Was that a Challenge?

[happyleesh]

DH and I were talking about our upcoming trip to WDW and he made the offhand comment "not to plan on a disney vacation every year." He went on to say that there is no way we could afford a $1200 vacation every year on a youth pastor's salary.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

So, even though our first 2012 trip is free to us (we're going with DH's grandparents, christmas gift to our DD) I have kicked into saving-money-for-disney-world-OVERDRIVE.

VERY excited to prove him wrong AND create a lifetime of memories for our little family.

 

[runwad]

Well one thing you can do to save money is extend those grandparents tickets to a 10 day no expiration. So if you go with them and using 5 park days go to guest services and upgrade them to the 10 days no expiration and you'll have 5 more park days to use plus a bunch of pluses (water parks, arcade). I can't remember the particulars but people here can help and the most expensive part of the ticket is the first day

The next time you can stay off site and find dozens of cheap places to stay. My family used this strategy and we'll get 5 trips out of those 10 day tickets. We usually stay 7 days off site and do something every other day. So usually 2 park days and one waterpark day and a downtown disney day then just a hang out swimming at the condo day

 

[Tink9295]

Well one thing you can do to save money is extend those grandparents tickets to a 10 day no expiration. So if you go with them and using 5 park days go to guest services and upgrade them to the 10 days no expiration and you'll have 5 more park days to use plus a bunch of pluses (water parks, arcade). I can't remember the particulars but people here can help and the most expensive part of the ticket is the first day

The next time you can stay off site and find dozens of cheap places to stay. My family used this strategy and we'll get 5 trips out of those 10 day tickets. We usually stay 7 days off site and do something every other day. So usually 2 park days and one waterpark day and a downtown disney day then just a hang out swimming at the condo day

This is what we do. We buy 10 day no expiration passes and stretch them out over 3 or 4 trips. We usually do 2 or 3 parks and 1 day in a water park. Then when we buy new tickets, we still have waterparks left from the old ones and only purchase park tickets.

 

[dimimi]

This was one of the smartest things we did too! The first time we bought a lot of days...no expiration...and it came with over 5 days of extras (water park, etc.)

We still have days left! It makes the future trips much less expensive.

We typically alternate a day at the park (which we do ALL day...open to close) with a day doing something different.

This worked for us.

***Here is an idea...whatever your inlaws offer to pay for the Disney tickets, offer to pay the difference to upgrade to 10 day, no expiration

 

[scbelleatheart]

Our oldest son was at WDW over Xmas and took his old ticket that we bought several years ago. He still had 5 days left on it. Those tickets that don't expire are well worth it. My daughter did the same thing with hers on a trip.

 

[wgeo]

DH and I were talking about our upcoming trip to WDW and he made the offhand comment "not to plan on a disney vacation every year." He went on to say that there is no way we could afford a $1200 vacation every year on a youth pastor's salary.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

So, even though our first 2012 trip is free to us (we're going with DH's grandparents, christmas gift to our DD) I have kicked into saving-money-for-disney-world-OVERDRIVE.

VERY excited to prove him wrong AND create a lifetime of memories for our little family.

Hi there! My DH is a pastor too, and says that Disney just seems like a too expensive vacay for us every year - we'll see

Other good ways to save money are to look into the tickets you can get from Disney's YES program (huge thread here on the budget board) and of course staying offsite. Good luck!

 

[pigletto]

I had a similar conversation with my husband years ago. It is very daunting to look at the big overall vacation cost. What we've found though is that we enjoyed it so much that it was worth it to us to cut back in other areas to make it happen. So for us it meant less tv stations (really.. who cares on that one), reducing our utility costs, less eating out, creative ways of making money (mom to mom sales, garage sales etc). Overall it taught us to be more frugal, and reach our goals.. and was FUN!! Taking one big debit out of savings to pay is nerve wracking. But watching a specialized trip fund grow with creative saving ..while leaving the savings alone is a great motivator! Good Luck