We all know that a Walt Disney World vacation is not cheap. Between the travel, the park tickets, the food, the souvenirs, your vacation bill can add up quickly. However, over the years, we have learned ways to help soften the blow to our wallet/pocketbook. In this article, I will be sharing some of our favorite strategies for saving a few bucks. Enjoy!
General: Disney Gift Cards From Target
This strategy requires a little bit of work, but the effort is definitely worth it!
The key to this strategy is using the Target RED Card. This is Target’s in-house credit card. The main perk of this card is that you get an instant 5% discount on almost everything you purchase at Target, including third-party gift cards. You can take advantage of this feature by using your Target RED Card to purchase Disney gift cards. Then you use those Disney gift cards to pay for your vacation. This essentially will give you an across the board 5% discount on your tickets, your meals, your hotel (if you stay on Disney property)… pretty much everything you purchase through Disney!
One trick is that most Disney online purchases only let you enter one gift card per purchase. That means if you have a stack of $50 gift cards, you may think you are out of luck. Well you aren’t. If you create an account on the Disney Gift Card Website, you can combine the balances of multiple gift cards onto a single card. That way, you can turn 10 $50 gift cards into one $500 gift card that you can then use for your online purchase of tickets, Disney hotels, or vacation packages.
Now when you are purchasing meals and souvenirs in the parks, this restriction doesn’t matter as much. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend putting your entire budget onto one card since if you lose the card, you are out of luck!
The other benefit of using gift cards is that it provides you with a natural budget for your trip.
One final note. This strategy of using your Target RED Card to get a 5% discount breaks down if don’t pay off your balance in full at the end of each month. If you carry a balance from month to month, the interest on that balance will far outweigh the 5% discount. So please be careful.
One final, final note: You will see that I didn’t mention Disney’s own Visa rewards card. The Disney Visa card only gives you 1-2% back on your Disney purchases (the exact amount depends up on which level of card you have), so it isn’t as much of a savings. In other words, 5% > 2%!
Travel: Drive Instead of Fly
We used to fly to Disney every year. That immediately ate up over $1000 for our family of four. Plus, when we got to Orlando, we had the extra expense of renting a car (because of Little Banshee’s use of a wheelchair, we preferred to travel by car versus Disney bus). That took an even bigger chunk out of our budget. Then in 2021, we decided to give driving a try. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad!
From where we live, it is about a 14 hour drive, give or take. The first time we drove, we did it over two days each way with a hotel stay in the middle. However, the next time, we just drove straight through. Not only did this allow us to save a day each way with travel, but we also saved on the cost of two nights at a hotel.
The other plus was not having to deal with all of the hassles of air travel: the security, the delayed flights (and if you are traveling in the summer to Florida, there will be thunderstorm delays), the luggage restrictions. Plus traveling with Little Banshee is much easier by car. Trying to get a developmentally delayed, autistic person in a wheelchair through the airport and onto a plane is not a simple task!
Of course, the downside is that you end up losing time at Disney, but you end up saving quite a bit of money. And the bigger your family, the bigger the savings!
Lodging: Stay Off Property
While everyone talks about how great and wonderful Disney hotels are (and they are great!), they also aren’t cheap. As of the writing of this article, one standard room at Disney’s All-Star Music Resort for one week at the end of June 2023 is around $150/night plus tax! If you stayed at an All-Star resort, you know that these rooms are not high luxury by any stretch. If you want to step up to something like Disney’s Contemporary Resort, which is a bit more deluxe but still just a hotel room, you are looking at over $500/night plus tax.
However, if you dare to venture off property, you can find so much more value. For instance, you can get a room at the Embassy Suites on I-Drive for $300/night plus tax. While you obviously aren’t on Disney property, you get a multi-room suite at a luxury property for that rate. If you want to go even cheaper, a room at the Hampton Inn Lake Buena Vista is around $150/night plus tax. Same as the All-Stars for a much more spacious room. Both of these hotels are WDW “Good Neighbor Hotels”, so they need to maintain certain standards to retain that designation. But you aren’t paying the inflated on-property Disney prices.
An even more attractive option is to rent an entire house in one of the many resort communities in the area. This is a great option if you are traveling with a larger group, since everyone in your party can have their own bedroom. You don’t have to cram a family into a single hotel room, or have the extra expense of getting multiple hotel rooms. Plus, many of these homes have luxury features.
The one we advertise on this site, the Encore Magic Villa, includes 6 bedrooms (with two themed bedrooms which the kids in your family will love), a game room, a theater room, private pool with spa, full kitchen, and more! Currently if you were to rent it for the next to last week in June, you’d pay around $3100 for the week with taxes. While that is around $500/night, you are essentially getting 6 single hotel rooms for that price. Not too shabby!
More To Come
In our next installment of this article, I will talk about some tips to save on dining and souvenirs. In the meantime, if you have your own tips that you want to share, please leave them in the comments.
AD: We hope you enjoyed this post. If you are coming to Central Florida and need a place to stay, please consider the Encore Magic Villa. It sleeps up to 12 and features a game room, theater room, themed bedrooms, and private pool… located within a short drive to the Magic!
