miles from Sea World for 2 nights and paid $33 per night from priceline.com. It was a decent place with a bedroom suite, nice pool, etc... Total for all of this (including park admission, hotel, food, etc..) was $420.00

After Sea World, we went to a Daytona Beach area for 2 nights. We paid $94 per night for our hotel on the beach. We rented chairs and an umbrella for our beach days (about $20 per day). Breakfast at the hotel was under $10 for all 4 of us (eggs, bacon, pancakes, hashbrowns). With other meals, gas, hotel and some shopping we spent around $280.00

Then we stayed onsite at the Wilderness Lodge for 7 nights and 8 park days. We had the dining plan included. Our package price for this was $3300.00 (woods view w/ bunk beds for the kids). We spent $170 on tips for the dining plan and for Mousekeeping (maid service).
We had a rental car for 1/2 of our trip (via priceline) for $160.00.

Our only other expenses were gas, souvenirs, lunch at Downtown Disney one day (we had a $15 voucher and one dining plan credit so all we had to pay for were the kids' meals), and a few out-of-pocket meals we paid for when the kids wanted to eat off the kids' menu (and we saved their dining plan credits for breakfasts that we shared).. The miscellaneous expenses came to $300.00.

We also flew, so that was an additional $950.00.

Grand Total for 10 days for a family of 4 doing all of the above was around $5400.00.

Depending on the time of year you will be traveling, you will probably find package deals out there, so if you plan to stay on-site, you might not want to run out and buy tickets just yet. If you don't do the dining plan and stay off-site which we did last year, our lodging for a 3 bedroom condo 5 minutes from WDW was $850 for 10 nights (at Windsor Hills). You could buy your own food and cook breakfast and dinner in your condo and eat counter service meals at the parks.

 

[JeMarie6]

We are middle class family and we are going to Disney in about a year. We are starting to plan far in advance partly so we can save enough to really enjoy ourselves without having to worry about $ and being on too tight of a budget. It will be me and my wife and 4 year old son. We plan to go to magic kingdom once, Seaworld once, animal kingdom once and hollywood studios once and go downtown a couple nights. We don't need to buy everything we see but we would like to shop a little bit. My question is how much should we plan to spend each day including park tickets? Should we go with the disney dining plan and/or the magic your way passes? I know this is a tough question to give any one answer to but is there some sort of formula to come up with a good answer? Just trying to come up with a savings plan so in 1 years time we will be set.

Just to give you a rough starting point, we had planned to do a bare bones budget vacation for a family of 4 for about $4000. After reading the hints and planning, we're managed to get tickets, on site hotel (POP) and free dining for 8 days/7 nights for about $1600, flights were another $1000 and with other spending money we're figuring a nice but still budget vacation for about $3500. We are doing just Disney, 2 MK days, 2 Epcot days and 1 day at DHS and Animal Kingdom - thus not having to rent a car. Definitely weigh the advantages of a longer stay versus shorter stay and watch for discounts depending on when you're planning to go. We planned for September for value season/free dining promotion.

 

[trainingupmy4princes]

First you need to know the ticket prices Mousesavers has a list so you can compare the more days the less per day cost. Airfare down depends on time of year Christmas= expensive fall= cheap when we've priced trips. So pick your time of year then you can also get a feel for what kind of discount at Disney you can hope for as well.
Your hotel can be a big part of the budget so you need to decide your priorities in hotels. I've stayed at moderateds,values and deluxe depending on budget and discounts. We tend to like the moderates, deluxes feel overpriced unless we have a 30-40% code. My autistic son loves pools so moderates give us a pool slide and hot tub which values don't have. The dining plan isn't always a good deal depending on how you eat but if you can go during free dining then it's a good deal.
We have gone to Seaworld for a day during our free dining trip we just made up for the extra credit by doing a 2TS meal one day(the Luau). But Seaworld was an extra ticket cost and food while there and transportation back and forth. We took the bus,pretty cheap, but it was kind of long getting there and back.
Once you figure out time of year and hotel preferences it'll be easier to get a ballpark budget. I would say for that age it will be hard to see MK without a day and a half at least. Surprisingly enough my kids loved Epcot as well and we had planned to spend the least amount of time there.Good luck and happy planning.

 

[crisi]

One thing you can do is decide on a budget and then craft a trip to fit around that budget. There are some things its hard to get any deals on (park tickets are one - there are 'less expensive' tickets for Disney - there are not cheap tickets unless you want to spend your vacation in timeshare presentations).

For instance, there are people who drive down (transportation = cost of gas), bid a room on the internet and manage to stay for a week offsite for a few hundred dollars, go grocery shopping and bring sandwiches into the park and do Disney for cheap. If that is what you can afford, that is what you do.

There are other people who will stay on property in a hotel room that runs $350 a night. They will spend $100+ a day per person on meals, plus alcohol, take advantage of some of Disney's optional and expensive offerings (Cirque du Soliel at $100 a ticket, backstage tours).

Chances are, what you can afford is somewhere between - and you'll be making a lot of choices - nicer hotel or better meals or more souvieniers or a day at SeaWorld or a longer trip or..... I'd recommend saving as much as you can so more choices are available to you - you can always choose NOT to spend it.

 

[SunnieRN]

Consider buying your tickets prior to the price increase in August. They will be good until the first day of use for the ticket and I think they expire two weeks after the first use, unless you buy the non-expiring option.