Surviving Disney… on a budget.

It’s possible. I promise.

We took our kids to Disney for the first time this year. We normally spend 2 weeks in Palm Beach over Christmas, and this year, for a variety of reasons, one major one being that the whole princess thing  would be just magical for the girl at this age, we decided to take a 4-day excursion to the House of Mouse.

My husband has been out of work for a while. When we planned the trip, back in August(!), we didn’t take this into account. I’m sure it would have been a much different vacation if money weren’t an issue, but thankfully we’d already paid off the trip months ago.

So we knew going in that we were going to have to watch ourselves, something that is incredibly difficult in a tourist spot where every ride ends in a gift shop.

[Funny aside: When I first heard about the film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, I thought it was about Disney World.]

On the first day, at the first park (Hollywood Studios), before even stepping through the entrance gate, I turned to the kids and said, “Okay, we’re in Disney World. You’re going to see a lot of things you’re going to want to buy. And each time you ask, we’re going to say, ‘No.’ Do you understand?”

Two solemn nods.

“So you’re going to say, ‘Mommy, can I have this?’ And I’m going to say…”

“No,” they replied, in unison.

“Okay. So it’s no use even asking.”

Yeah. Right.

Before I give you my tips, let me say in full disclosure that we went with my mother-in-law, who takes great pleasuring in giving her grandchildren gifts. She did buy them many things, but nothing extravagant – all great things that they’re getting good use from.

But this is just to say that even though we didn’t spend money on them, they did have some dough dropped on their behalf.

Okay. Here we go:

1. Try to stay somewhere that has a kitchen. It’s not so much that the food is expensive in the parks, because it’s not unreasonable, it’s just that the choices aren’t great, and after a day you get sick of the hamburger/pizza/chicken salad schtick. You’ll crave some home-prepared food, even if it’s just a cheese sandwich.

If you’re at the moderate level, and staying at a Disney resort, I’d recommend the Fort Wilderness Cabins. We didn’t stay there (due to lack of WiFi if you can believe it), but you get your own cabin with a kitchen AND if you’ve got young children, there’s a campfire every night with marshmallows and sing-a-longs with Chip and Dale.

2. That said, there’s good value in the meal plan. We got the mid-level one, the 1 sit down meal, 1 quick service meal and 1 snack plan. The only reason we did it was a) to get the discount on food, and b) we knew we were going to Cinderella’s castle for lunch, which is a cool $250 for a party of 5. With the meal plan, it’s just 2 sit-down meal credits swiped. That’s somehow less painful.

3. Sit down dining sucks. You need to make a reservation ages in advance in order to get a table at a decent time and if you’re traveling with kids, you’ll quickly find out it’s not so easy to know even 6 hours in advance when a good time for dinner will be. If you do the research and find the decent food, I’d go for the quick service plan, combined with your in-room kitchen.

If you do go to a real restaurant, you can always splurge for one meal.

4. The meal plan only has as many days as your night stays. So if you’re in the park for 4 days and 3 nights, your meal plan only covers 3 days. But here’s a tip: If you’re traveling with young children, buy them kids’ meals for lunch. They’re like $5, and have a variety of sandwiches, grapes, carrot sticks, apple sauce and a drink. Keep the extra quick service meals for the adults, which will run an average of $10 – $15 a pop.

5. The above tip won’t work for sit down dining, where the kids’ dining plan only covers the kids’ meals on the menu.

6. If you need a stroller, there’s a great company called Orlando Stroller Rentals very close to the parks. I think Disney charges $31/day for a double stroller, and this place rented me one for 4 days for a total of $65.00. Plus, they deliver and pick up from your hotel. The things is waiting for your when you check in.

Except, in our case, we realized we were going to need the stroller at 6 am, and the earliest delivery was at 7. So the night before, I called their 1-800 number and they told me where they were situated and we went to pick it up – no extra charge for the additional night. And when we realized we weren’t going to make it back for our 4 pm pick-up at the hotel, I called them and they said, “Don’t worry. Just leave it at the hotel and we’ll come get it later.”

Awesome.

Plus, it was the best stroller I’d ever used.

(I was not paid or compensated in any way for this. It was just an excellent product with outstanding customer service. They deserve recognition.)

7. If you buy your kids one of those Mickey Mouse balloons, and it pops, bring it back and they’ll replace it free.

8. Before you get there, think about when, if everything goes well, you’d want to go back. Really think about it. Like, pull out a calendar and check school dates think about it. Because if you stay at a Disney resort, when you check in, the first thing you see is a big pamphlet on your dresser offering you a 35% discount on your next trip if you book before checking out.

You don’t want to be making any rash decisions.

9. You’ll see refillable resort mugs everywhere. Pro tip: there are no self-serve drink stations to fill up your cup in Animal Kingdom or the Magic Kingdom.

10. You’re going to want to get your kid at least one thing. Watch them through the trip and see what really excites them. I think it’s nice to give them each a souvenir. We ended up getting her a small Minnie plush ($12.95) and he got a Mickey sorcerer pin ($8.95). They were both over the moon when presented with their gifts.

A couple of bonus tips, non-budget related:

1. It pays to plan. Don’t get all crazy in the head like I did, but take a couple of nights to decide where you want to stay (hint: the closer to the parks the better), and then you can plan your itinerary on another night.

2. It pays to get up ridiculously early. If you get into the park early, especially with extra magic hours (earlier opening hour for Disney resort guests), you’re way ahead of the game. We were in by 8 am and by 9 had done 6 rides and toured Tom Sawyer’s Island. Seriously.

We used a site called TouringPlans.com. It builds an itinerary for you based on whether you’re traveling with children and the number of days you have to spend in the park and then configures it so that you hit the parks on their historically least-trafficked days and do the rides in the least-busy order.

No shit, it was brilliant. Combined with the proper use of fast passes, we never waited in line for more than 10 minutes for a ride.

3. Fast passes. USE THEM. You need all the park passes for the members of your party, you pick the ride (your priority rides, of course) and go to the fast pass machine. It’ll spit out a ticket that gives you the time to return to that ride, and BAM! you skip the entire line.

For the life of me, we could not figure out why people were waiting 2 hours in line when we just waltzed on it.

3a) Some tips on the fast pass. You cannot get a fast pass for a second ride until you’ve reached the time stamp on your first one. HOWEVER, you do not have to get on your ride at the specified time. The “cast members” don’t enforce late penalties – so if you’re return time is noon, and you show up at 2, you still get on.

But this means, at noon, you can secure your next fast pass.

4. If you’re traveling with 2 or more children, and one of them is too short to get on a ride, you can do a parent swap. All of you get in line, one parent and the smaller child wait at the loading area for the ride, and when the second parent returns with the older child, the parents can swap places. Each parent gets a turn, the kid rides twice.

5. Don’t skip the movies and shows. Seriously, the rides are great but some of those shows were the highlights of my trip. Fantasmic, at Hollywood Studios blew us all away. Mickey’s Philharmagic at Magic Kingdom was an amazing 4D experience, as was the bug one at Animal Kingdom. The Beauty and the Beast and Finding Nemo live shows were also both incredible.

And the Wishes fireworks display at Magic Kingdom is not to be missed.

6. Animal Kingdom was kind of disappointing.

7. Try not to have a lot of expectations. We surprised our kids with the trip, which may not have been the best idea, given their personalities. But even if the kids had known they were going, I’m not sure it would have been different. We had to learn, quickly, how to put aside the expectations we’d been building for 6 months and let the kids guide us.

We expected them to run around the park, wide-eyed and smiling. Instead, they napped in the stroller between rides. Neither of these kids had seen the inside of a stroller in about 2 years, so thank god we’d heeded the advice of friends and rented one.

We thought they’d be excited about some things, but in the end they were excited by others. We had to adjust. And we did. Quickly. And the result was that we all had an incredible trip we’ll remember for a long time to come.

8. Have fun. Grab a photo pass and let the park photographers take lots of pictures. I spent so much time looking through my camera I feel I missed a big chunk.

Turns out, a CD with all the park-taken pictures is only like $150. I realize that sounds like a lot, but if they take even just 100 pictures (we averaged a few more), it’s still so worth it. Especially when I managed to get in and out of the park in 4 days for under $250 (pocket money, plus kids’ meals and breakfasts – remember our rooms and meal plan were already paid for).

If I’d have known that, I’d have put my camera away a lot earlier.

It’s Disney, people. Let the memories begin.