This is cool! I'm in! Our trip is not until Sept 2014. I have a Plan A (with
Free Dining) and a Plan B (if Free Dining is not offered)
We are a family of 5 for this trip: DH, myself, DS22, DS17, and DD14
Plan A (w/ Free Dining) looks like this so far:
Airfare: We have never flown as a family before so this is new to me. I started a thread and got some really good advice. A special shout out to "spears2008" for this tip:
"
I would recommend the Chase sapphire preferred card which gives you 40,000 bonus points if you spend 3,000 in the first 3 months AND the chase southwest card (apply when they offer 50,000 points for spending 2,000 in the first 3 months). Chase sapphire can be transferred to Southwest, so that would give you 95,000 miles for spending $5,000 on the cards. If you redeem for SW wanna get away tickets, that is worth $1,583 of airfare! (That's 60 points used for each dollar of airfare). "
Applying for the Sapphire card today to get that rolling. Was told Chase SW card ran the 50K points promo last year in Jan, so going to watch and hopefully apply with that promo then.
So, That gives me a budget of about $300 per round trip ticket. Based on recent research I feeling like I can get them for that if I keep a close watch on fares. Best case scenario--- (drum roll) ........ Airfare will be , or very nearly covered with the bonus points!!!!
DS25 will be dropping us off an picking up from airport so no parking expense. Using Disney's Magical Express in Orlando
Room: Since we are the dreaded "party of 5" our choices are limited. Our plan as of right now is that the free dining will include POR and we can get a room in Alligator Bayou with the fold down bed. (I know the bed is small but DD is a tiny thing (even tho she eats like a horse) and we've measured the mattress size out and she says she'll be fine. Hey, after a full day in the park, one can sleep on a razor blade, no?) I'm excited bc last yr we stayed at POFQ and liked it but ready for a change in theme and we are the out-doorsey type so the lush grounds will suit us!
Tickets: 5 "Disney adult", 6 day base tix (Found 5 of our "Park Hopper Plus" tix from 2003 with a remaining Water Park option. Based on research on allears.net the waterpark option on these tix does not expire. So going to give it a shot using them for a WP day if weather permits.)
Room and Tickets combined $3516. (according to Disney website just this morning) Adult son paying 1/5 of that so grand total on my tab is
~$2813
Saved: Currently have close to $800 in rewards dollars accumulated between my 2 Discover cards and the Chase Freedom (thanks to the working the quarterly 5% promos and 1 $250 bonus from Discover when I spent $3k over a 3 month period) We put everything we can on these cards including utility bills so I am pretty confidant that will be up well over $1k by next year at this time. Plus I will do market research focus groups (usually 2-3 per year) at an average of $100 each. That money goes right in the WDW fund so I'm guessing I'll have at the very least $1500 saved! Remaining $1100 or so I will keep on the Disney Visa (which hopefully will give the usual 6 mo no interest offer) and pay it off over the 6 months. That's what we did for the 2012 trip.
Food: FREE Standard Dining Plan! woo hoo
Tax and Tips on food to be covered by our change saving jar which usually ends up being $200-300.
Other Tips: Question here.. Do you tip Magical Express bus driver?
Change jar savings usually is enough to cover maid service (room) tips as well.
Souvenirs:
Budgeting about $300. ($100 each for the younger 2 kids and $100 for DH and I. Adult DS obviously has his own $)
Will be paid using my rewards dollars from the Disney Visa (which I will use to pay for the room and tix.) Then I usually calculate how much more I need to spend on that card to reach my rewards goal and throw some more purchases on that as needed.
So, souvenirs should be covered by the Disney Gift Cards from Disney Visa!
"Plan B" is if Free Dining is NOT offered
and that changes the room cost and obviously the food. This is not the optimum scenario but if this is the case we will allot for food expense by decreasing the room cost. This will mean staying offsite (Suite hotel, Condo or rental villa) for a target price of $79-89 per nite. (have obtained this price in the past) There will be then be the added costs of a rental car, parking fees and food will be out of pocket......... ugh! I don't even want to think about planning this type of trip but will do it if necessary. Any added advice in this regard would be appreciated. Here goes. This is very preliminary!.........
Room/condo/villa= $700
Rental Car= $300
Parking =$100
Food= $800* (not incl tax and tips which is allotted for in a separate category see Plan A)
--------------------------
Total: $1900 (which is the same as the room cost for 8 nites at POR- so that would keep us at the same budget level as with Plan A)
Tix: 1600 (saving a little getting them from
UT)
Grand total = $3500 with adult DS paying 1/5 = $2800 on our tab,
*I know the food cost sounds low but we will eat breakfast in the room/condo/villa, pack snacks to nibble on during the day and have our main meal at lunchtime rather than dinner. Have done this on previous trips.
so roughly the same as with free dining except for we will really have to plan a food budget per day and stick to it, which takes some of the fun out of the trip but is "doable". We've done it before on trips w/o free dining.
We are going in October, 2014.
