Disney on a dime

As I have already mentioned, we fly free.  So, I told the kids that if we can find a way to do Disney trips really, really cheap, we can go back a lot.  Part of this was just a matter of breaking the spending habit.  Big Boy loves his food and he loves spending money.  We almost always leave for the airport very early in the morning so he is in the habit of eating at the airport McDonalds when we travel.  I didn't want to take everything from him so I agreed that he could have his airport McDonald's breakfast.  I, on the other hand, didn't need McDonalds and Lil' Bit never eats her food.  So, we started the trip with purchasing one McDonald's meal and three milks.  Lil' Bit and I gobbled the mini donuts I had brought.

One of our suitcases was actually a soft sided rolling cooler.  The big part (bottom) was packed with all of our dry goods and a set of lightweight bowls.  The very top compartment had lunch meat and cream cheese.  As soon as I got the kids settled in at the gate area, I went to the Dunkin Donuts and got a ziplock bag of ice for the top part of the cooler.

Because our trip involved a second flight and we would be on the air during lunch, we made bagel sandwiches on the plane.

I choose bagels because they would travel better than bread and do double duty as breakfast when combined with the cream cheese..

We stayed in a value hotel (Pop Century) and used Magical Express instead of a rental car.  We ate dinner in the parks but we ate breakfast in the room every day and packed sandwiches for lunch the first several days.

When we were in the room, we had free soft drinks using our Disney refillable mugs at the cafeteria.  You are only supposed to use the mugs for the one visit only and they change the color scheme of the mugs each year to make that easier to enforce (enforce, ha).  re-using the mugs is a controversial topic in the Disney community but I am firmly in the camp that spending $15 on a mug that only holds 16 ounces is unreasonable and would lead me not to buy a mug at all - if I had to replace them each visit.  I think that regulars, like us, wouldn't be able to come as often if we had to pay cash for all of our sodas or spring for $60 worth of mugs each visit (for a family of 4).  We have it on good authority that Disney employees will never confront someone using expired mugs so, we scoff at the law and go for it.

For drinks in the park, we took advantage of the free ice water policy.  Any counter service which serves fountain sodas will give you free ice water upon request.  (places that only sell bottled sodas only have bottled water and this is not free).  We brought MiO drink flavor with us to the parks.

We ran out of bagels and lunch meat after a couple of days but the cereal and snacks lasted us the whole trip.

Here is a breakdown of our expenses.

Wednesday - travel day

$14 at airport
$35 on dinner at the park and milk for the room

Thursday

$40 on a snack of ice cream at the park and  dinner at hotel cafeteria

Friday
 $35 on snack at park and a shared pizza and salad at the hotel

Saturday

$46 on a couple of sodas, a snack, and dinner at the park
$21 of Big Boy's birthday money spent on Vinylmations (more on these things later)

Sunday

$10 on another Vinylmation (this is about to get ugly)
$89 on sodas, snacks, lunch and dinner in the park

Monday - travel day

$45 on breakfast and lunches at the airport

$8 in hotel room tips

We spent a grand total of $351 on food and incidentals. 

Dinners ran us about $147
Lunch (not including airport) was $30
We spent a ridiculous $24 on sodas
And another $25 on snacks

I don't have my hotel receipt handy but the room averaged out to something like $106 per night after taxes.  We did run out of food and had to pay an extra day hotel becausee we were unable to return Sunday as planned. We earned $45 in Disney gift cards by attending the Disney Vacation Club sales talk and we had earned $84 on our Disney rewards card by using our Disney Visa Card.

We spent a grand total of $881 for a three person, five day vacation in Disney. And after subtracting for the gift cards and rewards money, we spent $752 cash. (Of course, this does not include the cost of annual passes)

So, if you already have park tickets and don't have to pay for airfare, you really can do Disney on a dime (if  dime is worth $1,000)