Our Disneyland Experience: The Planning Stage - Budgeting
We have been home from our family’s first Disneyland vacation for less than a day and I am still experiencing the Disney high. I’m completely Disney obsessed. It was AMAZING! Truly the best vacation we have ever had. It was everything that I had hoped it would be, and then some.
I’m VERY excited to tell you all about it! Hopefully it will help you if you are planning a trip to Disneyland!
The Planning Stage -
Our Disneyland trip planning began about 15 years ago. Back in married years 1 and 2, we lived in Southern California. On our first visit as a married couple, be bought resident season passes (which were a lot more reasonably priced than they are now). We liked to go to Disneyland just for the evening to people watch, ride a few rides and have dinner. After observing the harried parents of young, crying children, we made the decision that our children would have to be able to walk on their own without being assisted by a stroller at any time before we would take them to Disneyland. We figured that would mean that the youngest would be about 5.
Our youngest turned 6 this summer, and I had been dying to take my boys to Disneyland for a couple of years. In fact, in December of 2010, I actually started pre-planning a trip. Of course, back then we still had my student loans and were just starting to get really good at managing our budget. My husband convinced me to hold off on Disneyland until I paid off my student loans. That was reason enough to become gazelle intense.
We paid off my student loans (which had a balance in January 2011 of $27,000!!) this March, a little more than a year later. I worked my hiney off (creating adoption profiles, in my papercraft template shop, and in my cash envelopes Etsy shop) in 2011/12 to get rid of that debt, and this summer my husband suggested that we start planning our Disneyland trip!! YAY!
One thing that was really important to us was that we be able to pay for our entire trip in cash. Absolutely NO credit. No getting ourselves in debt for a vacation. No, thank you.
We already had a few hundred dollars in our vacation micro account, and our other micro accounts were either fully funded or looking pretty hefty, so we diverted all additional money directly into our vacation fund. We also put our “debt snowball” that was leftover after the student loan payoff into the fund. It was amazing how quickly those dollars added up.
It was important to us that we were reasonable in our budget expectations. We needed a generous budget.
Let’s face it: Disneyland is expensive. Plus, this was our first BIG vacation with the kids, and we wanted to do it right. I have a tendency to be VERY cheap to the point where I practically give myself an ulcer if my husband wants to order a soda at dinner. Because, you know, that $2.50 (or $3.99 at Disneyland) is really going to kill me. However, I didn’t want to have to worry about money while on the trip. I wanted to be able to buy my kids a Mickey Mouse shaped ice cream sandwich ($4.99) without thinking about the fact that I could feed my family for a week on four of those babies.
I did not try to do the trip as cheaply as possible.
I know, I just lost most of you. But, stick with me, here! I did do some things right (ie. cheaply)!
This is a quick budget breakdown:
Tickets: $1125
Hotel: $369
Rental Car: $326 (we decided to rent a car since ours are very old and unreliable)
Gas: We budgeted $500, but spent less since our rental got MUCH better gas mileage than our old Jeep.
Food and Souvenirs: $500 (Wahoo! However, we came in lower!)
Total budget: $2820
We actually spent $2550, and we were VERY generous with ourselves.
I talk about ticket prices in my next post! Our Disneyland Experience: The Planning Stage: Tickets
Question Time: How old were your kids when you first took them to Disneyland? Did you budget generously, or did you save money? Did you pay cash? Share with us in the comments so we can all learn from your experience!
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It sometimes scares me how much we think alike Kelleigh! We are planning to take the kids to Disney World when they are 6 and other I have 2 years left to plan. Any chance I get to make income goes straight to our vacation fund. I am a cheapskate by nature too, so I want to make sure we save enough for the nicest meal plan and a moderate, not budget, resort. I can’t wait!
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StarWarsFans Reply:
October 2nd, 2012 at 6:06 am
I don’t know why my phone turned 8 into other!
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Kelleigh Reply:
October 2nd, 2012 at 7:56 am
Hey, I want more profiles, too! It’s been SLOW!! If we get anything, I’ll send them your way!!
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I am currently planning our trip to occur 12-18 months from now. I too want my youngest (currently 3 1/2) to be out of diapers, fully capable of walking on their own and no need for naps. We are a family of five and plan to drive as well as flying would eat my ENTIRE budget! I am also saving monthly. My biggest hang up is hotel - any ideas for where to stay?
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Kelleigh Reply:
October 2nd, 2012 at 8:00 am
Hotel was my biggest hang-up, too! I’ll be writing a post about that, for SURE.
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We did our first and only big family vacation at Disneyland in 2008. It was truly magical for our family, and we still talk about going back some day!
We needed to go using the “save every penny that we can” route.
We were able to attend during three specific days where a group ticket price was obtained by a large southwestern homeschool group. In the next years after 2008, they turned the 3-day occasion into a very expensive homeschool conference/Disneyland experience, so we haven’t been back since.
But anyway, we were able to purchase 3-day passes to both sides of the park for about $105 per person. The homeschool group had arranged for inexpensive lodging prices to the motel that was the closest to the park entrance - so for around $65 per night (plus tax), we stayed there for 3 nights.
We chose to buy our souvenirs at the Walmart 5 miles away from Disneyland, because they had a decent sized “Disneyland” section - and everything was much less expensive than at the park. All we basically wanted was t-shirts, anyway, so that worked out well.
We drove, because it was much less expensive than flying. We could have driven it all in one very long day, but we chose to stay with relatives for two nights on the way down, and different relatives for two nights on the way back home. That also allowed us to do some sight-seeing in both locations, so that was fun as well.
We purchased one of those RideMaxx software downloads (best $25-$30 or so we ever spent!) to help us plan our days at the park. In the middle of Sept., we only stood in line for a couple of rides over the three days! That software really, really works. I highly recommend it. Because of RideMax, we were able to go on every ride we wanted to, multiple times, over and over. It was fantastic!
For food, we did online research and found out the least expensive places to eat dinner in the park. There were 3 restaurants/places where we could eat for about $5 - $6 per person (not purchasing beverages), so we ate dinner at those places. For our lunches, we also figured out inexpensive places to eat and share food. It worked out really well! We actually spent very little on food there - basically the same we would have spent if we had gone to McDonald’s (ugh!) for lunch and dinner those three days.
We only bought drinks once inside the park. Because they allow people to bring in plastic water bottles, we did - plus a ton of those tiny flavored drink/tea pouches. The water down there tastes like swamp water and moss, so by adding the little, lightweight drink packets, we could stand drinking the water. We would just refill our water bottles in the bathrooms and add the drink packets to the water. Since it is hotter and more humid down there than we are used to, this was a lifesaver! We probably refilled our water bottles 10 times a day! This kept us from getting dehydrated, and it saved us well over $200 - $300 just by doing this one thing.
All in all, we spent about $1000 on the entire 10-day trip, including visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which wasn’t cheap.
From that point forward, we’ve only been able to spend maybe $300 per year for a family vacation, so we’ve stayed at a beach house every winter (prices are cheaper!) about 2.5 hours away from us, sharing it with my parents to make it less expensive. We cook our own meals over 4 days, so it is a very inexpensive vacation.
But if we were able to find the same kinds of deals like we were able to use in 2008, we would love to go back to Disneyland some day!
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[...] already talked about our Disneyland Budget and Tickets, so let’s move [...]
HOORAY! I cannot wait to read this whole series, Kelleigh. We’ve loved every one of our Disney experiences, too.
Great discussion questions.
We’ve taken kids of EVERY AGE to Disneyland, Disney World and on Disney cruises. I can say that I’ve loved every age (and, in fact, we desperately missed having a stroller to cart our waterbottles and jackets when the kids got older) EXCEPT age 9-24 months… at that age, kids just want to be mobile and they don’t understand why they’re strapped in a stroller or to mom all day long… they have WAY more fun at a city park.
But non-mobile infants and toddlers over age 2? FUN to have at Disney.
Yes, all of our vacations are prepaid and cash only. We had to put ONE vacation on credit early in our marriage - and, UGH, paying for vacation after it’s over? No fun at all. We vowed never to do that again.
We do middle-ground budgeting at Disney… some splurging, some saving. That would be a LONG story to tell, but, briefly I’ll say that ages of kids DO matter. i.e. It’s a lot easier to distract little kids with treats brought from home than it is kids who can read the signs for everything they’re missing. Our kids know the Disney rules ahead of time, they earn spending money before we go, and it’s a great learning opportunity for them to choose how to spend for treats and souvenirs and to feel empowered to make their own, fun choices.
P.S. This is me TRYING to not be long winded. HA!
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[...] already filled you in on our Disneyland budget, our Park-Hopper ticket choice, our trip timing and our hotel choice, and our drive to [...]
[...] me on my Facebook Fan Page! Thanks for visiting!So far in this series, we’ve talked about our Disneyland budget, the number of days we chose to spend at the parks, and the timing of our Disneyland trip. Go [...]