A Broke Guy’s Guide to Walt Disney World Family Vacations
This is the first in a series of posts about my family trip to Walt Disney World that will be running periodically over the next few weeks. It’s full of tips, fun and lots of stress. Also, the proverbial Disney magic.
Our hosts.
Like many families that visit Walt Disney World (WDW), we planned it for years. Okay, months. We had books. Lots of books. We visited websites. Daily. We had countdown apps on our phones and desktops. We set aside a fund to pay for the trip. We thought we had it all figured out. Top of the world, Mickey!
Here’s what we learned — we didn’t allow for everything. Shortly after we made all of the major purchases required for a trip of this magnitude my wife and I lost our biggest account at work, roughly 80% of our household income (that’s what this is about). It was, obviously, unexpected. Did I mention that the major purchases we made were non-refundable?
We had airline tickets, park tickets and a hotel room bought and paid for, all without a paycheck in sight. The money that we had saved toward the trip now had to go toward bills. Suddenly, our air of anticipation was replaced with the foreboding of fear. For the record, the anticipation was a lot more fun.
Luckily, we had already taken some steps to ensure that our trip was relatively sound, financially speaking. Relative being that we were planning a cross-country family vacation for four to Walt Disney World, quite possibly a once in a lifetime trip, and some corners couldn’t be cut.
How we did it:
Did we need the Rescue Rangers?
The Flight
We were flying from Seattle, which, if you don’t have access to a map, is far from Florida. The average price for most airlines was, generally speaking, very expensive. We saved money on the flight by choosing an overnight option for our trip into Orlando. It actually worked out quite well.
We bought round-trip tickets for our family of four (two adults, two kids ages 4 and 7) and that made it all official.
The night of the flight we boarded our plane at 10 p.m. our time, the boys were asleep within the hour and when they woke it was 7 a.m. in Orlando. They never knew what hit them.
Total cost for our family of four to fly round-trip across the country: $1,575 (including taxes, fees and a travel insurance add-on of $16 per ticket). Could we have flown cheaper? Probably, but not by much, and doing so would undoubtedly involve stops along the way, which are nice to avoid when traveling with children. Or ever, really.
The Park Tickets
Here’s the thing about buying park tickets at Walt Disney World. The more days you buy the cheaper they are. Yes, the price seems staggering at first glance. Also, at second glance, but when you factor in what you’re getting for the buck – admission, shows, parades and rides, not to mention the characters and magic of Disney, well, I’ve paid more for less.
There are many options to consider when purchasing tickets. How many days will you be visiting the parks? Do you want to add on a meal plan? Do you want to visit more than one park per day? What about the water parks?
We didn’t care to visit the water parks (the pool in our hotel was sufficient for our young children) and we didn’t opt for a meal plan for reasons that I’ll outline later, so we chose the 9 Day Magic Your Way Tickets with the Park Hopper for two adults and two children (that’s ages 3 – 9 by Disney standards, under 3 are free). The hopper part meant that we could go in and out of all four parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, respectively) on any given day, which we never did. However, we did hit at least two parks every day and the hopper was a good decision for us.
Total cost for four 9 Day Magic Your Way Tickets with Park Hopper: $1,173. We had planned on spending our 10th day at Universal Orlando, but their PR department dropped the ball, quite rudely, and they lost the opportunity to get my money. Their loss was Disney’s gain. We added a 10th day to our ticket plan for an additional $12 and some change. That’s $12 total for the four of us. Yes, as I said earlier, the more days you buy the cheaper it is, and adding a 10th day meant that we each received a one day hopper pass for about $3 (retail value of an adult one day hopper pass at WDW is $136).
The Hotel
We’re members of the Disney Vacation Club (DVC). Basically, it’s a timeshare, and it’s bloody brilliant. My wife and I first purchased our DVC membership about 10 years ago. We added on to it just a few years later. Even before we took this trip to WDW the memberships had more than paid for themselves. With DVC we’ve stayed in luxury hotels and inns across New England, and numerous times at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. Someday we’ll use our DVC membership to book passage on the Disney Cruise Line, which, according to everyone, is awesome.
At the risk of trying to sell you a timeshare, here’s how it works. We paid about $5k both times that we bought into DVC, at which time we were allotted X amount of points to use each year for 40 years (from the date of purchase).
The points are used to for overnight stays at hotels (among other things). For example, we wanted to stay on Disney property at the Boardwalk Inn and Villas which is within walking (or boating) distance from Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. A one-bedroom suite with a full kitchen cost X amount of points per night. We called DVC, told them when and where we wanted to stay, they put our points toward it and that was that. We, in the vernacular of the Disney Vacation Club, were home.
Just for the heck of it I tried to book the same room for the same dates and duration via the traditional channels (traditional being my credit card over the internet) and found that a stay would have cost us well over $5,000. That’s not a typo. Five thousand bucks. Plus.
We didn’t pay anything out of pocket for our room, and it felt pretty damn good.
Ducks in a Row, with Mouse.
Now, if you recall, all of the above was taken care of prior to the change in our financial situation. What followed was the realization that we were going to be at WDW for 10 days on a very shoestring budget. Very shoestring. I’m talking frayed laces, people.
In the second part of this series I’ll tell you what we did, why we did it, and if it worked. Stay tuned, Mouseketeers!
Photos by Whit Honea