frugal in disney?

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-07-2005
frugal in disney?
7
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 4:47pm
has anyone ever figured out what the ultimate cheapest yet still fun trip to disney would be? would you get the ddp or not, what about the passes, parkhopper or not? and accomodation, on site?


 

Avatar for laurieh88
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 7:22pm

The most frugal way *I* know to enjoy Disney is to visit during value season and look for a % off Disney resort room code that can be used during your stay. We fly Airtran, and we scan their site for many months beforehand until we see the rock-bottom price for a straight through flight. We also have an Airtran Visa that we use for credits towards air travel.

Other (rather obvious!) tips:

Bring breakfast foods to enjoy in your room each morning vs. purchasing breakfast (it helps if your room has a fridge and microwave).

Find inexpensive Disney shirts and trinkets for the kids before the trip and give them out each day vs. buying in-park souveniers.

Purchase single day tickets vs. park hoppers to save a bit of $$.

That's about all I've got! I'm sure you will get tips much better than mine. :)

LAURIE IN OH, Mom to:
Alex, 12.5 years old
Julianne and Leah, 11 years old
Audrey, 3.5 years old

Disneyworld trips in 1973, 1986, 1987, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006
Upcoming Setember-October 2007 trip!!!




Edited 7/19/2007 7:23 pm ET by laurieh88

LAURIE IN OH, Mom to:


Alex, 1

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 7:39pm

OK..here are my money saving tips..we do everything to save money since we have 4 kids and like to visit often!! Bring your own snacks/juice/water..Definitely stay onsite--we love the moderate resorts and you can get good rates there..We are paying $104 a night at PO French Quarter in 10 days (woo-hoo!!) and you can get the values even cheaper I do not think the DDP is a good value unless you happen to get it free during a promotion. It would add about $2000 to our vacation and there is no way we will spend that much on food--even with character meals every day. Since we know we will be going back, we purchase 10 day non-expiring tickets from an online source--it is more $$ upfront, but comes out to under $30 a day and we have tickets for 2 trips. We do not get park hoppers--we stick to one park a day. Park hopping in my opinion is too much of a hassel with all these kids!! We make sure the kids earn their own money before the vacation so they have spending money and dont ask us for everything. They know if they want it they have to buy it with their own money and if they blow it all on the first day, too bad!! We always fly Southwest and get the best rates! Again for our upcomung trip in 10 days, we paid less than $100 round trip from NH to Orlando. Pretty good in the middle of the summer!

Hope that helps a bit!

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 7:48pm

There are lots of ways to make your trip frugal.

As for DDP, if you eat table service every day, it's probably an awesome deal, but in 8 trips, we've only eaten table-service twice (and once was a non-Disney restaurant), so it would NOT be a good deal for us. I prefer to get more park time and do counter service than spend an hour plus in a table-service restaurant (and it's not all fast food at CS, either).

We also do breakfast on our own. We drive so we can bring our own breakfast foods and our own waters.

Park hoppers vs. not, definitely not for being frugal, but I wouldn't go without park hopping.

Souvenirs--our favorites are pressed pennies, and yes, we have brought those back for others as well.

Alysha













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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-21-2007
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 8:06pm

Here's what we do:
1. Airfare: Priceline (Less convenient, yes, but frugal!)
2.On- site accomodations (value resorts in value season LOL, ideally with discount code although didn't get one boo hoo) which allows for
3. No car rental. (Magical Express and Disney transportation all the way!)
4. Base tickets, no need to hop, although we will get the "water parks fun and more" option this time because we want to do DQ AND a water park (and even though we'll only be using 2 of the several "options", it's cheaper than getting the 2 separate tickets, I triple checked!)
4. NO DDP, no way that's savings unless you compare it to eating LOTS of food at TSs all the time. Even with a TS almost every day, we'd still not get a full meal (with appetizer, entree AND dessert) per person, which is the only way I found that the DDP would be justified. So, anything less than that would be frugal by comparison!

We're doing a combination TSs (sharing courses), CSs and snacks from home, and water bottles. Oh and breakfast in the room, whether following our simple camping method (which apparently disgusts many) of mixing our cereal with dehydrated milk, or keeping a collapsible cooler in the room for milk, etc (so either way not even spending the $10 per day for the fridge).

Had it been just me without DH, we would probably have skipped the TSs altogether, or at least would be more likely to visit one or two for dessert only (for the atmosphere and for curiosity to see what they're like after hearing about them so much). I'd be happy to live on trail mix and beef jerky from my waist pouch while in the parks as if I were in the wilderness without the benefit of a backpack. OK that and the occasional Mickey Bar or three, LOL!

Thanks for asking the question and helping me feel a little better knowing how frugal we've been, after spending quite a bit more than I should have this morning on other things (like fabric paint for making our homemade matching shirts for the trip and other FUN and totally frivolous stuff)!!

ETA to Alysha's :)
a.Second the Pressed Pennies! Best souvenirs for 51 cents :)
b.Since we get two checked bags per person, that's a lot more than we need so we're checking a bag full of food (trail mix, granola bars, breakfast foods, etc)PLUS the collapsible cooler in there and plastic bowls, utensils, etc...room for all that even though we're not driving thanks to those ME yellow tags (we also would be less likely to do this if we had to deal with the extra luggage ourselves)!
c.Begging to differ on this particular opinion, we find all that extra flexibility allowed by park hoppers is unnecesary. We can still, and plan to, leave the 'park of the day' for a break and come back, so I find that just a little extra planning to make sure we pick each day's park carefully to coincide with our priorities (whether those are Extra Magic Hours or a special show, etc) makes up for not having the hopping ability.

That said, we've never been on a resort on the monorail either, so we don't miss it...although I guess it could well be true that one try with either privilege (a deluxe resort on the monorail or hoppers) would spoil us so as to never want to go back to the old ways any more! Oh well, I can live in ignorant bliss and stick to my frugal budget...for now hee hee!!

Edited 7/19/2007 8:21 pm ET by mamainoregon




Edited 7/20/2007 9:39 pm ET by mamainoregon
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2005
Fri, 07-20-2007 - 12:16am

Check out this wonderful site, www.mousesavers.com (the name says it all! LOL) for great ways to save on your Disney trip.

Val, Co-CL Disney Vacations

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Fri, 07-20-2007 - 8:38am

Chiming in here to say that when I started my vacation research I checked a new book out of the library called "Disney on a Dime". They also have a website with the same name, but the website isn't so accessible. I think the point is to buy the book. Either way, the book had tons of ideas for doing a trip REALLY cheap. Too cheap for me... such as staying in the cheapest motel in orlando and eating microwave mac and cheese every day. But whatever. It had lots of valuable info too.

Good luck.
Laura

Laura

check out my blog

Avatar for cl_ktbugsmom
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 07-20-2007 - 8:59am

One thing to keep in mind, with Disney or any other vacation, is that while you don''t want to go into debt just to get there, you also want to enjoy yourself and you're not going to enjoy yourself if you're rubbing pennies together or worrying the whole time about what things cost.