Saving for Disney

We're a Disney family.

We truly love going to Disney so much that we even went for part of our honeymoon (that's us at the bottom of this post in our matching shirts!) and countless other times over the years. We planned to take my oldest when he was a few months old and again for his first birthday. But Covid had other plans. Now we've had two more babies (twins! Surprise!) and have decided to take only our oldest (2.5 years old) in January 2023.

The way I see it, the more affordable we make each Disney trip, the more trips we can do. In the past, we've always built up our Airmiles so we could cash them in for our Park Passes to help off set the cost. But Airmiles are becoming harder and harder to collect lately so its really not something I would recommend anymore.

Instead you have to get a little creative with your trips. I've found the cheapest times to go are January/February and end of August/early September. Obviously Florida is much hotter during one of those periods so we typically aim to go in January/February.

Part of the reason we're squeezing this trip in is because kids under 3 are FREE. My husband and I both went to Disney with our families when we were 5 so we completely understand that Easton is not going to remember this trip. But we also know we're never going to forget it. He loves "Mik Mouse" and watching YouTube videos of Disney World so we cannot wait to see his reaction in person.

Theres many different routes to make your trip more affordable, but you ultimately have to decide where you want to save money and what is worth spending money on. To give a few examples:

Staying on Disney property (incredible!$$) vs staying somewhere else local and close ($)

Eating at the parks ($$) vs ordering groceries and taking your own food and drinks in with you (just no alcohol allowed!$)

Flying($$) vs driving down($)

We've done every combination of all of these things so I would love to expand and talk more about the options if anyone is interested!

We've also used a variety of ways to save money for our trip. We've used jars to put our change into, sold any items around our house we don't need on Facebook Marketplace, followed different money charts where you set a certain amount of money aside every week for a year, money envelopes and asked for Disney gift cards at every holiday and celebration. I'll have to do a future post breaking down each one because they've all helped us get us to Disney at different times.

The nice part about Disney is they do have sales and different level resorts to help you save money. We always stay in a "Value Level" resort to help us enjoy the magical experience while also saving us money compared to the "Moderate Level" and "Deluxe Level".

They also run sales on their resorts that you can't miss out on! When you book a trip, you lock in that price as the highest amount you will pay. If they run a sale or have a promotion going on for the time you are staying, you simply call and they will reduce the price for you. But if the price goes up, you still pay the lower amount that you locked in. You have 30 days before your trip to cancel if something comes up but we love being able to lock in a price and know how much we need to save while also not worrying about missing out on a better deal popping up.

I could talk about Disney for days so this will be the first post of MANY to come before (and after!) our trip. Make sure you subscribe to follow along with all the tips and reach out on Instagram if you have any specific questions!