It is no secret that I take trips to Disney relatively frequently. Since 2006 I have taken 10 trips to Disney World in Florida with 3 planned in the next 12 months. We are far from locals as we live on the east coast of Canada. We started out going every other year with one trip in 2006 and another in 2008. Then it developed to once a year with a trip in 2009, one in 2010 and another 2011. Then this is where trouble started lol. This was the trip that changed everything for us as we bought our DIsney Vacation Club membership! In 2012 we took 2 trips to WDW and 3 in 2013. People often wonder how I can afford to go so often because when people think of Disney they often think it's expensive. Disney can be expensive but there are also many ways to make even one trip there affordable. Now you will not find any good tips in this post for one off vacations. What works for us to save money only works if you are going at least once a year.
I still remember back in April 2012 when I was on a trip to Disney with my best friend Meghan staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge....This was our first girl's trip together and I was explaining our Disney Vacation Club membership to her and how we make our vacations work. Meghan said to me "Wow you have even managed to make trips to Disney affordable". I was thinking of that comment the other day and it is what gave me the idea for this post.
The biggest thing that has made Disney so affordable, was the Disney Vacation Club. This truly was an investment for us and completely changed how we travel. In brief how the DVC works is, there is a cost for a certain amount of points. We get the same amount of points every year until 2060 (for us it is 160pts). We can then use these points as we please for the top Deluxe resorts at Disney (and at other Disney resorts around the world as well as RCI). All of the different rooms are a certain number of points per night. The option is also available to bank points to save them for the following year and borrow from the next year (we tend to borrow). This cost to the buy the points can be a fair amount (about $150/pt) but in the long run this is cheaper than the cost of a hotel room. I have calculated out what it would have cost since purchasing if we had paid for the rooms we have stayed in and it is more than the total cost of our DVC. We currently pay a monthly loan on our DVC which if you add up all of our monthly payments would be about the same as we would have paid for a resort room for say a week and a half every year at Disney. And then once the loan is paid off we have this until 2060 and our rooms are covered. Our payments are working into our monthly expenses so when we book the trips it doesn't even feel like we are paying for the room, since we would be paying the payments regardless. Then with our DVC we also receive special discounts at Disney World and Disneyland such as 10% off in all of the stores along with a lot of other special perks.
Park tickets can get expensive as well, especially if you are going all the time. If you were to buy a 7 day pass each trip that is roughly $400 per person just for Disney and Universal just increased their 1 day park to park pass to $140. So of course I came up with a great option to save money on our park tickets as well. We buy an annual pass (which we even get a discount on for being a DVC member) for about $480 for a Disney AP and $200 for a Universal AP. We get the Disney Premium AP for the same price as a regular AP, which includes all of the Disney Parks and water parks. Once we purchase these we plan so that say we go this October late in the month, then next year we plan our second trip so that it is just before the pass expires. This way we are only paying $480 each vs $800 each! Between 2 people that is a savings of $640 just on our Disney tickets. That's not even taking Universal into account (another $160 in savings) . he years that we have our AP we tend to throw in a 3rd trip in the middle since it is so cheap at that point and it feels like we are really getting the most out of our annual passes because we are then saving another $1000!
If we were to fly from our own airport flights would be expensive! Roughly $600 per person. So we drive 5 hours to Portland, Maine and fly using Jetblue for about $250 round trip per person. Jetblue also has a great program called True Blue, where you receive points for your flights. And they actually do add up fast! They often have a bonus for taking 3 round trip flights or 6 one way flights you earn 5,000 points. The great thing about this is a one way flight counts as each connection. So say you fly from Portland to Florida with a stopover in NYC, that is 2 flights! Just from our trips last year and once we have completed our Sept trip we will have more than enough points to redeem for round trip flights for both of us in Dec! So this program is also another great money saver!
I am always finding other little ways to make our trips affordable and am constantly learning! I love to travel but I am also surprisingly frugal :) Like I mentioned, we also have other little things discounts that we receive for being Disney Vacation Club members. Some of these include 10% off at stores and some of the Disney restaurants. Disney has also recently released several other perks such as special member nights at their spas where we get some free add ons to our services along with our 10% discount on the services. We also receive a 15% discount off special tours and special event tickets such as Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party (which we frequently attend) and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. Just to name a few!
So if you were ever wondering how we afford to go to Disney so often, these are just a few of the ways we make it happen! Along with some smart planned out budgeting :)
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