What's the Worst Disney Budget Advice You Ever Got?

[DaniB]

Most of those snacks remain in our bags. Why? Because we don't want the crap from home, we want the crap in the parks!! So instead of saving money, I end up spending more.

That's how we feel!

We spent all that money and time getting to Disney, we don't want the every day snacks we can get any day at home. We want the special Disney only snacks!!

 

[tlbwriter]

I didn't actually follow any of this advice, but this is what I've seen that I know absolutely would not work for my family.

For me, it was buying refillable mugs for a family of 5. We never used them enough to make up for their cost. The drink stations were too far from the room and no one wanted to carry them around the park all day just so we could refill them on the way from the bus stop to the room in the evening.

We never bought the mugs until our BC trip. On the other trips, the station was so far away from our room that we never would have used them. At the BC, the station for refills was just a minute's walk from our room, and we got a lot of use out of them. I would never carry one into the parks, but we used them in the morning, during afternoon breaks, and in the evening.

don't upgrade to deluxe dining plan, take the basic plan for free. for us the upgrade was totally worth the money. we paid for no snacks or meals out of pocket. yes at times it felt like a lot of food, but for two adults going all day in the park two meals and one snack just does not cut it. also it goes by nights not days, so we do a full day on arrival day and stay until at least 3pm departure day. when you do the math its 10 meals for almost 6 full days, we would have spent more out of pocket to supplement the plan once we arrived.

Our experience was the opposite. The basic plan was more than enough (in fact, we always end up using unused snack and CS credits to take food home).

packing so much stuff you have to pay fees to fly it down.....bad advice!
bringing backpacks and big bags of junk into parks daily-ugh!
I bring the tiniest bag I can manage that fits my stuff- and buy lunch while I'm there...I don't lug bags!
Bringing bottled water into parks- the true moneysaver is getting free ice water anywhere in the parks- and NOT lugging extra stuff around! (see above)
I guess I have a theme.....minimalism!

Oh, yeah! I'm not going to be a pack mule on my vacation. Flying cases of water to your resort? Carrying lunch, drinks, and a change of clothes? No way. I know this is a great idea for some people, but I'd rather stay home!

a 3rd pair of shoes solely for use in the room;

I've never seen this one before. What's the purpose of a pair of room-only shoes?

I agree with this. I cannot understand why people want to bring food to eat breakfast in their room. There's hardly any space, unless you're off-site or in suites with a kitchen. I don't want crumbs and food everywhere. And having to clean up stuff afterwards? Waste of time to me.

I bring boxes of Poptarts or granola bars, and we get some pastries in France. It doesn't take up excessive room, it's not messy, and there's nothing to clean other than throwing away empty packages. And it saves so much valuable morning time!

And if I had a kitchen? I sure as heck don't want to COOK when I'm finally on vacation!

I totally agree with you on that one. Even the above-mentioned jar of pasta sauce and frozen meatballs is more than I want to deal with on my WDW vacation. Not to mention doing the dishes. I love having a kitchen for a leisurely beach vacation, but my time is more precious at WDW.

As for a TS meal wasting 2 hours or more of park time? Well, that's personal preference. To us, eating a TS meal every day at a beautiful themed restaurant was part of our vacation & Disney experience!

This!

To me, it is far easier to toss in a load before getting into the pool, then it is to wash load after load after load after load when I return from my vacation. Literally, it could be an all day affair!

Seriously, I never spent more than 10 minutes "doing" laundry. What does it take? You toss it in (2 minutes). You move it to the dryer (1 minute). You remove it from the dryer and fold (maybe 5 minutes?). Big deal.

My laundry takes a lot longer. I hang my and DD's cotton shirts to dry to prevent wrinkling, so I'd have to take the time to do that, and I'd have to have hangers. Also, I prefer to stay onsite, and being able to do my laundry isn't worth being offsite.

For us, what did not work was pre-buying souvenirs and taking it all with us on the trip to prevent the gimme's. 1 my boys never had the gimme's so I was lugging around stuff they did not want anyway. 2, it was all dollar tree stuff and not the best quality, I remember waiting for the parade and proudly pulling out the glow sticks and 90% of them not working! 3, If my Ds's saw something they really wanted, they really wanted it and no substitute out of the bottom of the stroller was going to do.

This is always the tip that mystifies me the most. If my child sees something she loves in the park, she loves THAT. Me drawing a cheap toy from home out of my bag and saying "Surprise! Here's your souvenir for the day!" is not a substitute. It's not a souvenir from her trip, it's a gift someone else picked out and happened to give her at WDW. We have a souvenir budget and save our shopping for one day, and that works for us.

 

[redandblue]

These are great tips. Some things you think are such great ideas like bringing your own water and snacks to the park then find out no one wants to eat a granola bar when they can have a mickey mouse ice cream cone.

 

[ilovemk76]

The worst was free dining. We compared what we really would order and found paying OOP was cheaper plus we got a room discount that was better. We also do not go to WDW to eat but to escape the real world.

We are also glad we did not listen to others and bought DVC.

Staying at a condo or house would not be our idea of vacation. I don't want to cook, clean or make my bed. I have stayed off-site at hotels and had mixed feelings. We also want to not drive, since we drive so much in our daily life. We tend to use the buses when they are not busy and they are enjoyable to ride. If we are on standing room only buses I would most likely feel different about the buses.

We do laundry once during the trip to limit the amount of stuff we carry. We only do this on longer trips. For shorter trips we would not do laundry.

We are not commando people and that is why on-site is great for us. We get to the park at opening some days and when we feel like on others. We head back to out resort on some days and not on others.


DH loves his refillable mug. I don't get one since I prefer to drink water. Carrying around one mug is not bad. I would not carry around 5 mugs.

 

[snarlingcoyote]

Buy a throw away poncho.

Our last trip the last day was rainy. My DH had a Columbia rain jacket and I had my cheap $1 poncho. He was comfortable and dry. I was damp and looked like a drowned rat.

I now own one good Gore-tex rain jacket (last year's anniversary present) and about 3 other rain jackets bought at the thrift stores that are scattered around various cars and closets.

I stay dry, I can see, and I look cute.

No cheap ponchos ever again!

I will also toss my .02 into the breakfast in the room debate. It's very hard to find a healthy CS breakfast; there's usually one option, maybe two. It's much easier for us to eat healthier in the room for breakfast and we have a broader choice; it's also easier and faster.

 

[grafxgirl]

Another piece of bad advice was the one that said to use a TA because they were better able to get the good deals for you. Well, I don't know if it was just this particular TA or if most of them are this way but my TA was behind the curve on all of the discounts, was difficult to contact and slow to enact changes. She also put us on flights out of PHL with connections thru Dulles on prop planes instead of going on jets thru Atlanta or Charlotte. Never again!

Must have been a bad TA. I do travel agent work for my MIL's agency, who specializes in Disney vacations. I do my best to stay on top of things, and see if I can rearrange things as we go along if I find something better.

 

[grafxgirl]

Park tickets are the same cost no matter if you stay on site or off. I was only listing the difference in prices for staying offsite, not the total cost of a vacation. For meals we never did the dining plan either staying onsite or off. We just don't eat enough food to justify the cost. When they do offer free dining plans the rate for the on-site places are usually close to the rack rate so it isn't really "free", you are just paying full price for the room with free dining instead of a discount on the room and paying for dining.

We find that the offsite condo usually saves us money on food. We make a stop at walmart on the way from the airport and pick up some breakfast and lunch items that we can cook or prepare in the condo's kitchen and bring with us into the parks. I can usually get a whole week of breakfast and lunch items from walmart for the cost of one sitdown breakfast for the family at the park. We also don't end up having to buy $3 bottles of water since we can pick up a whole case at walmart for only a few dollars more and just bring some with us in a backpack. Since we are offsite and have a car there are also alot more dinner options. We aren't stuck with the expensive disney owned resteraunts (although we usually splurge once or twice during the week). Rt 192 has just about any type of resteraunt you can think of.

I'll give you the gas. I didn't include that in my original post. Almost all the driving we do is short trips back and forth to the parks and up and down Rt 192 which is right next to Windsor Hills. It cost us about $40 in gas when we went last year.

I am still waiting for someone to show the math on how onsite is cheaper.

Keith

It could be cheaper depending on what it is that a family expects out of their vacations: The type of resort, studio versus villa, CS meals versus TS meals, the type of park tickets they purchase, the number of people in the group, peak season versus non-peak season, etc. It does definitely depend on each family.

We do stay onsite because we are DVC (bought 8 years ago), but drive down instead of fly because we stop in NC to see family for a few days prior. It is cheap for us because we don't have to pay for a place to stay, we purchase park tickets once a year since we only go to the parks 3 days each trip, and we spend way less money in gas driving down/back than we would for airline tickets.

Even though we drive down and back, we park our car at the resort all week and just rely on Disney transportation so we don't spend gas money all week going from resort to parks. We are a laid back family so spending some time using Disney transportation doesn't bother us. Besides our 4 year old seems to love the buses, boats, and monorail more than the rides!

Even staying onsite requires some planning to save money. First thing we do is go to Walmart once we arrive and buy things for breakfast and snacks to keep in the villa, and we stock up on bottled water. We toss the bottled water in the freezer then take it out the next morning, put it in the backpack, and it thaws out throughout the day, but stays cold. If we run out of bottled water in the park, we just go to one of the water fountains and refill it. We do participate in the basic dining plan because it is just the right amount of food for our family. We have tried without the dining plan to see what the difference in cost would be and it certainly benefits our family to use it. Since we take 2-3 Disney trips a year, we purchase the non-expiration park tickets, or the annual passes to save money instead of purchasing tickets each time we go. The more days purchased for park tickets the cheaper the price is per day. We also avoid any peak seasons.

 

[ssawka]

I really don't have any negative advice that we received (I guess I was able to pre-filter it), but I think the best piece of advice I got from this board was to pre-send a package to the resort before our arrival. We used to bring snacks in another suitcase, that was back when the airlines did not charge for bags. Well, now I FedEx a box to the resort about a week before we arrive and it is there waiting for us when we check in and it's cheaper than bringing it on the plane. You see, we need to bring certain food items because DD has Celiac disease and needs gluten-free food. Disney does a great job accommodating us at TS restaurants, but getting snacks and breakfast can be troublesome.

 

[disneymom2003]

Like the PP I too fliter out the ones I don't think will work for my family.

Staying off site is not for us. We go for the whole Disney feel. Last time we went we got a great deal at the Hilton Resort for the first 2 nights. Beautiful 2 bed with a kitchen. It just was not the same. Could not wait to check in SSR

We have always stayed Deluxe. My husband wants time alone with me at night. We make a grocery stop and pick up things to eat for breakfast, snacks, soft drinks ( so we don't need the refillable mug) and wine. Again works great for us.

We us Disney transportation. It is just part of the Dis feel. Besides, driving to a park, finding a place to park, walking to the front entrance takes time too. My hubby would rather let someone else drive.

The DP works great for us. We are all adults now and love to Dine while at WDW.

Laundry is also not a big thing for me. It lets us take less clothes and one load every few days is not anything like doing laundry at home.

We live near Disneyland so we know how important hopper passes are for us.

I think other posters have said what works for one family might not work for another. I come her to the Dis and enjoy all the tips I get, even if I don't personally use them myself.

One tip I will use on my next trip is the app from Undercover Tourist. Can't wait!

 

[mickeymaker2003]

I really don't have any negative advice that we received (I guess I was able to pre-filter it), but I think the best piece of advice I got from this board was to pre-send a package to the resort before our arrival. We used to bring snacks in another suitcase, that was back when the airlines did not charge for bags. Well, now I FedEx a box to the resort about a week before we arrive and it is there waiting for us when we check in and it's cheaper than bringing it on the plane. You see, we need to bring certain food items because DD has Celiac disease and needs gluten-free food. Disney does a great job accommodating us at TS restaurants, but getting snacks and breakfast can be troublesome.

I would check with the airlines. I know liquid food for tube feedings can be checked for free as medical supplies. If everything you pack in the suitcase is specialty supplies because of medical needs, you may be able to check the bag for free.

 

[maxiesmom]

Staying onsite. I think onsite can work out cheaper if you're a commando park tour family, and have 4 or less in your party. That doesn't describe my gang. A lot of people think onsite is the be-all, end-all--and I used to be one of them, until I rented a house in Windsor Hills. Now, you couldn't pay my gang to squish into a couple hotel rooms for a "vacation".

Actually I have found that for a larger family, staying on site does make sense. By the time we add the cost of a rental van into the cost of a off site hotel big enough for 6, we could stay on site in 2 rooms.

And if we go with a Family Suite, we can do easy meals in the room. Even just doing breakfast saves a bunch.

Trust me, I have run the numbers a ton! I am always on the lookout for a way to squeeze in another trip to WDW. Off site is not always the cheaper option.

 

[disneyofcourse]

I just filter out what won't work for me. Like the bun and burger thing about buying one and splitting it.... Its Disney and a Vacation and Eating well/trying new foods is part of it. Not to mention my family would be horrified and ask if I needed money.

ParkHopper works for me even though some will say its a money waster. Nothing like having breakfast at MK, Lunch at the studios and then eat at Epcot. I like not feeling trapped and confined to one thing.

Photopass sharing won't work because I like the stability of dealing with my own stuff. Saving half isn't worth the headache of dealing with sharing.

Staying off site won't give me that true vacation feeling. I want to be close to the action. No way do I want to spend tons of time traveling to the parks. I have X amount of time to vacation before I need to get back to running things at work so I better make sure I use every minute. Sure they have places for $30 a night but I just wouldn't like it.


Things that worked-Driving down was great and it basically a 9-10 hour mini trip before our trip. We stopped at restaurants, saw sights etc. Sure beats the airport and having to spend time just waiting around for check in, baggage issues and whatever else they throw in(UGH delays!). I don't know what's with me and loving to drive starting at 3-4 am but I love the roads at that time. I figured it was taking us about 4 hours to 5 hours in airport and flying time and it just wasn't worth it to me. Neither was paying $250 + PP for tickets. That kind of money buys a lot of gas, food and fun! The last time I flew my flight was delayed for hours, then canceled and then I got on another flight after waiting for around 5 hours. So that didn't help my feelings toward flying!

 

[Pooh Girl 71]

Worst advice? To buy DVC. Not a good option for me. I go too much to make it work. I'd go broke buying so many points. For others, esp if they go just once a year or have a large family, it's a great thing. Not for me.

We have stayed on site when the math works for us. I'm going in May and we got a 2 br condo through for $139 for the entire week (I own a timeshare here in VA). I've also stayed off site in regular hotels. I don't buy into the Disney Magic of staying onsite. I'd pitch a tent in the middle of I92 in order to go to Disney

DD and I share meals. We like to snack so that works for us. I've only done the DDP when it's been free. Quite frankly, when it's hot out, its a of food for us.

 

[RachelsMommie]

Worst advice I ever received was not to take your child at age 3 as they won't remember it.

My older DD was 3 when we took her and she remembers EVERYTHING. We're taking another family trip next year when our youngest DD is 2 yr, 11 months. Yay, free park tickets!

 

[David Brent]

we bought a huge pizza for dinner at the POP food court a couple times and we even had leftovers that we brang back to the room

Seriously?

 

[pampam]

Seriously?

Lets be kind, now.

 

[BuzznBelle'smom]

Actually I have found that for a larger family, staying on site does make sense. By the time we add the cost of a rental van into the cost of a off site hotel big enough for 6, we could stay on site in 2 rooms.

And if we go with a Family Suite, we can do easy meals in the room. Even just doing breakfast saves a bunch.

Trust me, I have run the numbers a ton! I am always on the lookout for a way to squeeze in another trip to WDW. Off site is not always the cheaper option.

Have you ever looked at condo/townhouse rentals? Some go for as low as $200-300 a week on vrbo.com. I could never get room for 6 onsite for that low. Now, we go for a 4BR/4BA house that costs more--that's our choice, because I find my kids like having their own space. We also spend a fair amount of awake time at the house. Our current minivan rental (going in July) is for ~$50 a day, so you'd be talking $650 for the week for rooms and transportation. I don't see 7 nights on WDW property, either in 2 value rooms or a family suite, coming in under that.

But hey, if you like staying onsite, I'm good with that. It's kind of like with the restaurant thing--my gang simply prefers to eat at the house, they don't like sitting through a restaurant meal. Since it typically costs us $200 for a TS meal on WDW property, I'm fine with cooking simple fare. It doesn't make someone else's choices wrong, just doesn't make sense for our gang.

 

[PrncesKMW]

I agree with others that you need to take into account how YOU want to vacation and spend the money accordingly.

For us, even though we had free dining, I think we would have been better off with the room discount. We were only vacationing with just us two adults, but I did not take into account the portion sizes. We found ourselves eating when we weren't hungry, and the only reason it ended up being close to a "good deal" was that we could use our snack credits for Food and Wine Festival - and we still had meal credits left when it was time to go home, even though I planned all our meals about 3 months in advance!

Wish we would have planned 3 - 4 nice sit down meals and shared an entree for everything else, including lunch - would have been plenty of food and probably cheaper using the room discount.

 

[mrodgers]

Things that worked-Driving down was great and it basically a 9-10 hour mini trip before our trip. We stopped at restaurants, saw sights etc. Sure beats the airport and having to spend time just waiting around for check in, baggage issues and whatever else they throw in(UGH delays!). I don't know what's with me and loving to drive starting at 3-4 am but I love the roads at that time. I figured it was taking us about 4 hours to 5 hours in airport and flying time and it just wasn't worth it to me. Neither was paying $250 + PP for tickets. That kind of money buys a lot of gas, food and fun! The last time I flew my flight was delayed for hours, then canceled and then I got on another flight after waiting for around 5 hours. So that didn't help my feelings toward flying!

People at work kept telling me to fly.

"What would you rather have, 19 hours in the car, or fly and be there in 2 hours?"

I chose to drive 19 hours because we would actually get there earlier!

No matter what, we were arriving in Disneyworld on Saturday and leaving the following Saturday. The vacation time isn't any big deal, I have 4 weeks and my wife can take off what she wants (doesn't get paid for it all, but doesn't get paid much anyways.)

Flying we would get up at 6 am to get the kids ready, 2+ hours to the airport, and the earliest flight I could find was 10 am. I could only find a layover in Atlanta (I think) and we would arrive at Orlando around 6 pm. Then there would be finding baggage, getting to the resort, checking in, lugging everything up to the room, etc, etc. Sure the actual in air flight time would be 2-2.5 hours, but overall, much longer.

Driving, we left a day early at 4 am. Had a fantastic drive, West Virginia and Virginia is beautiful and we didn't hear a peep out of the kids (6 and 9) the entire trip. Stopped in Savannah overnight around 6 pm. Left at 7 am from Savannah and by noon my kids were standing in front of the castle at Magic Kingdom. Got a text message around 3 pm that the room was ready, ate dinner in MK around 5-6 pm, ran back to the resort to unload the luggage from the car, and was back in MK watching the fireworks.

 

[torinsmom]

Yeah, flying is a bust for me too. 30 minute drive plus 30 minutes to get to the terminal from the parking lot and check in. You are supposed to be there 1.5 hours early, then an hour flight, then deal with getting luggage. Then get to a car rental place and wait on all that. Finally, navigating out of MCO and getting to your house. All that hassle and time is worse for me than the 9-10 hour drive, IMHO, and it is a lot cheaper.