Trip for 3 college students

[Disney'sInMySoul]

Hi everyone! I have gone to Disney 5 times and I love it! I am going again this Spring. My friends however, have never been. They also do not travel much and have never gone out of the state, except to our neighboring state a few times. I would really love to plan a trip for Disney with them this Summer. I know it is really late to start planning, so I need your expertise!
I would love to be able to plan a pretty inexpensive trip. I would plan on staying at a value, probably pop, and only stay about 4-5 days. I'm also kind of nervous because one of my friends is very frugal with her money and also does not really want to go to Disney. She would rather go to New York City. Help make this a magical and possible trip for three college students please!

 

[Fyrefly]

I did the same thing with my friends last year. A few things to consider:

1) If you have a long winter break, take advantage of that. Going during Spring Break will be a fortune, and you may have internships for the summer. Early January at the very beginning of value season was cheap, plus we still got to see the Christmas decorations even though the events were no longer going.

2) Can the 4 of you stay in a single value without killing each other? It will be full-sized beds and one bathroom, but the sink at our room in the AsSp was on the outside of the toilet/tub so we were able to get going quickly. You'd save a decent amount of $ there.

3) Do Disney transportation the whole time, ME, the busses and such. We're too young to rent cars, or if a group does give us a rental, its a fortune. If you're driving, never mind.

4) Pick a clump of time that's as open as you can, then watch for Southwest and other airline sales. We went during our break, and were originally doing an earlier departure but then a Southwest sale came out that started for flights on the 7th. So bumping our entire trip back two days didn't matter because we weren't fitting it in anywhere.

5) If they've never been, you don't really need Hoppers because they will be able to spend an entire day (or more) in each park seeing all there is to see. If it's winter, you don't need waterparks. So I would just go base tickets.

6) Keep an eye out for promotions for the dates you are planning on. We were originally going to do 5 park days (2 epcot) and no parks on arrival day, and we ended up finding a promo where two of our hotel nights were free and we got two extra park tickets, so we added a day to our trip and spent our arrival afternoon in a park.

7) Don't bother with DDP. Bring cereal/granola bars, etc for breakfast and pay OOP. The portions are so big (you know that) and its not like you're doing 10 character meals for little ones to make the cost really worth it. I think you'll save money. If you feel like doing some TS go for it, and try doing it for lunch rather than dinner since its cheaper.

8) If your friend really doesn't want to go, I would suggest you respect your feelings. Not saying cancel your trip, but don't force anybody to go to Disney who doesn't want to - they'll be a wet blanket and make everyone miserable, particularly if you are sharing a room.

That's what I learned, at any rate. Best of luck planning! I think I ended up going for about $450 per person plus food and souvenirs at double occupancy for a week, less for quad but I don't remember how much. I don't remember if that included airfare, I don't think it did but I found the deal as I said so that was barely $100 RT The friends I was planning for balked at even that much. I don't know what they were expecting as I got it as low as humanly possible, but I didn't let the fact that all 8 people we had proposed this trip to shut me down bother me, just grabbed my boyfriend and we had our own trip without. Don't get discouraged, we're all frugal college students, but some have pretty outlandish ideas on how cheap a vacation should be.

 

[Marionnette]

Hi everyone! I have gone to Disney 5 times and I love it! I am going again this Spring. My friends however, have never been. They also do not travel much and have never gone out of the state, except to our neighboring state a few times. I would really love to plan a trip for Disney with them this Summer. I know it is really late to start planning, so I need your expertise!
I would love to be able to plan a pretty inexpensive trip. I would plan on staying at a value, probably pop, and only stay about 4-5 days. I'm also kind of nervous because one of my friends is very frugal with her money and also does not really want to go to Disney. She would rather go to New York City. Help make this a magical and possible trip for three college students please!

Try to go with a room only discount for late May or early June. You should be able to book a value resort room at 20% off of the rack rate. Avoid the weekends (Friday & Saturday nights) because the rates go up at the values on weekends in May and June.

Use Disney's Magical Express from the airport to the hotel. It's free is you're staying on site. The cost of renting a car when you are under 25 is

Buy your tickets from a place like undercovertourist.com. Sign up for the mousesavers.com newsletter and use the link in it to get a little bigger discount. Skip hopping and waterpark fun options to save money. Don't bother with side trips to Universal or Sea World if you're trying to keep it low-budget.

Bring some snacks with you. Plan to do breakfast in the room while you're waiting for your turn in the bathroom. Nothing fancy just granola bars and juice. Stick to the counterservice restaurants. No need to leave a tip there. Split some meals if you are not big eaters. Order kid's meals if you like what's in them. There's no rule that says you can't. Bring a water bottle and ask for a cup of free ice water to refill it. Don't bother ordering soda pop with your meal.

Watch airfare on kayak.com or bing.com travel sites. When you find a price that you can live with then buy it. If you don't mind connections, layovers or weird travel hours, then try naming your price on Priceline.

And if you have a friend that doesn't want to do Disney then you need to actively listen to her. It might be that she doesn't like amusement parks but has no idea that a theme park is different. Or maybe she just feels that if she's going to spend money on a trip, she wants something a little more grown up and sophisticated than Disney World. If she isn't enthusiastic about going, she may make everyone unhappy once you're there.

 

[Disney'sInMySoul]

Thanks everyone! That was really helpful. I will ask her again if she really doesn't want to go. The thing is though we aren't really just "oh she's my friend" she's like my sister now so sometimes I forget to actually listen to her instead of annoying her into doing things. lol I will seriously talk to her about it though.