There are a million blogs and posts and articles out there about how to save money on a Disney trip, so this is by no means a complete list, but these are the things we did that we found helpful!
Do the free stuff!
We didn’t go to the parks! You can probably only get away with that if your kids are little enough to not know the difference, but ours were happy to do anything involving warm weather and a pool. See our “Disney without the parks” post for what we did instead - we spent 6 days there and barely scratched the surface of what you can do for free.
Gift/Visa cards
I got a BJs membership at a discount (teacher!) and bought three $500 gift cards for $479.99 each. I used the Disney Visa and got $300 back on the first $1000 spent, which meant we paid $1,139.97 for $1,500.00 in Disney money. We used the cards to pay the balance on the hotel rooms and food throughout our stay.
Groceries
We ordered groceries to the room and requested a fridge/microwave combo for the room that didn’t have one (Animal Kingdom Lodge). We used the groceries for breakfast and at least one other meal per day.
Book cheaper rooms… then upgrade!
We went at an off time (end of Feb/early March) which meant we could take advantage of a resort deal that was going on. We booked an Art of Animation Little Mermaid room at the discounted rate but were able to upgrade to a Cars suite at check-in. The suite rate at check-in was much lower than the suite rate when we booked. We also booked a standard room at Animal Kingdom Lodge and upgraded to a “partial savannah view” at check-in - again for a cheaper rate than the savannah view at booking, and it was only “partial” because there was a small holding area between us and the animals. The view itself wasn’t restricted at all. These check-in upgrades were probably only possible because of the time of year and is a risky strategy - a suite/upgrade might not be available at check-in - but it worked for us at both places!
Mobile order and picnic
Instead of sit-down meals, we mostly packed food from our groceries or picked up quick service mobile orders at places where we’d want to picnic anyway. We enjoyed meals with beach views at the Polynesian Beaches (food from Captain Cook) and Beach Club (food from Hurricane Hannah’s), but could have also done this at the Caribbean, Fort Wilderness, or Port Orleans.
