How much we ACTUALLY spent on our trip to Disney World

Although my husband, Hayden, and I have travelled to Disney World many times, we have never travelled with children. We've also only flown once before; we usually drive down to save money but it makes the trip less of a vacation. We decided if we were going to go this time, we were going to fly.

Flights

Because of where we live, we priced out flights from Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo. The Buffalo flights always seem like the best deal but they are in USD so you have to work out the exchange as well. The important things for me were a direct flight and a midday flight for our first time flying with a kiddo. This time we found a flight out of Toronto with WestJet at 730am and 1030am. Unfortunately, the 1030am was $1000 more so we went to the airport at the crack of dawn for our flight to Florida AND our flight back home.

By choosing the early morning flights it was $913.02 CAD for all 3 of us with our checked bags.

Transportation to and from the Airport

Since our flight is so early we looked at getting a hotel room the night before to get as much sleep as possible. Three years ago when we did a similar trip, we paid $200 for the night at the hotel and that included a shuttle to the airport and keeping our car for the two weeks we were gone. We couldn't find anything that price with parking for our vehicle while were away. Instead, my incredibly sweet father offered to drive us to the airport and pick us up so we can save the money.

Disney no longer has a free shuttle from the Orlando airport to their resorts. Our two options were a shuttle that we pay for or an Uber. We didn't want to do an Uber only because we didn't have our phones turned on (with Rogers its $12 per day now to use our phones!) so we went the shuttle route. They were both similar prices depending on what time of day you are booking an Uber and how big of a car you need.

Sunshine Flyer is the company we went with. It was $64 USD total for our shuttle to the resort at the beginning of our trip and to the airport at the end of the week.

Hotel

It can be a lot more affordable to stay off site compared to staying on Disney property...but Disney resorts are extra magical and convenient. We have done both depending on our budget for the trip, but this particular trip we stayed on site at Disney's Pop Century Resort.

Disney has three levels of hotels; Value Level, Moderate and Deluxe. Pop Century is considered the top of the Value Level - it has its own bussing system and is apart of the Skyliner route which is transportation to Epcot and Hollywood Studios in the sky. We love this resort - it is worth a lot more than they charge compared to other resorts. I won't list all the reasons its incredible - if you're curious, just reach out and I'll tell you all the reasons we love it!

Our 6 nights hotel stay at Pop Century was: $1128.38 USD

Park Tickets

We had enough Airmiles for on of our Adult park passes and our toddler was free (kids under 3!)

I can't find our confirmation for the one Adult 5 Day Ticket that we did purchase was around $500 USD

(I'll update if I find the credit card statement)

Food

A lot of people do grocery delivery orders on their trip. We've never tried it, but we saw a lot of people receiving their orders. Having a toddler with us this time, I packed a ton of snacks from home that I got on sale and know that he likes. We packed Mio drink squirts so we could save ourselves from paying $5usd a drink - they will give you free water at any Quick Service restaurant and then we just added our own drink squirt when we were sick of water. The resort also provides free coffee in your room so my husband just drank that every morning and saved us from buying a coffee in the parks.

Quick Service restaurants are the most affordable at Disney. We primarily ate at them but did splurge for one character meal (Chef Mickey - always incredible!) and one regular sit down meal (Tony's Town Square Restaurant - our first time and was delicious!).

Chef Mickey was around $100usd for the 3 of us

Tony's Town Square was around $50usd - the three of us shared an appetizer and an entree.

I didn't track the rest of our meals but I do know we spent around $300usd on the rest of our food and souvenirs for trip.

Which brings our grand total to:

$2142.38 USD

PLUS

$913.02 CAD

It was an absolutely magical trip. I cannot wait to take my boys again in the future. We have an adults only trip planned for my birthday in May. May is a much more expensive time at Disney than January/February so even though we are going for less time, it is costing us more money. I'll have a full breakdown of cost when we return from that trip as well as many posts over on instagram and tiktok!