5/5/23

The Mouse and His Money

May 5, 2023

All of my friends were at Disney World this past weekend. I was not.

Reading blogs or watching vlogs of people in the parks is always enough to give me major FOMO, but weekends like this past one hit a little different. It isn’t just missing my happy place or missing my friends, but it is missing my friends IN my happy place. It stings a a bit more. There were a few video calls, and while I’m grateful that they were thinking of me, it made my heart hurt. Why wasn’t I there?

Life.

We in this community know that life keeps us from our favorite destination far too often. Some of us don’t have the vacation time for more trips. Some of us have family obligations that keep us tethered to the home-place more often than not. And let’s be honest, some of us just don’t have the expendable income for the number of trips we would prefer making. Walt Disney World is a lot of things, but cheap isn’t one of them. I don’t care how many money-saving tips you know; it will still be a pricey endeavor. So let’s discuss the elephant in the room. The cost of a Walt Disney World vacation, and how can you mitigate expenses.

First of all, is Walt Disney World TOO expensive? This is a nuanced question that is subjective in every sense of the word. However, if you forced me to a definitive answer, it would be no. This is not me being a “stan” or a “homer” for WDW. This is just looking at numbers and statistics. In almost any given week of the year, are the parks full? Yes. Are the resorts booked to capacity? Yes. Both of these factors tell me that Walt Disney World is walking that fine line of keeping guest satisfaction at an acceptable level, but still packing the place on the daily.

Is it too expensive for some people? Sure. It’s also too expensive for me to take the number of trips a year that would make me happy. But if it were objectively and quantifiably too expensive, then the hordes of humanity wouldn’t be there. Now I fully believe that Disney is relying on its reputation in the last few years. The guest experience has certainly dipped below its previous sterling prestige, but because of their brand and the nostalgia that comes with it, they can rest on their laurels. (For a while at least. Even the most loyal, pixie-dust snorting fans will eventually become disillusioned if the product continues to underperform with guest satisfaction measures) For now however, business is good.

Naturally, the only way to measure expenses is to define value. “Value” means something different to every person. There are always trade-offs. I know some people who only do quick service for the whole trip, and they save enough money to tack on a few extra days. To others (I’m firmly camped in this camp), full service meals are part of the intrinsic WDW experience, and they need at least four or five a trip. Some people stay off-site and save significant vacation dollars on their lodging and spend the savings on additional park days or splurge dining. On the flip side of the coin, there are others who would rather color-code their dryer lint than stay outside of the bubble (again… I’m ‘others’). There will always be a trade-off. The only question is: what is most important to you?

I can’t answer that for everyone else, but I have my own values that dictate what measures I take to ease the expenses. As mentioned earlier, my family likes to do one full service meal a day, and we almost always have that meal for dinner. Sometimes on a non-park day we will splurge and do Boma breakfast and another sit-down meal at night, but normally we do a super quick breakfast at the resort, a quick service lunch, and a sit-down meal in the evening. This allows us to budget more efficiently.

Refillable water bottles are also a must for me. As the parks increase the number of bottle filling stations, this becomes a bigger advantage. $6 per bottle of water just isn’t my speed. I used to rely solely on Disney’s complimentary transportation as well, but since the pandemic, transportation has become less than reliable, so I use LYFT a lot more than I did. (One of those trade-offs we discussed)

I am also a big advocate of Disney gift cards. I’ll spend a year or more buying a $25 or $50 gift card per pay period and just combine them on the Disney Gift Card website. Because my family really never leaves the bubble once we’re in it, gift cards can be used for almost everything. Personally, I buy most of them at Kroger and receive a fair amount of fuel points for GC purchases. It’s a win/win for us! It definitely helps us avoid the sticker shock that a Disney vacation can create. It also helps us keep our number one rule: don’t borrow to go on vacation. We don’t put anything on credit cards and we never take out a “vacation loan”. When we return, we immediately start to save for our next vacation, not spend three months paying off the last one!

While this blog is more of an opinion piece most days, I will offer this one up as some potential help (and some fabulous justification) for your next trip. As my buddy Rich says, “The Mouse always gets his money”, but you do get to dictate how much!