Saving for your Disney Vacation

Listen, we all know a Walt Disney World trip isn’t going to be cheap. Park Tickets alone for one person will be anywhere from about $100 to over $300 depending on the number of days you visit. Add in the room, food and souvenirs. Then there’s the travel cost – our plane tickets for this trip are about 2 1/2 times as much as what we paid in September 2007. For a family of four staying at a moderate-level Disney resort, you can easily spend between $5k and $6k for a one week trip. It is very easy to go into sticker shock.

So, how do you pay for your magical journey? There’s the typical bank vacation club account and spare change jar routine, of course. Here are some other options to get you closer to your goal:

• Couponing to Disney has some great tips to use the savings from extreme couponing to save money which you then use toward your trip. Extreme couponing takes a bit more time/work than I’m willing to commit. I’m pretty lazy like that. But if you are willing to put in the time, you’ll be surprised at how fast you can save a tidy sum.
• Use a credit card that gives you some sort of cash back reward. There are quite a few of these around these days so check them out and see what fits your lifestyle. Disney, of course, has it’s Disney Rewards Visa Card (DRVC). We had held off getting the card because the interest is pretty high ( an average of 14.24% variable APR). Last August, we finally decided we should get the card, use it for all of normal monthly expenses and pay it off at the end of the month. By doing this, we get 1% back of what we spend in the form of Disney rewards dollars – you get a refillable rewards card you can use at the Disney parks and Disney Store (brick-and-mortar and online). We also got a $200 bonus just for signing up and spending some threshold amount of money ($250, I think). This we immediately applied to our trip. Since then, we have racked-up over $300 of additional Disney dollars which Melanie just applied to our trip balance. By the time we go in November, we’ll probably have received over $600 in-total of free money!

          You also get a few other nice perks:

• Special 6month 0% financing on your vacation. Think about that, you use the card to pay for your trip, get the reward points for the money you spent and get special financing for 6 months.
• 10% off at Disney store, DisneyStore.com and WDW in-park merchandise purchases over $50
• 10% off at select in-park restaurants
• Special character card-holder only meet-and-greet
• As of August 2013, the DRVC is offering $100 gift card after you spend $500 in the first 3 months and the Disney Premiere Visa Card (DPVC) is offering $200 after spending $500 in the first 3 months. DPVC gets you 2% for certain types purchases but has a $49 annual fee.

• Also, until the just released Free Dining Special or Room Only Discount for Fall 2013, DRVC card-holders received Disney Special Offers about a week before the general public. This was not the case for the current deals and rumor has it that this perk is gone for good. We’ll have to see how this pans out in the future.

• Remember, the biggest thing with this option is PAYING OFF THE BALANCE EVERY MONTH! It doesn’t make sense to earn 1% and pay back over 14%. We keep all of our normal household expense money in our checking account, don’t touch that money and apply it directly to our bill at the end of every month to avoid any charges.

• This one comes from the manager of our local Disney Store: You can add money to a Disney Gift Card at anytime in any amount. Several times a week she will skip her coffee or bring lunch instead of buying it and add the money she didn't spend to her gift card. This is easy since she works at the store, but the strategy can work for anyone. Put aside the money you would spend on these little luxuries and stop by your Disney Store every few weeks to top-off your card. You don't have a local Disney store? Add the money to your vacation club or save your money until you can buy a Disney gift card in a preset amount (usually $25 or $50, available at stores like Target.) This way you will lock in your money and won't be tempted to spend it one something else.

I hope this helps. If anyone else has methods they used to save some extra cash for their trip, please feel free to post them in the comments or email them to me and I’ll add them to this post.