Life in the Lowcountry's 10 Ways to Save for Disney

The biggest question I get from friends and family members when we go on our Disney vacations is, "how do you afford it?" The answer is easy and I wanted to share...

Okay, so the first may sound silly but it is beyond true. One - Officially book your trip! Once you put down your $200 deposit the trip gets real. Sounds silly doesn't it? What I mean is, book your deposit, whether it be on a credit card, Disney gift card, or if you have an extra $200 in your bank account. 

We live paycheck to paycheck and the thought of $200 out of thin air isn't realistic. We have a mortgage, tuition, car payments, etc. What we do is put down our deposit by saving a little here and there or on a credit card. Once the trip is booked and you have an official date, the savings get real, and quick. You somehow realize that you don't need to eat out on the weekends as much as you did, because that $60 you would have spent on dinner can go towards your vacation. Eating lunch on a daily basis averages around $7.50 per day. That's $37.50 per week and $150 per month - that's one heck of a payment towards your vacation! Once we booked I've done nothing but bring meals from home. Leftovers from the dinner before and by doing that I've already paid $60 towards our trip this Fall. It's crazy how quickly it adds up!

Two - Disney has promotions and great discounts - use them! Last year we saved around $1000 by getting all of our food for free. It was such an amazing feeling saving that much money for my family by making one simple phone call. Free Dining is never guarantee'd, but they have offered it the past ten years so hopefully it will be back for 2015 *fingers crossed*. Even if Free Dining isn't a current promotion, they often have different discounts to offer, such as a percentage off your package or a room discount. These things add up to save you hundreds of dollars. The best advice I can give is to join a Disney Vacation FaceBook group or groups. There are tons to choose from. My family personally travels in the Fall, so I joined a few vacation pages that are focused towards that time of year. Just type in the search bar and you'll find hundreds of groups. I know it can seem a bit nerdy, but I would have never heard about free dining last year had I not joined. I'll be a nerd if it means saving money!

Ahh, the Disney Dining Plan - my favorite. You get one Quick Service, one Table Service and one Snack, per person, per night of your trip. It's a lot of food and it's all delicious. You also get free Disney Resort mugs when you check in and can get free refills throughout  your entire trip, as much as you want, at any Disney resort. 

See those mugs Tarl and Cadence are holding? This was at Animal Kingdom Lodge, which was not our resort. We wanted to venture out one day and see the different resorts and it was nice knowing we could fill up at any resort, not just our own. Drinks at Disney are not cheap, so having these mugs to refill at no cost and getting them as a souvenir was great, and such a great bonus to the dining plan.

We tallied up our total of what it would have cost us in drinks alone had we had to pay, and it was over $200, that's crazy! - but again, it was included in the dining plan and thus, free!

Which brings me to three - if you only eat enough to keep a bird alive, don't get the dining plan!

Eating is part of the experience for us. The character meals and fun ambiance is wonderful and something we look forward to every day. It's not only a fun thing to do, but it's also great to just sit down and relax after being in the parks. I cannot stress enough how essential the dining plan is for our family, but again, that is for our family. We used our snacks for breakfast, our quick service credits for lunch and our Table Service meals for dinner, but you can switch it up to suit you and your families needs. There are some days we have our Table Service as a breakfast. That's the great thing about the dining plan, it's up to you on how you want to use it. 

For our trip this Fall, since we're staying for 8 nights, we will get

8 Table Service meals per person 

8 Quick Service Meals per person

8 Snacks per Person 

However, if you are used to only eating a lite snack and then a dinner, the dining plan isn't for you. It's a lot of food and if you don't eat a lot and do not use all of your dining credits, it's pointless and a waste of money. My mother in law and sister in law went a week before we did last year. They hardly ate at sit down meals and would order a pizza that would last them two days. It's not for them and that's OK. Again, you need to do what fits your families needs. My family will not go without the dining plan.

We saved every receipt from our meals, including snacks. If we would have had to pay out of pocket for all the food we got it would have been $1,500+, again we got it for free! Love the dining plan!

Another question we got was, "is the food good?"

 The answer is simple - yes! And these aren't even half of our meals. 

The great thing about Disney is they care a lot about what their clientele thinks so if something isn't up to par, let them know and not only will they resolve the issue, they will make it better. The mashed potatoes one night were on the colder side, not only did my waiter send it back, he brought me hot mashed potatoes and double the size - amazing!

Four - Disney Gift Cards, buy them, buy them, buy them!

Every time I have some extra cash and am standing in line at Target, I grab a $25 Disney Gift card, Tarl does the same. Granted, this is not every time we shop there, because like I said before we live paycheck to paycheck and some times $25 isn't available, but when it is, we buy them! The other day while standing in line at Target with a tutu in hand (for Cadence's dance class), I was skimming through the magazines, searching for a pack of gum, and there I saw the gift cards. I snatched up a $25 Disney card and bought it. It's now sitting in my wallet waiting to be spent in September. I told Tarl my idea and he said it wasn't bad. He walked into Home Depot on Saturday to grab some light bulbs for the house, came out to the car where I was waiting and handed me a $25 Disney Gift Card. 

See what I mean, we just booked our trip and already have $50 in spending money for when we get there. Whether the money be spent on souvenirs, the Halloween Party, Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique or whatever, it's paid for with gift cards and takes a weight off my shoulders without having to worry about how much money I have in my bank account when we go. 

Five - buy merchandise before your trip!

If you have a child anything like my daughter, then they want stuff, but again, what child doesn't? Disney merchandise isn't cheap, but it is double, sometimes triple the price in the parks. Cadence loves dressing up in Disney dresses and dresses in the park are beyond our budget. I've always purchased her dresses prior and we pack them on the trip. It seems trivial, but it's a great way to save. For Christmas 2013, she got her Belle dress which was $60 off the Disney website - I saw the same dress in the parks for $110! Disney t-shirts in the park start at $30, you can get similar tees at Target and Walmart starting at $4!

I knew Cadence would want some pajamas while there. That girl loves new PJs and mama and daddy didn't have money to spend every day for new PJs, so Tinkerbell left her new PJs every night of the trip. Tinkerbell found them at Walmart, on sale, for $5!

These are her favorite and she still wears this nightgown 3x a week!

Christmas 2014, Santa brought her a Little Mermaid dress for around $40. In the parks you're looking at around $80! Remember, every little bit adds up which brings me to six - don't spend beyond your means.

This is a tough one, because what parent doesn't want to get everything their child wants? Case in point - Cadence really wanted to do Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique last year and have a princess makeover with the works. That package starts at $200. wow!

We have taken Cadence to Disney twice before and we give her the option,  you can go to Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique or get a special prize each day. The last two times she has chose the daily prize. We financially cannot afford both. Honestly they both equal out to the same so it's one or the other. 

Last night we asked her again, and she said this time she's going to choose BBB instead of the daily prize. I figured as much. She's at that age where everything is princesses and makeup - who can blame the girl? Who doesn't want to be a princess?!

Some times you have to make choices like that. It doesn't mean that she won't get any souvenirs this trip, it just means she won't get one every single day. If you don't have the extra money, don't feel bad. You're in Disney, and you've taken your family to Disney, that in itself is more than enough. Any extras are just that. 

FYI - if you want to do BBB, there are several options that aren't nearly as costly as the entire package. Some packages start at around $40, and you can always bring your own dress in the parks if you cannot afford to buy one while there. 

Seven - it rains in Florida!

It rained three nights of our trip. Two of those nights it was a quick storm and we were eating dinner at the time, but on one night it just down-poured. Buy ponchos prior to your trip like I did, at my local CVS for $3 for the child size and $4 for the adult size. Disney knows it rains, and often, and their ponchos are around $10 a piece...no thank you!

Last year we stayed for 6 nights/6 days. This year we're staying for 8 nights/7 days. That's a lot of time on vacation, and quite frankly that's a lot of clothing to pack. Eight - don't splurge on new clothes for your trip. 

This is another tough one. It doesn't matter if you're going to Disney or the Caribbean, when we think vacations, as women, we think new clothes and a wardrobe to match the occasion. Don't waste what could be valuable vacation money on clothes you don't need. 

The resorts have laundry rooms, and I know the thought of doing laundry on your vacation is not a fun one, but I promise you, it's not long at all. If you're going for a quick trip then this isn't necessary, but for us it's a must. Florida is hot and you sweat. Jeans are a no-go and shorts are a necessity. I don't have 8 pairs of shorts to wear those 8 nights and I'm not going to spend good vacation money on 8 pairs of shorts, when I can pack a few tide pods for the trip along with a few dollars worth in quarters for the laundry machines.

Nine - plan some non-park days! On our last trip we spent one entire day not at a park. Granted we did end up going to MK that night to watch the fireworks, but I digress...the resorts are beautiful and you can what I call "resort hop" which is basically where you go to each resort and look around. It's absolutely beautiful to see each resort and what they have to offer, and it took us half the day. We spent the second half at Downtown Disney, which is free and does not require a park ticket. It was great taking that time away from the parks and looking around. If your budget is tight when planning your trip, just remember, just because you're vacation is 7 days, doesn't mean you need to purchase 7 days of park tickets. Try purchasing only 6, and spend that one day venturing to other places. That one day can save you a lot when booking a trip!

My last piece of money saving advice is Ten - pick your resort wisely! Okay, who doesn't want to stay at the Grand Floridian or Contemporary Resort? They're huge and gorgeous and so close to Magic Kingdom you can almost touch it, but they're also around $600 per night, crazy right?! Just because you're going on a vacation doesn't mean you have to spend that kind of money on a room per night, especially when most of the time you're only in your room to shower and sleep. Disney offers three different resort options to fit every budget, Value, Moderate and Deluxe. We have always stayed at the Moderate resorts. They offer a bit more than the value resorts and it's within our price range. If you can't do the moderate resorts, by all means choose a value, they have some super cute value resorts that will go with whatever your families style may be. Every evening we like to go back to the resort to relax for an hour or so, and in my opinion the moderate resorts offer more of a quiet environment, along with bigger beds, so it fits our needs, however, that doesn't mean the value resorts aren't good, because they truly are great in their own right. 

Don't think you have to break the bank by booking a deluxe because it's a vacation. In fact, in most of the Disney groups I'm a member of, people who have stayed at all three of the resort options, have said that the moderate resorts are some of their favorites, that's including the deluxe category.

Don't get me wrong though, one day we'll stay in the Contemporary, one day...

Well, there you have it. A list of 10 ways to save and help budget for your Disney vacation. I know some seem trivial, but from personal experience they add up and quick! I like to think of it like this. Let's say you have an extra $2 per day (Monday - Friday). That's $40 per month. In a nine month span that's $360 - see how even $2 per day can add up? $360 is a lot of spending money for a trip, so don't take $2 and spend it on a pack of gum or energy drink, stash it in a piggy bank for your next trip to see the mouse!

Speaking of the mouse, in the words of Mickey...

See ya real soon!