There are many articles written on how to save money at the Disney parks. Here are a few tricks that I found that help us to save money when we visit Walt Disney World!
1. Stay on Disney Property. You can spend $100 or less a night at the lowest tier property, or you can spend $1000 a night. Walt Disney World offers various prices on their hotel rooms, depending on the property.
a. No matter what the cost of your hotel, from $100 to $1000, you are eligible for the Magical Express, free round-trip transportation to your hotel from the airport. That is a HUGE savings that you cannot get at Disneyland!
b. You also get free bus service all day long to and from your hotel to the various parks and Downtown Disney. This means you don’t have to rent a car. This is another huge savings, not to mention, if you have a car, you have to pay for parking at the parks, which then leaves you further away from the entrance as well!
c. Free baggage check at your Walt Disney World hotel property. Check your bag in before you head to the park in the morning, leave your carry on with the bell boy, and pick up your luggage at your home airport! Disney makes it that easy for you!
Last August we are spending $300 for an 8 night stay at the Dolphin hotel, the only hotel complex (this includes the Swan) that is not Disney owned. We lose the perk of the Magical Express, so I have to figure in the cost of a car service. You also lose the opportunity to use Disney Dining, but we do not use that anyway. Those are the only two perks you lose, and for us it will only cost the $50 cab ride from the airport. I had British Airways miles that I was not going to use anyway, now I have a Starwood American Express and am earning free nights for our next trip!
2. Plan to stay for a long time. A four day base adult ticket costs $294. Every day after that costs $10 more. No one I have spoken to seems to realize that, for example, a 10 day ticket costs $60 more than a 4 day ticket! At that point your average daily ticket cost drops from $73.50 to $35.40. Most of us see $99 for the first day and think this is an incredibly expensive proposition. Here is the graphic taken directly from the Walt Disney World ticket sheet, current as of June, 2015:
PLEASE NOTE! WDW has instituted tiered pricing (prices vary by date and theme park!) so this is not 100% accurate for the year, but it is a guide to the cost savings!!
On the right, the bold number shows your average cost per day. It goes down from $105 on the first day to an average of $36.50 when you buy a 10 day ticket, which is what we did in 2013. The total cost per day is under the bold number and you can see after four days it only increase your ticket cost by $10/day! I think this is one of the best kept secrets about Walt Disney World. Sure, you have to pay extra hotel nights an food, and there are plenty of sites that tell you how to do that in a thrifty manner, but all I see is that we go to Disney for only an additional $10 a day per person after 4 days! That is fantastic! That is why we save our vacation time and dollars and spend more than a week at a time at Walt Disney World. Plus, it feels like home for all three of us!
This is the best example I have found at “How to Save Money at Disney!
Don’t forget your Memory Maker when you are in Disney!
3. Eat breakfast in your room. There is always a kitchenette. I bring ground coffee and coffee filters from home and save a few dollars a day that way. We like iced coffee in the morning and that costs a lot. Mine costs far less if I make the coffee at night and pop it in the fridge, and I am happy to make it in the room, I want it as soon as I get out of bed anyway!
I also go to the general store at the hotel and buy basics, which, while they cost more on property, still saves me from spending $40 in a theme park to eat breakfast. (Many folks have a car stop at a grocery store to by the same basics as me, just cheaper.) That also saves us time, we eat as we are getting ready, we hate to miss even one minute away from the parks!
4. Stay in the luxury of a DVC property for half price. It is no longer difficult to find travel agents that can do this for you. Sorry WDW, but if I can get a room at the Old Key West or Saratoga Springs for half price, without buying the DVC membership, I am going to. Two years ago we had a full one bedroom at the Saratoga Springs for less that $250 a night. Full kitchen and laundry, two bathrooms and a Jacuzzi. Last year we had a studio at the Old Key West for slightly less than $200 a night. Both of these were rooms that would normally cost double. This is our room budget for our big vacation, and as you read above, we certainly are beating that at $300 for 8 nights!
This is just for the Disney Vacation Club properties. My friend paid $85 a night during the same period at the end of the Summer in 2014. They stay at the budget hotels on Walt Disney World property. Every WDW property grants you al the same amenities whether you have a $1000 a night suite, or whether this $85/night room!They received all the amenities in #1 above that everyone on property gets, no matter what your room costs!
5. Kids meals. My son and I both had a kids meal in Epcot. We had a cup of macaroni and cheese, a yogurt, a cookie, apples slices, and a drink. That was half of the cost of an adult meal alone, without a beverage! And it is plenty to eat. I did that again at the Animal Kingdom. It only took five trips to WDW to figure this one out! It is plenty of food if you are just looking for a quick service meal to fill your belly. And this way I don’t feel bad when my son and I snack on a giant $10 turkey leg 2 hours later!
These are my top 5 tips on how to save money at Disney! With the extra money we saved, we ended up spending money on Magic Bandits. We dressed them up, and of course each of us purchased a hat but we did save money. How do you expect us to walk around the parks without Star Wars bandits on our wrists!
BUT WAIT! WE HAVE ONE EXTRA TRICK! We enjoyed free refills at all our sit down meals in Walt Disney World. We also stumbled upon the fact, thanks to some nice waiter, that we could get a “to go” cup when we left. So we all walked out, full of liquids, and with full containers of beverages in hand! And I mean soda, not water! For our August trip when the weather was 140 degrees, this was a huge hydration help and money savings! There are also free cups of water to be had at the lunch spots, just walk up and ask!
If you have your own money saving tips on “How to Save Money at Disney,” please leave it in the comments!
some good tips,,i hope to take the grandkids someday if I can ever afford it