Opinions

Vacation Aspects
These 4 short essays on "The 4 aspects (travel, hotel, food, & park tickets) of budgeting for a WDW trip" by TheMouseForLess members have completely different views, but they all make good points.

I'm going to answer this question by just throwing out a few things for first-time planners to think about.

1. Travel: In my opinion, with today's gasoline prices and the fact that you don't need a car at WDW, you can fly a family of 4 for a few hundred dollars more than it would cost to drive--if the drive will require at least 2 days on the road. If you factor in the cost of renting a motel room and buying meals for 2 extra days (going and returning), the cost of driving can add up. Now this would not apply if you simply picked up the phone and ordered those airline tickets. You would have to start well in advance of your trip looking for good prices and be a little flexible in your planning, but cheap airline tickets can be found with a little effort. The down side of this is that if you are traveling with small children, your cheap airfare almost definitely will require you to have connecting flights. With the reliability of of todays airlines who knows what you are in for. I'm not recommending one method or another....just throwing out some things to think about.

2. Hotel: The Orlando area offers a huge variation in hotel prices. People on this list have gotten very nice hotel rooms for as little as $39 per night. So essentially, you could pay as little as $280 for the week, or over $1000 for 7 nights at a moderately priced, on property Disney resort. So this is the point where you need to decide what kinds of things are most important on your trip. Will you need to rent a car? Is it preferable to immerse yourself in Disney atmosphere and convenience? Or do you want to have extra money to do non park activities such as renting water sprites, eating good quality meals, and maybe taking in an attraction or two outside of Disney World? You can do a lot with an extra $100 per day in your pocket. I'm going to put in a little plug in here for staying on Disney property. Being a kid at heart, I go to Disney to live out my fantasies. Leaving WDW offers too many reminders of the real world like traffic, crime, etc......I feel it really intrudes on the wonderful production that WDW puts on for you throughout the entire WDW property. Only you can decide if showmansip is worth an extra $700 a week. The WDW All Star resorts are designed for families on a budget, and can be had for $500-$700 per week depending on the time of year you are going. They offer a great atmosphere for children, convenient transportation to the parks, cheap dining options, and even a method for families to split up since no one has to depend on a car. Older children can remain in the park, while mom or dad returns with junior to the resort for an afternoon nap.

3. Food: Again, there is a huge of variation in cost here between eating at the resort food court and park fast food all week, and enjoying quality sit down meals. I know that most people traveling to WDW with a couple of young children don't give their dining options much thought. This can be a mistake since many of WDW's restaurants cater to children and are a continuation of the "show" that you see in the parks. A meal at Primetime Cafe, Hoop Dee Do Review, Chef Mickey's or Whispering Canyon Cafe can be on the pricey side, but they are really an attraction in and of themselves and should be experienced by families. I'd recommend forfeiting some other activities to book a few good meals at WDW.

4. Tickets: If you are looking for areas to budget money, tickets have the least wiggle room. Before determining how much your tickets will cost, you need to know what the rest of your week will look like. Are you going to any attractions outside of WDW property? Do you plan on spending a few days at a water park or Disney Quest? If you are considering not going to a WDW park even one day, I would not recommend that you buy a Disney package. The length of stay passes that are included are priced for entry into the park every single day of your stay. Buy ticketing that is priced for only the number of days you plan on going to park. These tickets come with or without options for other activities at WDW, so plan out your schedule before you decide what type of ticket to buy. Taking the time to plan will save you the optimal amount of money on this aspect of your trip. -- Binnie

First off let me say that "very tight budget" can mean different things to different people I think. So this is just based on MY opinion of what MY family would do if we had to tighten our belts for the trip (and if there was one extra person since we are really only a family of 3 but you asked about a family of 4:

1. Travel - we would still definitely fly. If we only have 7 days we don't want to spend 4 of them (2 coming and 2 going) on the road driving. I budget $300 per person for round trip airfare. For transportation to and from the airport we use Tiffany ($100 including tip). This is important to us as we don't start out the trip or end the trip on a bad note waiting and waiting for Mears and being squished into a van with a bunch of other folks. We use Disney Transportation while at the resort.

2. Hotel - Swan & Dolphin. We will get 50% off rack rate with either the Disney Club Membership or Entertainment Book Discount. We would book a basic room and then more than likely (hopefully) get upgraded because we are Starwood members as well. Approx $1200

3. Food - for breakfast we would grab a quick something, probably having granola bars, breakfast bars, etc. stashed in our room. Lunch will be counter service at one of the parks. Dinner is our big meal of the day and we would still go to a sit down dinner each night. Approx $800. I know this sounds like a lot - but we plan on $100 per dinner for all of us and $30 per lunch. Sometimes it's obviously less, but that allows us for snacks as well and possibly some leftover money at the end of the trip. (this is really where I pulled at the budget as on a regular trip we would have 2 big meals on many of the days, not just one)

4. Tickets - We will be using AP's. We will take 2 trips during their life so I am adding in the full price here, but then our next trip we don't have this expense at all! $1300

5. Extra money for misc. We would plan $500 more for misc expenses. Extra things like mini golf, souvenirs, presents for family, tips.

Total: $5100

Now before everyone GASPS on this. Let me explain again that this is what MY family would do and I understand that not everyone is going to do the same things. To us it is very important that we have all the things listed above. To us it's all part of the WDW trip, we can't take away things and still have the same type of trip. If we can't afford this amount then we don't go - we wait until we can afford it and then be able to enjoy our vacation to it's fullest extent. We truly enjoy the deluxe hotels, the full meals, the Tiffany transportation, buying the little souvenirs, taking presents home to the family, etc. To add one final note, we are not rich (if I were I would go on the Grand Tour plan every time and not give a thought to anything money related!). We are just an average middle American family who does have to save all year for our trip - we could do a lot of other things with that $5100 but to us the time that we spend together at WDW and the joy and fun we have there because it's WDW and the time we spend together as a family with no work distractions and the ability to leave all of our worries behind for a week is worth more than that even! -- Robyn Wright

I don't know what "tight" budget means to you. Being at Disney is enough for me that I do not need all the bells and whistles to enjoy the trip. What I don't care for is spending more than necessary and find it fun to be resourceful and get there and have a good time for the bare minimum cost. I don't want to have the cost of the trip affect me all year long either. We are using priceline to get a hotel for 11.00 per night (around 14.50 including taxes and fees) and hoping for a car rental (big enough for 6 people) for around 200.00 per week. You can rent a SUV for 189.00 a week from Alamo (check hot deal tab) but we need space for 6. Alamo rental currently nets you 2 FREE Kennedy space center tickets which is a huge savings if you were planning to go there. If you can get by with a smaller vehicle, rentals can be as little as 9.99 a day depending on promotions. I am sure you can get a rental for 3 or 4 people for less than the price of the transportation from the airport to Disney World. That is if price is your main concern and not luxury.

You can cut down on food expenses a little if you happen to get a hotel with a continental breakfast. The last hotel we stayed at had a nice breakfast. They had cereal, pastries, donuts, fresh fruit, juice, milk, coffee and more. NO bacon and eggs but since my concern is feeding a family of five on a budget, I was thinking it was quite a bonanza. When we went to Disney we ate at the food courts early afternoon. We avoided eating supper on site when possible. We took some snacks along but enjoyed some along the way in Disney too. You just have to watch where you buy.

As far as airline tickets go, mine were mostly free this time through a promotion that has now ended. However, frequent flyer mile promotions can be a terrific way to get free tickets. You can get miles for almost everything you do. Some people make a game out of it and usually come out way ahead. Here Kellogg corn flakes are on sale for 1.40 - 1.50 for the 18 oz. size box. There are coupons 1.50/3 and there are 100 AA miles on each box. Even if you were to throw the cereal in the trash (PLEASE DON'T as charities would love it) this would be a great deal. For each box you also would get an eet and ern code towards online Kellogg's stuff and when you entered the code, you could specify a school to get .10 credit also. Besides that there is an offer to get a FREE mini nascar racecar and a little semi-truck transporter if you are a Nascar fan for 6 upcs (the offer is on frosted flakes but Corn Flake upcs are good on the offer). Yes, you would need to get around 200 or so boxes to get a free ticket if you haven't any other miles already. If you want to make the news, watch for such deals and buy a few hundred boxes or more and become a celebrity like the pudding guy from the Healthy Choice ff promo. I know lots of other ways to get these frequent flyer miles and you can use them for hotel rooms and other things too if you convert them through the Hilton Honors program. -- shirley giesler

As most or all of the other responses have mentioned, planning is everything. During peak seasons, without planning, it is possible to arrive and not find expensive hotel rooms...in fact, no rooms at all! In our early visits, we made this mistake once or twice. (BTW I went to WDW at least once each year from 1972-1984, and have made several trips since.)

If you have access to internet, this is a useful tool for this type of planning. My family & I are planning a WDW trip next month. My sister & I surfed the net for about an hour and a half and located a hotel which shaved about $150/week off the best price I had been able to find through other means. (I am however, totally amazed at the $14.00/night rate discovered by the author of one of the other responses!!) Hotel rates both on and off Disney property vary with the seasons. Simply visiting WDW during the "slump" season can yield substantial savings. IMPORTANT NOTE ON SEARCHING NET FOR ACCOMODATIONS - I have found (personal experience) that searching for "motels" yields Hole-In-The-Wall-Inn type establishments at higher rates. The typical "motel" I found was 20-30 miles from Disney with rates for my planned travel dates starting at about $70/night. Searching for "hotels/resorts" (rather than "motels"), I found a resort "on the strip" 1 mile from WDW Maingate for less than $40/night. The resort also features free shuttle to Disney (saving the WDW parking fee), continental breakfast, and other amenities. "Hotel" - "motel"; to us it's simple semantics, but to the net, it makes a world of difference.

I agree with the other responses which recommended having one meal per day in WDW. Lunch seems to be the most economical meal to have there. Snacks through the day from park vendors can gobble the budget quickly without one's noticing the dwindling cash. It has been some time since my last trip, but I'm reliably informed that there is now at least one large discount store on what we call "the strip" (the highway in front of Disney's Maingate). The hotels on the strip are generally very good ones, and if staying at one of these, one can drive a couple of miles for inexpensive meals (including hot deli meals) when leaving Disney for the evening.

I always drive to Disney (I'm about 1000 miles away). I do so for several reasons. Not the least of these is that I can drive three of us for less than the price of one airline ticket. Also, I enjoy the adventure of driving. I drive straight through (usually w/ a brief nap at a truckstop or secure rest area about halfway there).

There is very little opportunity to cut costs on Disney tickets. I would offer a word of caution about Free Ticket offers. Many of these require a minimum annual income and a 3 hour tour of a time- share condo. I found one discount offer on the net which sounded reasonable, but would have only saved about $5 on each adult ticket. To the best of my knowledge, Disney tickets are still perpetual - You can use remaining days on future visits without any time limit. (Someone correct me here if this has changed.) This assumes that you ARE able to return (as was uncertain during my first few visits), and also that the tickets aren't lost or destroyed before your return. IMHO, it is best to plan ahead and purchase a ticket only for the number of days you will be visiting the parks. Again IMHO, a minimum of one day per park is necessary to at least cover the high points of each. One last point; purchasing tickets in advance either at your local Disney Store or online will save time and hassles at the gate.

P.S. - Given my suggestions above, a vacation involving 4 days in WDW, hotel on the strip, 1 day in Universal Studios Orlando, and at least an afternoon at an Atlantic beach is expected to cost less than $1500. -- ShawnC.