Designing Your Walt Disney World Vacation to a Lower Target Budget
OVERVIEW
While doing so will not provide you with the best possible first family visit, of course you can design your trip around a target budget.
For example, if the recommended trip at Pop Century for $4,300 plus transportation is too much, you could follow the steps below instead to design a trip you can afford.
DESIGNING YOUR DISNEY WORLD TRIP TO A TARGET BUDGET
1. Set your target budget
2. Look up on the thumbnail above (click to open; when open, click again to enlarge) what you can do for that.
For example, if your target budget before transportation is $2,500, you’ll note that you could either, with no extra shows and events, stay for 5 nights and be in the parks for 6 days, or with an allowance for extra shows and special events, stay for 3 nights and have 4 days in the parks.
The thumbnail assumes a family of four with one kid younger than ten, and includes hotel with refrigerator costs, Magic Your Way base park tickets, the Dining Plan, and refillable mugs. (See this for more on the Dining Plan.)
Note: The thumbnail on the right includes the specific numbers, so that you can see, for example, just what the “extra and special” budget amount is for your target budget.
3. Then either modify one of the existing itineraries and To-Do Lists to match what you can afford, or go to this page to build your own.
LINKS FOR WHAT TO BUDGET FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD
For the basic December trip recommended by this site
- See this for what to budget during the basic December trip
- See this if you are on particularly tight budget, for (difficult) ideas to reduce the December trip budget by more than $1,000
For help getting to much lower budget numbers,
- See this for links to current Walt Disney World deals and discounts
- For basic Disney World budgeting concepts, see Planning Your Walt Disney World Budget
- To design a trip around a specific budget target–e.g., what you can do for $2,500–see this
- For reducing your lodging costs,
- See The Tightwad’s Guide to Where to Stay at Walt Disney World
- See this for links to current Walt Disney World deals and discounts
- For reducing your dining costs,
- For ideas on cutting your dining costs compared to what this site recommends, see this
- For a period during which dining is sometimes free, see The Tightwad’s Guide to When to Go to Walt Disney World
- For reducing your transportation costs, see this
For Walt Disney World price seasons,
- See this for resort price seasons
- See this for Disney Dining Plan price seasons
- See this for Walt Disney World theme park admission tickets
For the Tightwad’s Guide to Walt Disney World, see this
For the Comfortable Guide to Walt Disney World, see this
6 comments
We are investigating a December, 2011, Christmas week visit and will be staying at the campground. We did this in 2003 so we are familiar with it. I am having trouble finding any prices for the campground. Can you find any?
Joan–the 2011 prices should come out any day now.
Disney typically releases prices for the next calendar year in early August….
If you can’t wait….I expect they will be very close to 2010 prices. See this on MouseSavers.com for Fort Wilderness 2010 prices: http://www.mousesavers.com/ftwilderness2010.html#campsites
Hope this helps and have a great trip!!
Dave
I am traveling with a party of 8 fromages 4 to 80. My mom will not want to do more than a day or two for about 1 show per day. I would like the flexibility of any park, any day for 3 days but I do not see a package for that. Can we get this…we are also a military family!!! we want to take advantage of those discounts!
Hi Sandra!
You can buy tickets for any number of days up to 10. To go to any park any day, you add the “Park Hopper” option to the tickets. For tix for the general public, see this: http://yourfirstvisit.net/2011/06/12/disney-world-2011-2012-admission-ticket-prices/
You can also buy military discount tickets with park hoppers–however you can only buy 6 (you’d have to get the other two at regular rates). See this http://yourfirstvisit.net/2010/10/24/disneys-military-salute-for-2011-officially-announced/ Note that this deal and also the discount on rooms mentioned on the same page have been extended to Sept 2012. Disney has not published the details of this extension yet, but you can find more here: http://yourfirstvisit.net/2011/05/24/key-details-on-extension-of-disneys-armed-forces-salute-are-out/
FInally, for on-site hotels for such a large group, see this: http://yourfirstvisit.net/planning-your-first-family-trip/special-circumstances/special-circumstances-large-families/
Hope this helps! Dave
i am a single mother saving for a trip for my family of 5. i dont plan plan on going until 2015 which seems kinda far off….are there any savings or discounts for booking trips that far off? if not then what do u suggest?
Hi Melissa, you can save a bit on tickets–which are shockingly expensive–by buying them as soon as you can afford them. After you buy them, they’ll go up 3-5% a year, but you won’t have to pay any more…just don’t lose them!
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