I have to ask...how do all these people afford...

[Beca]

Some people have AP's, and drive in and stay cheap. Others have good jobs and can just plane afford it. Many others use plastic and are in debt up to their . If you have to fly your whole family in and stay expensive then they probably can't afford it.

Sometimes this can be true, and sometimes not. We are DVC members...and, our DVC was purchased with cash. Outlays on our dues come to just over $200 per month (about $2400/per year). We will be taking 4 trips on those dues...3 at Beach Club, and 1 at Boardwalk. That comes to $600 "budget outlay" for lodging at deluxe resorts. We paid for our DVC by skimping, and allocating money for that instead of new cars (we own Hondas, and can easily get 150,000-200,000 out of them, so why not?)

We will get AP's with DVC discounts, so we are looking at under $1000 for the three of us. Over 4 trips, that is $250 each trip for tickets.

My dh travels a lot for business, so he gets free airline tickets, and has a companion pass. Therefore, we only need two free tickets each trip for the 3 of us. Airline travel....free.

Our biggest expense is actually boarding our two dogs. We will probaby spend $300 a week for this.

Of course, there is parking at the airport (about $50). Then, there is food/spending money. Sometimes, we take a lot, and sometimes we don't spend much at all. Since we go so often, dh and I are "over" buying a lot. We try to say that each of us can buy something "nice" while we are there. But, we don't buy a lot of "junk". Dd still likes the "junk", but after so many trips....she is not as "enchanted" by it as she used to be. We average about $1000/wk for food and souveniers....as I said....sometimes more, sometimes less.

That is $2200 for each of our trips where we fly, and stay deluxe. Of that $2200, $600 is "normal budget" and not noticed at trip time...so, we really only budget $1600 for each trip. If we didn't have the dogs, and had someone drop us off at the airport...we'd be down to $1250 outside of our monthly budget, and $1000 of that is totally within our control. We often stay in 1 bedrooms that have full kitchens...we COULD do that for a lot less.

I am not trying to be argumentative. I am just pointing out that some things are not what they seem.

 

[DVC-Don]

We are DVC members with contracts paid for a long time ago, so room costs are not a concern now. Our dues add up to about what a 7 day stay at a moderate would cost and we get in about 20 days a year at WDW in a DVC unit over the course of 2 or 3 trips per year. We also use AP's with a $100 or so DVC discount on each. Then we are Southwest Rapid Reward members with them tied into a SW Visa card and get about 2 free roundtrip tickets per year, not to mention the occasional Ding fare. That makes it much cheaper to spend time at our second home with DVC.

 

[mama4]

I've struggled with how to make our trips more affordable for years. We live two hours away and I just wanted to take advantage of it. Driving instead of flying, great price on seasonal passes, good deals on rooms- we should be able to make 3-4 trips a year I thought. Well, maybe not. This year I got a little smarter. I used to be spoiled by staying on property (not deluxe but mods and values) and I wanted to stay 3 or 4 days minumum AND do at least 1 week long trip and we'd need 2 rooms for our big family. Now I see it's just too expensive for us. We will have to stay off property with the kids.
My DH earns a decent salary but I am a sahm and with our 4 kids (one of which just started driving- car, insurance, gas money, etc.) We also have lots of family in Florida and travel back in forth (some two hours away, some 5 hrs) often for holidays and such-. Now even though we don't have a ton of debt, and we budget for clothes, food, entertainment- everyday life is still expensive. I came to the realization we just can't justify throwing in three or four WDW trips in the budget.
Well, that said we just took our second trip of the year. The first trip this year was in June and it was just me and the kids going to the parks as dh was in Orlando on business. We all got the 3 day play Fl res passes for that one and stayed in an offsite hotel paid for by dhs company. This last trip was for our anniv so just Dh and I. I upgraded my 3-day play to a seasonal and he bought a 3 day play pass. We had a discount on the room at CSR and a $50 dining card for having the AP so we spent under $100 for food that trip. I will be going back with my Mom to Epcot for the CP in December (her birthday gift) for 1 night and then we will go back in February for a family trip for our longest trip ever (7 nghts ) How? Well- we will all have seasonal passes which we upgraded from our 3-day play passes by then (a Christmas gift) and the coolest part of all is that dFIL is using timeshare points (which would otherwise go to waste) to get us a 2 br condo for the 7 nights. The room will cost us a total of $187. We will use the kitchen to prepare many meals but we will go out to eat a few times I'm sure. Overall though, that will probably be our least expensive family trip ever. So we are going 4 times within a year but VERRRY cheaply and staying within our budget (now that I know we can't stay onsite). Now, after our Feb trip, since our passes will expire in June, we'll have to see. If we can't get these types of deals we probably won't go as much. But I can live with that. I've been wanting to do a mountain trip anyways

 

[LilGMom]

They think a Disney trip is too expensive.

I used to hear this alot from coworkers who'd roll their eyes because I was either planning or heading to another WDW vacation. I ended up taking pictures of the Hess gas station (they even thought that gas would be super high priced) and would get menus from some of the restaurants or take a picture of a CS menu. Most people were very surprised about the prices and then once they found out about various discounts (i.e. FL resident rates/tickets, DDP, AP discounts on merchandise/dining, etc.) they were even more surprised. Eventually I ended up helping two coworkers plan trips to WDW.

 

[MEM]

Sometimes this can be true, and sometimes not. We are DVC members...and, our DVC was purchased with cash. Outlays on our dues come to just over $200 per month (about $2400/per year). We will be taking 4 trips on those dues...3 at Beach Club, and 1 at Boardwalk. That comes to $600 "budget outlay" for lodging at deluxe resorts. We paid for our DVC by skimping, and allocating money for that instead of new cars (we own Hondas, and can easily get 150,000-200,000 out of them, so why not?)

We will get AP's with DVC discounts, so we are looking at under $1000 for the three of us. Over 4 trips, that is $250 each trip for tickets.

My dh travels a lot for business, so he gets free airline tickets, and has a companion pass. Therefore, we only need two free tickets each trip for the 3 of us. Airline travel....free.

Our biggest expense is actually boarding our two dogs. We will probaby spend $300 a week for this.

Of course, there is parking at the airport (about $50). Then, there is food/spending money. Sometimes, we take a lot, and sometimes we don't spend much at all. Since we go so often, dh and I are "over" buying a lot. We try to say that each of us can buy something "nice" while we are there. But, we don't buy a lot of "junk". Dd still likes the "junk", but after so many trips....she is not as "enchanted" by it as she used to be. We average about $1000/wk for food and souveniers....as I said....sometimes more, sometimes less.

That is $2200 for each of our trips where we fly, and stay deluxe. Of that $2200, $600 is "normal budget" and not noticed at trip time...so, we really only budget $1600 for each trip. If we didn't have the dogs, and had someone drop us off at the airport...we'd be down to $1250 outside of our monthly budget, and $1000 of that is totally within our control. We often stay in 1 bedrooms that have full kitchens...we COULD do that for a lot less.

I am not trying to be argumentative. I am just pointing out that some things are not what they seem.

Wow! I could have written this same post, except that my one little dog will cost $300 for boarding. We budget from $2,000 to $2,500 per trip for each of our three trips per year and I do include in each budget one-third of the cost of our APs and one-third the cost of our DVC dues.

Thanks to great Ding! fares I booked today, I shaved $200 off our budget for
the first week of December, bringing us down to $2,000. We no longer feel the need to eat more than one or two TS dinners per trip and that helps with trimming the budget too.

There will come the time when we have to take fewer trips per year but we will be able to upgrade to a 2 bedroom villa and dine-in to save money.