I can hardly believe it's time to say, "Next month we go to DisneyWorld!" I am really starting to get excited now.
One of the things I'm really interested in is figuring out a way to save money once we get there. A few people have mentioned that you can take backpacks into the parks with snacks and drinks, and we're on the Disney Meal Plan, so the meals themselves will be taken care of. We plan to use Disney transportation to and from the airport and to and from the parks every day, so I haven't reserved a rental car.
Can you think of any other ways we can save money?
Next week: WHAT TO CARRY INTO THE PARKS.
8 comments:
The meal plan saves a ton of money, but you still may want to throw a few easily portable snacks into your bag each day, along with water or sippy cups or whatever. We saved a lot of money on souvenirs by shopping for some stuff at the Disney Store first. We didn't tell our kids that we were going until Christmas, when they opened up a big box of stuff that Mickey and Minnie stuffed animals were sitting on. For stuff we bought at the parks, we told our kids that they could each pick out one thing that we would pay for, and then they got to pick out one thing to buy with their own money. Since we had already bought t-shirts, ball caps, bathing suits, stuffed animals, etc. they didn't feel compelled to look at any of that stuff. We also purchased one professional picture that the people at Disney took (there were 9 of us on our trip) and just took a ton of our own pictures that were great. I purchased a photo album with the logo and year on it, but I didn't think the scrapbooking stuff was anything out of the ordinary, so I got cute stuff when we got home from the local stores. Kim
We set a limit of 2 souvenirs (of the t-shirt/toy type) for our trip, knowing that I'd be doing a scrapbook for each of them when we got home. I also bought our yearly Christmas ornaments while we were there. From what I've heard, the meal plan is a great money saver!
Oh, and the Disney folks will take your photo with YOUR camera - then you don't have to pay for their photo!
My kids favorite souvenir was the pressed pennies! It became a hunt to find the machines. Cheeeeeep--51 cents each. I also ordered tradable Disney pins off ebay before we left and let them use those to trade. I spent $9 on 8 pins. One pin at Disney could be momre than $9!
We spent a day at Disney World on Tuesday, and my tips are:
**Take your own pictures (we did bring the photo pass cards home with us *just in case*, but I have no plans to even look at them because I'm sure I'd want to buy some).
**Set a dollar limit on souvenirs rather than an item limit. Even my 2 and 3 yo understand the concept of "that's too expensive" and "if you get that, you can get something else too", and we had no fights over our $20 limit and everyone got what they wanted. We didn't make a big deal out of them having more to spend once they settled on what they wanted either, though.
If you take food and drink with you and have a plan for souvenirs, then you really shouldn't have any other expenses to worry about!
Have fun!!
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