Disney World: How to Afford it

Disney World: How to Afford it

Today, we break down how we have been able to have multiple vacations at the WDW Resort and give you tips and tricks to help you do the same! This also wraps up our 5 part mini series on Disney World. We hope it has been informative!

Transcript

We're the Essary family and we're exploring America one destination. At a time. On this episode of TravelEssary. We're going to wrap up our little mini series on Disney world. And today we're going to talk about how you can afford it. Let's chat.  

Welcome and thank you for joining us on this episode. 

As we talk about Disney world. And how you can afford a trip to Disney world. Now I will preface this by saying I am not the one that usually makes up the plans. I'm the one that I guess would make the money and then Misty spins the money. But she's the one that does all of the planning, uh, especially for a large. The larger, bigger ships that we take, especially whenever we go to Disney world, there's a lot to it. 

And sometimes it can be overwhelming. As far as whenever you're looking at. All their packets and you're looking at their webpage. And although they do a fantastic job, as far as.  I'm making it smooth and easy for you sometimes it can feel a little bit overwhelming or you might miss one or two things. 

, they do have the travel agencies that you can use that will plan your trip for you.  And work with you and try to figure everything out. , but every single time that we have gone Misty has gone through the extensive long lists of checking all the boxes, making sure that all of our plants have been taken care of.    But we're going to quickly get into. How can you afford. To go to Disney world. Whether it's for a day. , whether it's for a long stay.  Actually want to break this down into two parts. So there are two ways to go to Disney world. 

You can do it through the Disney world website. , and that's the first part I'm going to . Talk about today, or you can do it on your own.  Or through a travel agent. So my experience is always through the website and there's a reason for that. And I'll share that at the end.  But I wanted to do. , a decent package. 

And to me, a decent package is a weak. A week vacation. So we're going to base our numbers and stuff today off of a seven night. Stay. , if you're doing a shorter vacation, it would obviously be cheaper if you're doing a longer vacation. Then it would be more expensive. 

And before  she really starts breaking this down.  At I'm not a hundred percent sure what she has planned. But all these prices vary based upon what days of the week you go. What time of the year you go, that's the most specific part of what time of the year that you plan on going? They do have during their slow season, they have discounts or they have, if they haven't met their quota or they're not up their numbers, aren't up to where they like it. They will quickly throw in. Um, 25% off or 20% off of this, or, you know, they have discounts and they, they do a really good job trying to entice people to come. 

So you really want to work those as much as possible.  And these prices are as of the end of 2024 prices. Like Jeremy said, they do fluctuate. I went just a few days ago and got on their website and looked up how much everything was. Uh, currently, , Disney is known about every 18 months to do , price hikes. So keep that in mind. 

, it is significantly more expensive to go than it is. The very first time we went, I feel like life in general has just gotten more expensive. We've talked about that many times over the podcast. So keep in mind. As the years go on. Your prices probably will increase. I priced this towards a moderate time of the year. So it's not the less expensive, but it's not the most expensive. 

So it's going to be a very basic average package that you can get for a week, stay and Disney world.  So the very first thing that I suggest is that you plan. And book your vacation nine months to a year in advance. We have always done ours a year in advance. And the reason I say that is because a lot of times you can get discounts by booking it. So early.  , and if you're doing by the website, if you're doing everything, your total package by the website. Which again I do recommend,   And I'm just going to say it. 

The reason that I recommend of doing. Everything, your stay, your food, everything on the resort is because you get that total immersion. And I'm telling you it's worth it. The  . Price difference to me really? Isn't that big. And we're going to talk about that. But staying on the resort. What little bit more that you would end up paying is absolutely worth it. 

So you pay your 200 upfront and for a family of four, two adults, two kids a week long package can range from around $3,500 to close to $5,000.  Which seems crazy and a big number. And that is if you have three months to pay for it, or you have four months to pay for it. But whenever you.  Break it down for a year. 

If you were to pay that by the month, it would be three or $400 a month, which is very, very doable. And we're going to talk about how you can do that and your day to day life, what you can do. To do three or $400 a month. So this is staying.  And an all star resort. It is their lowest tier resort, but it doesn't mean it's low quality at all. We have stayed in all of the all-star resorts.  Oh, wait. We have not stayed in the music one. So we have stayed in two of the all-star resorts. And we loved it. 

Absolutely loved it. You're inside of your hotel is pretty basic, but the outside is amazing and they have a lot of the things that every other resort out there has.   This is with a quick service dining plan and the quick service dining plan for every day that you're there. It gives you two quick service meals. A snack and a refillable mug per person, which I'm telling you is more than enough food. When I tell you guys, this is more than enough food. The first time we went. The last day we were there. 

We were quickly trying to use all of our mill points, like getting snacks and stuff for our two day ride home because we had so many mill points left over because a lot of the portions in Disneyworld are quite large. That two people can share one mill.  And we, we have never ate more than what our mill points are.  And so before she really breaks down what exactly mill points are. The last day that, that we were there on our first time. Um, we didn't know exactly how to use everything, but man, that the cast there is so good. 

They're so great with people. They worked it out for us. We ended up turning our mills. Into snack points. And then we practically, almost bought them out of all the snacks that they had because we had so many points left over. That on our drive home, we really didn't have to stop and try to get any kind of snacks because we had so many Disney snacks left. I'm not sure if they still do this, but at the time you could take one mill and turn it into three snack points. So that was, that was an insane amount of snacks that we took home that first time, because in our kids were so little, they were three and five. So they weren't eating very much at the time. 

And we had dining packages for everybody.   So that's what the quick service dining plan.  And that's with four days worth of tickets. Okay. That's not with a park ticket for  all seven days that you're going to be there. That is four days that gets you in to the four main theme parks. One for each day.  And then that gives you days to explore the rest of Disney world a lot of times, or most of the time, every time. The packages include like free games of mini golf and discounts to other things. 

And so you can take.  Those days too. Play at your resort, which is free to go to the mini golf, which is free to hang out at, um, Disney Springs, Disney, boardwalk, all of the other things that we have mentioned in the earlier podcasts about Disney world, that gives you an opportunity to get out and explore more. 

I promise you're going to want to do that. You're not going to want to spend all seven days in a park. Go, go, go, go, go. You're going to want to take breaks. You're going to want to see what else Disney world has to offer because it's, it's all very awesome. So that is with . A four day base ticket without the park hopper, without memory makers or anything like that. 

 So that's 48. 81. For a seven days. For people. All star resort. Quick service dining. If you don't think your family can eat all of the quick service, which is a possibility cause our family rarely does. In fact, we, we talked about next time we go not doing the quick service, just because we don't eat that much food.  And if your family is like that, you can leave off the quick service dining and just pay for food whenever you want to pay for it. 

Just budget that. And it's only 34 44.  For a , same package just without the dining.  And like I said, you can easily break that down. So depending on which package you want, if you plan that a year in advance, it's only three to $400 a month. And Jeremy knows all about us. , preppy. Mil wise when it comes to, Hey, we're going to be going to Disney world in a year. 

We got to save this money because there are many times we used to make jokes. Um, especially the first time we went, we'd made jokes about beans and rice for the next year, so that we could plan for our Disney world trip. 

And where she goes into the three or $400. A month.  So.  Um, I'm not sure.  If, if we made this clear just yet, you can only schedule your time to go to Disney world. A year in advance, 365 days ahead of time. You cannot schedule two, three years out, but that doesn't mean you can't save two to three years out. So if you know, Looking at your budget. 

You're like, oh man, I can't cut back. Or, you know, going out to eat or getting all this other stuff. I can't make up this money to go in a year. Well then. You can save over a longer period of time, but you can only schedule your time to go to Disney world 365 days out.

Correct.  

So that's what we did in our first year is we number one? We really didn't know what we were getting into. We didn't know the whole process just yet. , and as much as Misty went through and she did as much research as you can possibly do on the internet. , we did say that what was it a year and a half? 

Almost two years. Before the first time that we went and it was.  Totally doable. And the great thing about it is yes, you pay your 200 deposit upfront. You pay that, but you can make either monthly installments or you can just get on and pay whenever you want. Like if you get paid weekly or biweekly or monthly, and you want to take a certain amount out of that check, you just get onto your account that you created at this point. And you add that money to your account and it goes toward , your stay. 

And I love that so much because how many times do we put something back and then something else comes up or we feel like, oh, I need to spend it on this. And then we have to start over. That's happened to me so many times. I put something back in saving and then something happens and I'm like, oh, now I gotta use this money for this need. 

Instead of this one.  But with Disney world, you can put it straight into your account every time that you're ready, you can deposit it and it goes towards your state. So before we get into. Booking a stay.  Off of the resort, I guess. Um, let's talk about ways to make up that three or $400 a month. Which is, it sounds daunting. 

It really does, . Especially in this days, you know, Groceries being so expensive, everything just seeming to increase every day, but three or $400 a month is very doable. And the number one way that our family saves when it comes to this is by not eating out.  

Yeah, eating out is such an expensive thing nowadays. 

And I understand the prices of groceries and just, but eating at home. It's just way cheaper. Than eating out to me because whenever you go eat out family of four, if you all get it entree and you all get, especially if you get a soft drink or drink anything other than water, they're charging you three, $4 for that cup. So you definitely find the savings by not eating out. Just one time a week. Right. I feel like every time we eat out, we're spending. You know, at a fast food chain, a good $45 for all five of us, or if we're in a restaurant we're easily spending 60 bucks. So think about that every single time we eat out, it's 40 to $60. 

, we try to only eat out once a week.  Max. But think of how much money you save by just not eating out.  I know groceries are expensive, but it's still significantly cheaper than eating out.  The first time we were budgeting and looking at going to Disney world. We broke down our budget. 

And one thing that we saw was that we were spending an insane amount of money eating out. Like I'm embarrassed to say how much money. At that time we were spending 80 now and I was like, oh my gosh, like, We have got to stay home and eat more because. We could. We could pay off this Disney world trip in a few months. 

If we were not hitting out all the time. And so that was something that opened my eyes to how much money you save by not eating out so much.  And the next thing is skip Starbucks. Skip it. Skip going out every morning, getting the coffee, getting the donuts, getting the mat griddle. I'm talking to you, mom. Okay, so you don't have to go out and get those things every morning. 

It costs me about $40 , to purchase the things that you need to have a Starbucks drink or, you know, a frappuccino or something like that. And that $40 has lasted me a whole year. I definitely could not have. Spit $40 or less by going to Starbucks all the time. So , our oldest daughter, Tory, she was a barista for a long time and she has taught us how to make all these different drinks. And 40 bucks easily.  Was the whole year's worth of drinks for us. 

 We still do every now and then, but we don't have to go to Starbucks. So  spin. You're a 40 or $50 for the year and stop going out and getting coffee stopped going out and getting your sweet stuff every morning. Eat at home. I get your stuff from your house. You're going to save so much money.  

Another way. 

A lot of people, I think don't realize because it's automatic every month are those subscriptions. 

If you sit down. And calculate how much a month you spend on your subscriptions. You might actually surprise yourself. And what I did was I went onto my bank account and went through a whole month to see what came out. And there were ones that I had completely forgotten about. , I just did it a few months ago and we spend $235 a month on subscriptions.  200. And $35 a month. 

And so I went through. And canceled a lot of ones that we're not using. There's a few that Jeremy likes for certain times of the year. , Darren football or tour de France or something like that. And I only hold those subscriptions for that time of the year. And then I cancel them. Or if I notice no one in the house is using a certain streaming service or audio book service or music streaming or whatever it is, I'm going to cancel it until someone asks me for it again, so that that's less money that we're spending. But if you go through your subscriptions,  You could probably save a chunk of money by the ones  you're not using.   

Especially in the world that we live in nowadays. I mean, everything is live stream, , you're trying to cut out commercials. You don't want to listen to ads.  But even all that extra stuff that you pay for. Does add up a lot and especially family of four, you'll have different things that you like. 

And so going through and kind of minimizing  just downsizing just a little bit. Cause even, you know, every little bit helps.  The amount that we spend on live stream. Whenever it used to all go towards cable.  He is. Astronomical.  So.  Take a few sacrifices cut back on. You know, streaming or bingeing, some things. 

And trust me, you can, you can catch up on it. A promise.  

Uh, way to save money. I guess save money, collect money, get money. I don't know. Um, that's kind of old school. And I feel. People don't use or think about any more is collect your change, collect your change throughout the year and go turn it in right before your vacation. Uh, we did that one year and had almost $200 in change. 

Like all of us, the whole house where you were putting in those old Coca Cola bottles, like the big tall ones that people used to put their change in. I know we kind of live in a. Almost cashless society, but there are still instances where we get change. So save that up, dig in your couch. Cushions. Um, ours tend to fall like  underneath our seats in the car. This is where we find change. 

Like loose change in the car from dropping it. , so collect your change. You might can get a little more spending money.  Clean out your house.  Go through your house and go room by room, put stuff that you're not using, that you've been meaning to get rid of.

Put it on Facebook marketplace, get rid of it. And as soon as you collect that money, go put it onto your Disneyworld account. Don't  put it back for later and say, you're going to do it later. 

Just go ahead and do it. The moment you get that money. If you don't want to do, you know, one item  at a time online, have a big yard sale, something like that. You could probably get a couple hundred bucks just by cleaning out your house and going through room by room.  And I know we all have stuff we need to get rid of Jeremy and I have been cleaning our house room by room and getting rid of things. And there's so much more than I ever thought that we didn't need, but we're finding that out real quick.  And then. For that year that you're planning.  Discipline yourself. 

If you're the spender in the family, if you're the spontaneous one, discipline yourself and only buy what you need. Not what you want. If the kids need new shoes, , you know, obviously you got to buy new toothbrushes. If someone's socks, all have holes in them. If someone's grown out of all of their clothes, okay. 

Go buy what they need, get the kids jackets for the winter, but don't buy new clothes. Don't buy new shoes. Don't buy new purses. Don't buy new anything unless you need it, unless it's something you actually need. And that is another way to cut back on spending. I feel like we are a society.  Where we're kind of  consumerism driven and you see something you're like, well, it's on sale. 

I know I'm bad about that. Well, it's on sale.  It's 60% off. I have to have it. But you're going to have to discipline yourself and the whole, family's going to have to be on board to make all of this work. Um, you know, everyone's going to have to be on board about not eating out as much or only eating out, say once a week of getting rid of things of not buying unnecessary items. And if you get the whole family on board and get them excited, then it definitely is something that is doable. 

It's very doable to come up with three or $400 a month.

And actually we're going to break it down here in a few weeks. About how we, um, budget our vacations and things like that. But three to $400 is what I budget every month for our little trips. And the way that I've been able to do that is by exactly what I have been talking about today. These little things that you can do. , in your life to, to come up with that three or $400 a month. 

Sometimes we only spent $200 on our monthly trips, depending on how long we're going and where we're going to stay. But it is doable. If you sit down and you break down your budget. 

One thing that I do want to say in here. Um, before she starts getting into some other stuff. Is get your extended family involved in this. You all have birthdays, you all have anniversaries. You have Christmases, you have all these times where. They're purchasing a gift for you or they're spending money on you. So what we did . On our trips, is we towed? Our extended family. 

Like, Hey, we're going to Disney world. If you really want to give us something, give us cash, give us gift cards, give us something that we can use that we can put towards this event. And. We were able to pay for our trips and then because our kids. Got money instead of gifts or presents during their birthday times. They took a astronomical amount of spending money that they could use to buy whatever they wanted whenever they were there. 

Yeah. Their grandmothers got them Disney gift cards, which is good, you know, not only at like any Disney store, but anywhere. And Disney world, you can use those gift cards for merchandise and stuff.  

, let everyone know that you're going. 

And, , there'll be more than willing , to help you and, , to get you there and have a great, wonderful time.  

So a lot of people don't like doing their packages through the Disney world resort website, because they feel like it's cheaper if they do it other ways.  And that's a yes and a no.  It's really not that much cheaper. And I feel like with what you have to do, it's not worth the hassle, but I will tell you ways of doing that. 

You can book a travel agent, you can do that,  and have them help you as much as possible. I just, I never recommend that because the one time that I did it, I was like, I want to see how much it would cost going through a travel agent. I ended up doing it myself for almost $300 cheaper, which when you're adding thousands of dollars, that $300 is kind of a big deal like that could be spending money or something like that. 

I don't know. What she did differently. I don't know what it was, but I did it. I found a cheaper way of doing it. And that was actually through the website. It was $300 cheaper. But a lot of people like to stay off of the resort, get an Airbnb or something like that.  I don't know if you've priced Airbnbs around Orlando, Florida, lately, but they're pretty expensive. Unless you have a large group coming to split that Airbnb you're going to be paying more than you would for the hotel. 

So whenever I priced them the other day, They were close to two 50 to three 50 a night on the low end. On the all-star resort. It's only one 50 to like 180 a night. So it is quite cheaper to actually stay on the resort.  Than it is to get an Airbnb again, unless you have a big group coming to split that cost. 

Then that might be an option. And then another thing that people think about is they're like, oh, we're going to stay in an Airbnb. So we're going to get our food and do all of that, which is great for the days. You're not in the park, but you can't actually take food into the park. So if you're at the park, All day, like if you're going, when the gates open and you want to stay until the fireworks. You're going to be starving to death. 

You know, you're going to eat and drink while you're there. So you might as well just bland for that. 'cause you, you can't take in coolers, you can't take in packed lunches. You can't do things like that. The only things that they allow are like, You know, baby bottles, diaper bags, baby food. Th those kinds of things, you can't just go take a lunch. 

You could leave a lunch in your car.  If you wanted to, and then go out, get your hand stamped or whatever they do these days go out. Eat your lunch and your snacks. And then come back in. You could go somewhere on the resort and do that. But man, you are killing so much time because. That is a good 30 minutes just to your car and back, not including eating time that you would be doing, but if that's something that you would want to do, that's another option. You also have to keep in mind. 

If you stay off property, you have to pay for parking.  Parking at Disney world is not cheap. You guys, so almost everywhere you go, you're going to be paying for parking.  If you're on the resort, you don't have to pay for parking. If you have that package, you either get a free parking pass. Or as we have recommended is that you do the Disney world transportation, and you never have to worry about getting your car because they can get you anywhere. 

You want to go pretty much.  With their free transportation. .  And then you have to pay for gas to get from where you're staying off property to the Disneyworld property. And like we said, in our first Disney world podcast is the Disneyworld property is very large. You're going to be traveling for a while. I mean, it could be 30 minutes to an hour, depending on where you're coming from and where you're going. 

And of course that's gas that you're going to be spending. So it's really not that much cheaper.  To stay off property if it even is, if it even is whenever I booked it or a number, I researched it the other day for our family, it actually would have been more expensive because the Airbnbs were expensive. The hotels in the area. I will say the cheaper hotels in the area.  Are pretty cheap. You can get them for, you know, a normal hotel price, which is about one 50.  A night staying off property, but again, the all-star ones are around  180, depending on what time of the year you're staying. So it's not, it's not a significant enough.  Price difference.  To stay off property. 

The only thing that I will say is we've had family members that have gone down there recently that have stayed in the air BNB, or they stayed off premises. 

But what they did is they only took a couple of days and went to Disney world because Orlando has so much to offer down there. And they took a couple of days and did other things. So if that's what you're looking for, you know, getting the whole Orlando and looking at all the theme parks that they have down there, then probably staying off of Disney world is definitely the way, but , if you're doing what we're talking about going an entire week and just getting.  The entire Disney experience within that week. It is so much more worth it to stay on the resort than to stay off the resort. 

 You will save time. You will save yourself a headache. , you'll be able to sleep in a little bit more.  Your stress level will drop drastically because all you have to do is go to where their transportation cues are. You stay in there, you wait for . Your bus, your transportation to arrive, you get on it and you go to the next spot. 

It's that easy. You don't have to worry about. Trying to navigate their streets and worry about other, all the other traffic that goes along with it. Cause those guys that drive those transportation's over there, they know exactly what they're doing. They are experts at where they're going and they usually get in a whole lot faster because they have, um, fast lanes for their,  transportation to go through. 

You don't have to go through the line of. Paying for parking and then finding a parking spot. And then traveling. All the way to the front gate. I mean, the bus really kind of drops you off almost. Exactly in front of the front gate of all the parks.  Yeah. If you're wanting to do an Orlando experience and not a Disney experience, then I would stay off property. 

In fact, we're talking about taking three to six weeks sometime soon and staying in the Orlando area and not only doing Disney, but universal and everything else. But since we're specifically talking about Disney, , for this podcast and this series, if Disney is your sole purpose, then 100%, 1000%. 

I recommend staying on property and doing the Disney package because even if you stay on property, it doesn't mean that you can't leave and go do something else. Maybe a day or two. But while you're at Disney, everything is taken care of for you

so let's sum it up real quick.  If this is your first time thinking about going to Disney world and you're, you're trying to plan, or you don't really know how you can afford it or make it happen.  This is what I would say.  Do what we went over. Go for a week, spin four days. One day in each park. 

Just take your time in there. Enjoy the park. But then take those other times go to Disney Springs. Go to some of the other places that they have, that you don't need a ticket to get into and just really experience everything.

And of course, Anything that you do on the first time, you're always going to be nervous. It's not always going to go to exactly the plan. You're going to have some, some trials that you're going to have to go through. There might be some situations that you might run into, but. Go the first time.  Don't stress about it. And in my opinion,  it's a super easy process. Easy. Um, I'll sometimes go through and book different packages just to see what the prices are and things like that. And it takes me maybe 10 minutes to get to the end of.  Of the checkout. Yeah. Booking it like, and putting in all of my. Um, needs or requests or wants, and there are so many different ways to create a package. 

And this was just like a basic seven day quick service package. But you can absolutely do it cheaper than the three or 4,000 that we talked about. You could go at the cheaper times of the year, which is mid January to mid February. You can take out the quick service completely. And you can, um, only eat. At the parks while you're in the parks and the rest of the time you can eat off property. 

If you wanted to go to McDonald's or something like that. And not spend so much money on food as you would in the parks. You can do lots of things. There are different. Offers that they have throughout the year that you can. You can select depending on what your family wants and when you want to go, that will give you discounts on that Disney world website. Um, they'll have the list of, of what they offer and what they're offering at that time. 

So you can go and click on that. And I think that's one of the reasons why I ended up saving more money than what the travel agent was going to charge us or for our package was because I went and I clicked on the discount. It was like a 20% discount specifically for a family of four. Whenever I did that. And it knocked off several hundred dollars from our, from our trip. And Disney has it set up and I mean, you can go through there. 

Nothing is permanent until you actually put down the 200 that's whenever you, you got to, and that's not even permanent, you can. I mean, you can always call and make changes to your account. At that point. Once you do book it, you do need to call and talk to your representative to make any changes. 

But you can price gauge all of the different packages that they have. 

You can just kind of see how that price fluctuates and then you can take your budget and be like, okay, so what can we cut out for? A year. A year and a half. And make this doable where we're not just coming up with just one quick, big song. And I know that for some people it's doable at the end of tax. You know, if you get a good tax return. Sometimes you can pay for your entire Disney world just by that. 

. A lot of people put it on a credit card because three or $4,000, you can easily put on a credit card and then they pay that off the next year. That's also something you can do. 

We prefer not to do that. We like to go in with everything paid for debt-free we've never put ours on a credit card or anything like that. We, we do ours in advance instead of paying it off later. But if that's something you want to do, I mean, you consider, consider doing that.  If you do credit cards. And you can pay it off within a year. 

Easy. That's definitely an option, especially if you have a low interest, but on top of that, something that I forgot about Disney has a credit card.  That you can use. It's actually not Disney. So it's a chase credit card. Oh, it's a chase credit card that you get Disney points for. Yeah. So the credit card that we do use, and, you know, you get double points for gas and groceries, and then you paid off at the end of the month, but. Um, I'm sure there are others out there. 

I don't know, but we, we use chase specifically for things like that, so that we can build up our Disney points. And the last time we went to Disney world, that's actually, it actually paid for all of our park tickets. So that was really nice. And so I know that. You know, a lot of our listeners are overseas and so flying in. Taking that credit card and paying for your tickets. Gives you flight points and it gives you points that you can use at Disney world. 

. So 

use the reward points as much as possible. Look into it. Um, it'll save you some money over the long run  yeah, so  that wraps up our Disney world series. I hope. .  Oh, at least one of the five episodes we did was informative. 

I hoped you learned something new. Next week. We're going to talk about how to deal with being sick on vacation