Vacation Money

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I thought even the studios were between 10-12 points per night during weekdays.

How many points is a room during the lowest season?

Dawn

It depends on the property. They are not the same from property to property.

Don't recall what we uses in points at AKL in July. It was a lot given the season and we stayed over a Thursday and the high point Friday in a 1 BR villa. But we have 5 plus infant and it gets a little snug in a studio. Oh...and we had Savannah view which meant more points. It was a splurge fir dd's birthday and we are not returning until 2012...so we were using up our 2010
balance.

They also said they skip a year...so that is double the points to work
with in then years they do choose to go.

Many ways to stretch the points. But in that case---the off year costs would need to be added in as well.

 

[neatokimmo]

Next year's vacation budget is 6K. Its myself and a 3.5 yr old. We normally split rooms with family or friends. That 6K is 2 7-day cruises, a weekish in NYC, a long weekend in DC, a long weekend in NYC, a week in Myrtle Beach and possibly the Grand Canyon (not sold on that one yet-it involves a LOT of train time). We don't fly, our airport is small and that helps with cost. We'll be using Amtrak a lot too. We don't do expensive souvies or food. I'm totally ok with packing roadtrip food and snacks for each adventure.

So we are able to do more with less.

 

[jemgumby]

We are a family of 3 and typically our Disney vacation is around $3,000. We like to stay deluxe and get the dining plan. Now our DD is considered an adult at Disney so that does add to our cost.

 

[honeydiane1953]

So many variables but usu around 5000.00. Have a small family btw 3

 

[Tecbot]

never really added it up before but went down to florida the last 3 years this is my expensive holidays my cheaper ones are at a lake and i normally only spend about $500-800 for a week or two in summer.

flight - $750
car rental - $700
park tickets - $580 for disney tickets got 10 day non-expirery/water park/park hopper tickets like 3 years ago still have 4-5 days left from 1st trip, bought a flexticket for bgt, sw, ioa and universal last 3 times probably get a ap this time, like the other parks better than disney can normally see 2 parks in 1 day when i go by myself at disney. flexticket was $285 last year ap for all the parks i want is $199.95+$289.99 will last me 2 trips though.
food - $800+
spending money - bring $1500-2000 normally depending on how good the loonie is then use cc when i need more near end of trip
Gas - $300


So total: min $4000 to upwards of $5000+ for myself also depending if i have to buy park tickets that year. My parents have a place about a hour from all the parks so dont have to pay for any lodging while im there. my parents also have a car but this year my brother and sister are coming at the same time so we need 2 vehicles this year or normally i wouldnt need a car.

Normally stay a month at a time and normally do something overpriced for what you get like drive the richard petty nascar it was fun but not worth the price unless you have tons of extra income to burn also did a key to the kindgom tour or whatever with my parents one year.

 

[ML_LovesDisney]

Beach vacations: about $1500 (rent a house, split cost with other family, cook at home, drive). Disney in February WITH buy 4 get 3 free? $6000. We have a family of four, me, DH, 5 yr old, 2 yr old. This time we are going on DVC (which is costing us monthly, which is better for me than up front), $900 for DDP and DxDDP part of the time, and we bought $1500 worth of no expiration 10 day tickets which should last us at least 2 trips (don't plan on going to the park much this trip). Plane tickets were about $400 since we used our miles and only had to buy one OOP. We will probably budget about $500 for tips and souvenirs this trip.

 

[disneyfan2kids]

I admit I don't know that much about DVC but I have looked into it. How are you getting a full 3 weeks for $858 per year....or is each vacation less than a week long?

Dawn

For example - our "3" span the entire year - with a 1 weeks difference.

So in this years "12 month" span. We'll go 2nd week in December, late spring/early summer, and then the FIRST week in December so our annuals are still active. This way, the first and the third are almost exactly a year apart - thus getting 3 uses from our annuals (which are the most expensive part of the trip - so we try to exhaust their use.) Usually we go for 5 nights, stay in studios, and avoid weekends. It can be done... but it takes planning and flexibility.

We still say our DVC was the best purchase we ever made. Life is too short - we paid a pretty penny up front for it, but could never have created the memories with our kids that we have, without DVC.

 

[cepmom]

we just returned from a 10 day trip to Southern CA and Disneyland and our total spent came to $3900 including everything(hotels, park tickets, food etc) for 5 people. Our trips to WDW usually come in around the same or less, depending on how long we stay. We really lucked out on this past trip; DH had enough Southwest points to get all 5 of us free flights so that helped the budget a ton!

 

[canadianjovigirl]

We usually plan on spending about $5000 for our family of 5 each year and like to do 10-14 days all inclusive and add a few excursions to get away from the resort for a few days. When we went to Disney land in 2004 we stayed off site for 18 days and saw alot and got to relax as well. Last November we spent almost a month in Florida and stayed in Clearwater Beach for 4 days then a rental home in Davenport and saw Disney, Universal, Seaworld, NFL game, Kennedy Space, Busch Gardens, Daytona etc etc and that vacation was under $10,000 for 5 of us. This winter we will do a 10 day all inclusive for about $3500. We did make a weekend trip to Banff and stayed in a cabin for 3 days and spent over $1000 just for that weekend so like to do day trips and then larger get away vacations.

 

[kmwek]

For us it all depends on where we are going. We are a family of 5. We love going to Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain NP. That trip usually runs about $2000 for 8-9 nights, that is gas, hotels (you can stay in Old Faithful Inn for under $100 a night), and then we usually do picnic meals, and a few gifts for the kids. WDW runs us about $3000, we drive, stay at Port Orleans, and do counter service meals.
Next year will probably be our most expensive ever. We are lookin into Alaska. My preliminary calculations are putting us about $5000-$6000. If not there, then we are probably going to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. $3000 or so.

 

[Purseval]

We still say our DVC was the best purchase we ever made. Life is too short - we paid a pretty penny up front for it, but could never have created the memories with our kids that we have, without DVC.

Don't most spreadsheet programs show a 15-20 year breakeven point?

 

[DawnM]

I see. So then, if you get 5 nights each week (3 total) it would be around $57 per night including taxes. That isn't bad. I looked at Mouse Savers and they had a spreadsheet showing when one would break even. I think it was around 10 years compared to paying rack rate.

It wouldn't be a good investment for us because we really don't know if we will be living on the East Coast forever and if we move back to SoCal there won't be a need for it.

We have also been told DH may be sent overseas for a while to work.

We also prefer 2 bedroom places and to get that you either pay a huge price or stay off-site.

Dawn

For example - our "3" span the entire year - with a 1 weeks difference.

So in this years "12 month" span. We'll go 2nd week in December, late spring/early summer, and then the FIRST week in December so our annuals are still active. This way, the first and the third are almost exactly a year apart - thus getting 3 uses from our annuals (which are the most expensive part of the trip - so we try to exhaust their use.) Usually we go for 5 nights, stay in studios, and avoid weekends. It can be done... but it takes planning and flexibility.

We still say our DVC was the best purchase we ever made. Life is too short - we paid a pretty penny up front for it, but could never have created the memories with our kids that we have, without DVC.

 

[hsembrick]

For our family of five we try to stay within a $3000 budget. For this trip it is more mainly because we are flying (the drive from TX is over 18 hrs) and we went deluxe instead of value or mod. For our family we are staying WL woods view, 6 nights, Free DDP, 6 days base ticket for $2809. DD8 is staying in my parents room but her ticket is figured in our cost for this trip. DH is a bigger guy so we went with deluxe mainly because of the queen size beds. We didn't realize that CR had queen beds until after Free DDP was announced and by then all the rooms where booked with FREE DDP or we probably would have stayed there.

We do take small trips each year and then splurge on our disney trips. We like to go camping (looking into purchasings a travel trailer sometime this year), to galveston (BIL owns beach house) and Schlitterbahn (we recieve free tickets every year from the radio station that we advertise with). The smaller trips usually cost us around $500 for food and hotel.

 

[TandLMommy28]

Normally our vacations are to Rhode Island to visit family. It generally ends up costing me about $1,200 to do this, even though we drive. My parents are the type who only go buy the food they are going to cook that day. Which means there is never any food in the house and we end up eating out every meal and usually spend about $60/day on food. Plus we always do something special while we are there (this year it was a train ride to NYC to see Wicked!).

We sometimes do a three day weekend and try to keep those under $500 including hotel, gas, food and entertainment. We are big fans of hotels with indoor water parks in the winter months!

Disney feels remarkably cheap when you consider that it costs me $1,200 three times a year to go visit my parents. We paid $1,678 for our hotel, tickets and free dining with taxes and insurance. We will spend $300 on gas, another $300 or so on hotels traveling there and back (still cheaper than flying which I haven't been able to get a price less than $900 for four of us). Then I am figuring on around $1,000 in spending (including MNSSHP, stroller rental, photo pass, tips and souvenirs). so that's what, $3,300?

The moral of the story is if I stopped visiting my parents, I could go to Disney twice a year.

 

[eliza61]

Just wondering,

How much money do you usually spend on a vacation in total? & how many people are in your family?

My parents & I are currently having a debate on how much people usually spend. And this is also a personal reference for me.

If you can't/dont want to post it here, can you pm me?

Generally for my family of 4 we generally spend any where between 5-7K for a 7 nights/8 days.

We just came back from Niagara falls for 4 days and it ran $2,000. We splurge when we're on vacation.

 

[eliza61]

Don't most spreadsheet programs show a 15-20 year breakeven point?

We broke even at year 7. Generally when we go we stay 7 nights deluxe or concierge so we were routinely spending 5K on accomadations at the world.

 

[savannahcat]

Family of 4 - 2 adults, 2 children

3 trips per year to WDW, with a year off after 3rd. (So we only buy annuals, every other year.)

Annual Passes - @ $1150
Airfare - @ $750 per trip (x3) = $2250
Room - FREE through DVC
Food - @ $600/trip = $1800

So that's $1150 + $2250 + $1800 = $5200
Divided by 3 trips = $1733/trip.

DVC rocks!

True... True. I guess the easiest way is:
$12,900 initial purchase (the most simplistic math possible):
$12,900 divided by 50 years = $258/year
PLUS $600/year dues.

So $600 + $258 = $858 year added on to vacations. That's an additional $286 for the DVC cost per each of 3 annual vacations.

So instead of $1733/trip...it's more like $2019/trip.

I'm not considering all the stuff like interest/etc... too much math

About $6000 this year:

We do much the same as this poster, but we usually drive and stay offsite in a condo. It just doesn't seem like vacation to us if all four of us stay together in a studio.

Annual passes for four: about $1900 (not sure how PP gets 4 APs for $1150, even with the DVC discount)
Driving expenses: $300 per trip
Condo: $500 per trip
Food: $600 per trip

So, about $1900 per trip, but we usually stay at least 8-11 nights, so sometimes the condo is a bit more than $500.

We took the DVC tour and I wanted it to make sense for us, but based on the way we travel, it just doesn't.

 

[MaMa3Princess]

We are a family of 7 and we typically spend 2,000 or less on vacation.
If we do Disney or Orlando,it is off-site, eating in and carying snacks with us.

If we do a beach trip, we use DH hotel rewards from work and we choose hotels that offer free breakfast and has a kitchenette.


We have done simple lake trips where we have just fished, spent time on a boat and enjoyed the water. Our vacations are pretty low key.

We are just thankful that we can afford to vacation and we get to experience family time together.

Hey if you can afford it , do it. If you can't don't feel bad, we just are thankful that are kids get to experience time away every year.

 

[ZiPaD3doDAH]

Thanks to all!

Gives me a good idea