Hey friends! I always like to have total transparency! This blog post includes an affiliate link and we collaborated with Disney World on two, one-day park hopper passes. My opinions are always my own and I would never share anything with y’all that I don’t truly love. Thank you for your support friends!
Disney World is a place where dreams come true! I understand it can be a challenge, if your traveling as a large family. Planning is crucial but you can create the vacation of your family’s dreams! Today, I am going to share with you how our large family of 6 can go to Disney on a budget! Here are our tips.
1) Purchasing Disney World Tickets.
You will need to decide if you will be visiting all four parks, may be just one park and if you will purchase the park hopper option. For this trip, we decided to go with one park per day and not use the park hopper option. We have used the park hopper option in the past.
The best place that I have found to purchase Disney World tickets is Undercover Tourist . Let me show you breakdown of the two options we chose from for this trip. We are a family of 6, needing four adult tickets, since ages 10 and above are considered adult tickets for Disney and two child tickets, ages 3-9. Don’t forget that kids under 3 can go to Disney for free!
Our first option is a four day base ticket with no park hopper for $406.47 per adult and $388.90 per child. Those prices include tax, no hidden fees and free shipping. Total=$2,569.36, with a savings of $271.00!
Our second option was a 2 day ticket with park hopper option for $323.64 per adult and $313.06 per child. Prices include tax, no hidden fees and free shipping. Total=$1,920.68, with a savings of $234.00!
For this trip, we chose the four day base ticket with no park hopper option. The reason we chose this option is because we did the two day park hopper option, on our last trip and we really wanted to have one day to spend at each park. If you do chose the two day park hopper option, it is doable but remember it is a lot of walking! We did Magic Kingdom on one day then Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and Epcot, all in one day! If you do decide to park hop, don’t forget to use Disney’s transportation via the bus, monorail or the new Skyliner!
2) Decide on your lodging.
Since we have larger family, it is cheaper for us to stay off site, than in a Disney resort, due to needing two resort rooms. Plus, we travel with our family pet and she stays with us in our rental house. We like to use VRBO and can stay for around $65 per night. For this trip, we decided to stay for 6 nights and 7 days, which included a $30 pet fee and a $65 cleaning fee for the week. Our total lodging cost was $491.00. Another option is to stay for 4 nights and 5 days with the two-day park hopper option, making your trip $325 lodging and $1,920.68 tickets!
One option to staying on site with a larger family is Disney’s Fort Wilderness . Depending on the time of year, you can stay here in your tent or camper for around $100 a night.
Disney resorts are magical!! We had the opportunity to visit the Grand Floridian on this trip, to attend the Disney Princess Perfectly Princess Tea Party.
The Grand Floridian is a Victorian-style resort, decorated with Victorian Christmas decor, grandiose tree and a life size gingerbread house with a sweet shop inside of the gingerbread house!
3) Food: Cooking meals while on vacation.
One of the reasons we like to stay off site, is so that we can cook in our rental home and bring our own food into the parks. This essentially is huge money saver for us! I will take our grocery budget for the week and meal plan every meal that we will have while on our vacation. For example, the day before we leave, we will pre-make several food items. For this trip, I made banana nut bread, orange rolls, speghetti sauce, chili and grilled chicken. I decided to freeze the speghetti sauce and chili. I baked the orange rolls for breakfast the morning we left, then had grilled chicken salads for lunch on our drive to Orlando. For dinner we had grilled chicken with rice and creamed spinach.
On our first day at the parks, I got up and made brioche french toast with berries and sausage links. For our lunch, we made sandwiches or spinach wraps and brought a bag of sweet potato chips with fruit. We also bring our Brita filtered water bottles for our drinks. For dinner that night, we heated our homemade chili on the stove! We did choose to have a couple Disney dining options for this trip.
We went to the Disney Princess Perfectly Princess Tea Party , along with breakfast at The Plaza , where Chef Ken did a fabulous of taking care of all of my food intolerances!
We also had dinner at The Crystal Palace and were able to catch the Magic Kingdom Fireworks show.
The reason we chose to have two park meals is because we wanted to stay in Magic Kingdom all day to see the fireworks show that night. These meals are extra and will not be included in my finally total.
4) Disney Parks parking fees.
It will cost $25 per day to park in the standard parking lot. If you arrive early enough, you will actually be parking right next to the preferred parking area. We usually arrive in the parking lot about 30 minutes to an hour before the park opens, you will grab the best parking spot, right next to the preferred parking.
5) Souvenirs and deciding on spending limits.
How do we handle the souvenir money? We suggest to our kids to save their Christmas and birthday money received throughout the year from family members. My husband and I also do the same.
6) Our “chill day” at Disney Springs.
One other thing that we like to do while in Disney World is to have what we call our “chill day”. We will break up one of our park days to go to Disney Springs .
You can visit their Trail of Christmas Trees which is 22-themed, Disney related trees.
You can also visit with Santa at Disney Springs.
Just check in at the Marketplace, head to the podium, give them your phone number and they will text you when it is your turn for Santa!
You can also make an appointment for your little princess or prince for a royal transformation at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique .
Our two youngest little princesses enjoyed the royal treatment, at BBB, while at Disney Springs.
One of the souvenirs that my husband and I like to purchase is a caricature, each time we visit Disney. The Art Corner has artists that can create beautiful caricature’s that can be hand-drawn or digitally created, along with Christmas ornaments.
We love our newest caricature drawn by the artist, Keelan Parham . One of my favorite traditions when vacationing is purchasing an ornament to help remember our trip.
Disney Days of Christmas literally has hundreds of ornaments to choose from! We also enjoy looking around at the unique retail stores at Disney Springs.
Total Cost of Disney Vacation:
Our total cost for tickets, lodging and parking fees was $3,160.36. Our family loves going to Disney! There is something there for all ages, the parks are always clean, the cast members are always friendly and go out of their way to give you that special Disney magic! We can’t wait for our next Disney family vacation! I hope this information will help you when planning for your Disney vacation!
“If you can dream it, you can do it.”-Walt Disney
❤️-Melia Shae
Sweet Southern Grace 