How the holy crap do normal people afford Disneyworld?!?

[BeanCalledPickle]

I promised the kids a trip to Disneyworld before the end of primary. They will be 10 and 8. I’m not adverse to missing a week or so of school. I can cope with about 10k. Started to have a look and am horrified! Flights from london at least 2.5k, probs more like 3k. Park tickets 2k for 7 days (only seems to offer me 14 days for price of 7). Non Disney hotel but still decent resort style hotel relatively local. Another 2k min but probs more like 3k. And then I assume about 250 quid a day spending money which is 3k for a just under two week holiday. So that’s 11k. That seems like a truly huge amount of money. I used to see threads saying you could do it for 7k. What am I missing??

Your measure of 'normal' is likely different from other peoples. While many people struggle to save others have lots of savings.

If you go through a travel agent they tend to get better deals, people also use points such as BA Executive Club, American Express points etc which can knock money off flights.

It's hard because you're looking at school holidays. I've seen flights to Florida for as low as £400 each but obviously school times make that worse.

Try and book when they're doing the Dining Plan. That way food is included and if you book a Disney hotel there's free transfers.

We booked for two people, all meals included, flights and passes for 2,500 on 2018. But it was not in school holidays.

The last time we went was in 2018, so not since the recent price rises, but we spent nowhere near £10k either time. The way to save money:

• Fly indirect (direct flights are always expensive, because so few airlines fly UK-Orlando, so they can stitch up the route and charge more or less what they like);
• Even better, use Airmiles for your flights, which is what we did;
• Rent an Airbnb apartment. There are thousands of them within an easy drive of Disney. We stayed at the Wyndham Bonnet Creek when we did Disney. It had pools, restaurants, bars and we had a huge 2-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen;
• Go to a supermarket and buy breakfast foods to eat in your apartment and, if you really want to save money, take a chiller backpack into the park with your lunch in it and a water bottle for each person. There are water fountains all over the parks for refilling;
• Join The Dibb or one of the other Florida groups on Facebook. There are people on there going all the time, so they have the most up-to-date info and can point you towards the best places to buy park tickets. We got our park tickets through I think Floridatix, because at the time they were the cheapest;
• Go outside UK and US school holidays (the former for flight prices, the latter for how crowded the parks will be. Oct half-term is a good time to go IME and for the weather, which is perfect);
• If you really want to save money, join loyalty schemes for chain restaurants, although you can eat out in the evenings pretty cheaply in the US.

Have a look at sky scanner to price up best flights, BA direct to Orlando is around £600 each for feb half term and the week before next year. Also bear in mind that the 7 for 14 days offer on park tickets is only valid through the end of 2022, 2023 prices are around £200 more for three people. Gate prices are much higher though so it’s still worth getting 14 day tickets even if you aren’t going for that long. We had to cancel our trip this year but had booked a villa for 10 days for £1600. We’ve rebooked for next year but decided to do 5 nts hotel first and then 5 nights in a villa, hotel is on points though so only costing us the $35 a day resort fee.

It's interesting that people say avoid school holidays - in my experience, so many people do this that its actually busier in term time than it is in school holidays - plus you only save about £10 going in term time.

Top tip is stay in a villa. Much cheaper than hotels, although you need a car. But a car gives you freedom to get cheaper food on I Drive for example.

We went in 2017 for about £4.5K, 2 adults 2 kids, 14 nights 20th January.
I'm a super budget traveller. We actually got a Virgin package for £1900, staying at Clarion Inn, Lake Buena Vista, which had free shuttles to the parks. We only did Disney, as had done Universal some years before. Hotel had pool and splash park.

The room had a fridge, so took butter, cheese, tinned ham, tuna, nutella, jam, cereal over in suitcase, along with heaps of carton drinks. Took loads of cereal bars and brioche from Aldi. Bread in the shops near the hotel was over £3 a loaf of worst white bread. So made a picnic lunch every day. I think we had a breakfast provided by hotel (or we ate the cereal!)

Signed up to various restaurants for vouchers, so had dinner out every night.

Not everyone's idea of a holiday, but hardly in the room and used hotel pool once, as went to parks daily and were exhausted on return.

Went to Celebration on the bus - stopping off at Walmart. That's nice. One night I took an Uber to Michaels to browse craft supplies. The exchange rate was too poor for shopping ($1.08 to the £). We did go to an outlet village, but only good if you're really into labels, and the Wallmart clothes, you might as well go to Asda!

I wouldn't do Disney again. I thought it disappointing compared to Universal.
However, because we didn't spend much, it didn't have to be a once in a lifetime thing, and am planning a return to orlando in a few years.

I looked into Disneyland Paris for Easter. It was extortionate! Obviously Easter holidays bumps the price up. We went to the palace of Versailles rather than the Disney palace!! Kids didn’t seem to mind!!!

My top top is: don’t go! Spend your money on other enjoyable things. We did a day trip from Paris. It’s truly a waste when Paris is so great. DC never talk about it. If was a non event.

I wonder if there is a difference in price between Disneyworld and Disneyland (California). Maybe Disneyland may be cheaper/cheaper flights etc?

Disneyland (Anaheim, CA) is a a smaller park, much like Disneyland, Paris and it has another park next door called Disney California Adventure Park. That's it. Disneyworld in Orlando consists of a much larger park (the Magic Kingdom), five other Disney parks - Disney's Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Epcot, Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon - a town (Celebration), a shopping area, camp grounds, hotels, you name it. It's an absolutely huge complex and really not comparable with Disney in Anaheim.

Pandemic has had a HUGE effect on holiday prices. We managed to get some good deals that I booked during it that were honoured but because of that (and the number of people having moved cancelled stuff due to border closure). Flight prices are really high at the moment.

Car prices/hire is insane as well (quite a lot of stock was removed during 2020/2021) making that option fairly expensive.

School holidays dont have the impact either that they can on other holidays.

My advice (and it is what I do) is work out what you can and are willing to spend - and look around and wait until you get that price and then lock it in

@zafferana That's interesting, thanks for all that info. I genuinely thought it was the other way around, given how hugely hyped Disneyland is, Disneyworld is rarely heard of. I thought Disneyland was the real and original and the major park, and Disneyworld a smaller mini version of Disneyland. I've never been to America, so this is interesting.

DIsneyland was the original park - built in Anaheim because that is where he was based.

It was very successful but the problem was there was just not enough land (similar reason that France was picked over the UK for Europes one) so they went to Orlando where there is lots of land.

Florida now has DisneyWorld, Universal, SeaWorld etc and it pretty much built up from there.

Walt Disney World though is the one that is hyped? Its only the Hollywooders who tend to go to Disneyland

@TalkingCat Disneyland (Anaheim) is the original one, opened by Walt Disney back in the 50s. But if take a look at Google Maps, you'll see that it's hemmed in on all sides by the sprawl of LA, so expanding that site wasn't an option. What Walt Disney needed was a huge site that he could develop, so he bought the land at Lake Buena Vista, south of Orlando, and built his parks there instead. It was swampy ground that was pretty cheap, so he got a great deal, drained it and that's where Walt Disney World was built. As well as those two sites and Paris, there are Disneylands in Tokyo and Shanghai.

Never paid 3k for a hotel when I've stayed. Also never paid more than £1600 for flights for 2 adults and 2 kids. The most expensive part of the holiday is the park tickets, but you can get them reduced slightly when ticket sites have voucher codes

I went to Disneyland in my twenties for a hen party, yep was excessive but my friend was marrying an American and had relocated there and did Disneyworld with my actual children years later. I preferred Disneyworld.

We took food with us to eat in the park, hired a car using air miles and eating out in America is much cheaper than here plus portions huge. We also flew to a smaller airport, it was much cheaper. It was a while ago though and the pandemic has pushed prices so high it’s ridiculous.,

I've been once with a friend and only managed because I came into some money.
DH has been 5 times because he was v well off pre-marriage and kids 😂
We've decided we're taking the kids next year and I think we'll have to take out a loan for it.

What???
I've just priced up on the actual Disney website and for 2 adults, 3 kids in a Disney hotel it's only £9,500!

You could save money by going in the summer holidays, summer is off peak in Florida so accommodation is much cheaper. But you have to like humidity! The locals will think you're crazy, but just tell them you like thunderstorms when they ask why on earth you're there!

We went to Universal. I booked a flight and hotel package for a budget hotel off site (I knew people who'd stayed there so knew it was ok) and booked park tickets separately. The hotel had a shuttle into the park, it was sometimes fully booked so we got Ubers or the bus. Taxis hanging around outside the hotel were very expensive. We rarely ate in the parks but still spent loads of money on food, even going to buffet restaurants and filling up on breakfast.

Basically I paid for the flight/hotel package monthly over the longest time possible and saved as much as possible for spending money.

I wouldn't book the hotel and flights separately, just because you never know who's going to go bust or what's going to get cancelled these days but the official universal packages with park tickets etc. we're massively more expensive.

Weirdly Universal can be cheaper than a lot of package holidays. We have annual passes (did before Covid and just after) and with that going there for a week or two is cheaper than lots of other package holidays to the Greek/Spanish Islands.

But this year is just so pricey across the board with holidays

We went to Florida in 2018, 2 adults , 2 kids, Disney hotel, free dining plan back then and it cost about £12K. Honestly OP, it wasn't worth it IMO! We've had better holidays for far less. The kids were underwhelmed with the queues and crappy food and there was more bedazzled overpriced mouse tat than you could shake a stick at. Unless your family are absolutely desperate to go, I'd consider other holiday options.

Same, but the prices are massively increased this year, which doesn't help.

We've now managed to source a hire car for about £800 for 2 weeks in September but quotes online were at £1,300! For the same class of car we paid £250 for 10 years ago!

You could do it cheaper that we have by having a condo rather than a villa and the ability to self cater will save a lot of cash as even eating out isn't as cheap as it was.

It is super expensive for sure. We’re going this year and I reckon it will cost £14k all in, but I’m of the opinion that if I’m already committing £10k then I’m going all in. There’s no way I’d spend that and then eat cereal bars I’d bought from home, or limit myself to buses or just one day at Disney!
I do appreciate that is a ridiculous cost for a holiday, but it’s been 7 years since we went and we have prioritised this expense.

I would do California instead if that's coming up cheaper. That's the original Disneyland and has two parks. Universal is a working studio still so they run tours of the studios too which imo is the best thing there. Lots of other things to do too which aren't part relayed - Santa Monica, Huntington beach, Hollywood, we travelled to San Diego too which is wonderful. As pp said though you would definitely need a car.