10 Tips and Tricks to Save Money when Intentionally Splurging at Walt Disney World with a Family of Four

Walt Disney World is expensive. Period. In September we took our third trip to the self proclaimed most magical place on earth. Our kids had reached peak age for Disney. Old enough to no longer need naps or a stroller but young enough to still enjoy the magic with minimal attitude. Because of this we intentionally planned to spend money on things we haven’t in the past. This was our splurge Walt Disney World visit.

This also wasn’t a reckless spending trip either. Years of living a more intentional life style have trained Jamie and I for this type of trip. We’ve learned how to be intentional with our money and still enjoy our lives. Being intentional with money for us means knowing how much money we have and choosing how to deliberately use that money to live the best life possible for our family. So although this wasn’t a budget Disney trip, we were intentional about what we splurged on and we still made sure to find ways to save while we were splurging. Here are 10 tips and tricks we used to save money while intentionally splurging at Walt Disney World.

1. Go off Season

If your schedule allows, go to Disney during an off season time of year. September and January are historically the cheapest times of year to visit. Walt Disney World uses something called dynamic pricing. They adjust prices based on factors like demand, the season and special events. This is applicable for more then just ticket prices. Everything cost less money during those off season times; resorts, tickets, lighting lanes. Just by planning your trip around these lower price periods can save a bunch of money. This crowd calendar from Undercover Tourist can help pick a time to visit. This one from WDW Prep school is great too. Less crowded times usually equal cheaper prices.

2. Stay Deluxe but Rent DVC Points

We stayed at two deluxe Disney World Resorts during our stay, but did not pay full price for either. Our strategy is to rent DVC points through David’s Vacation Club Rental instead of booking our hotel directly through Disney. We pay half the cost, sometimes less. We’ve paid the same price for a deluxe resort that we would have to stay at one of the budget hotels. We’ve done this three times and each time the process has gone smooth.

More and more vloggers are starting to create YouTube videos about renting DVC points. Bekah Hart has one I’d recommend if you want to learn more about the process.

Madison Pracht has a great one too.

3. Consider a Split Stay

We wanted a hotel with walking distance access to Magic Kingdom but didn’t want to pay for that luxury when we didn’t need it, so we did a split stay. We stayed at Bay Lake for the first three days of our trip, while we were doing Magic Kingdom and Epcot park days. Then we transferred to Kidani for the second half of our trip. Kidani is the cheapest of the deluxe resorts (not sure why, it’s amazing). It is half the price of Bay Lake. This significantly saved us money for the rest of the trip. It’s also fun to experience multiple Disney resorts in one trip.

4. Hack the Dining Plan

Usually at Disney we have groceries delivered to cover our breakfast and lunch. We typically eat out at one quick service restaurant a day. This trip we tried something new. We decided to use the Disney dining plan for the first part of our split stay.

Split Stay

Normally you must buy the dining plan for the length of your entire stay at Walt Disney World. However, when doing a split stay the clock resets. You only have to purchase the dining plan for the entire length of that particular hotel stay. This allowed us to buy the dining plan for only three days of our trip and not the full eight.

When you buy the dining plan, it is valid from the day you check into your hotel and remains available until midnight on the day you check out. We were still on Disney property that check-out day, just transferring to our second resort. This gave us four days to use all of our meal and snack credits. We found there was just too much food to eat in three days and we were easily capable of stretching the dining plan to feed us an extra day. We had a few groceries delivered from Walmart and ate bagels for breakfast and had beef sticks, granola bars and peanut butter crackers to compliment the dining plan.

Resort Mug Advantage to a Split Stay

The dining plan also includes resort mugs (that would have cost us 22.99 per mug) for everyone in our family. This is a souvenir mug that allows free refills on all fountain beverages for up to 14 days. The cool thing about these mugs is that we only paid for the dining plan for three days but we continued to use them for the rest of our trip because they are good for fourteen days once activated.

Plan in Advance

Do not purchase the dining plan if you don’t have the time, energy or desire to research and make a loose plan of what your family is going to eat in advance. It’s very easy to not get your money’s worth if you go into the dining plan blindly. I created a spreadsheet listing the restaurants we would go to, what we would most likely order and the cost to make sure that financially we would actually save money using the dining plan.

I also made sure that we would actually be able to eat the meals and snacks we wanted and still have it make financial sense. We weren’t just trying to spend the most money on food, because that’s kind of pointless too and definitely not being intentional with our money. Ohana, Boma and Steakhouse 71 have been on our Disney list for a while and one of the main reasons we decided to do the dining plan. We typically don’t do Disney sit down meals due to the insanely expensive price. It also takes up a lot of time. These three restaurants were ones we’ve wanted to try for years and we decided were worth the time we would have to invest in them. It also gave us the opportunity to try more expensive snacks some more expensive quick service meals too.

Use Mobile Ordering

We found mobile ordering work well when purchasing quick service meals and snacks using the dining plan. It allowed us to optimize our spending and ensure that things were coming off of our account properly. It also saved us a ton of time and avoid waiting in lines.

Final Savings with Dining Plan

At the end of the trip I sat down and calculated our expenses. Comparing the dining plan costs to the food we bought, we came out 270.47 cents ahead! We definitely could have spent more, had we chosen to do character meals or more expensive quick service meals or snacks, but we ate what we wanted. Things like using four snack credits on dole whip and not a fancy sundae from The Plaza because we all really wanted to dole whip and not the sundae worked for us. We didn’t book character dining at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall (69 for adults and 46 for kids!) because my family is uncomfortable with character dining meals. Despite this we still came out well ahead in the end.

5. Buy Lighting Lanes… But not for Everything and do your Homework

Multi Pass Lighting Lane was awesome. It allowed us to save so much time. We went on every single ride we wanted without waiting in line. We bought it for every park, even Animal Kingdom, and I would do it all over again.

Single Pass Lighting Lane was a different story. We had a harder time justifying the cost for a single ride when we were multiplying that cost by four. Of the rides that offered single pass lighting lanes we splurged and purchased Rise of the Resistance and Flight of Passage. Those were two rides that we would be very sad to miss. Hollywood Studios is one of our favorite parks with so many attractions we wanted to get to in one day. Waiting in a crazy long line for Rise of the Resistance would prohibit us to do that.

We didn’t buy a lighting lane for Guardians of the Galaxy, Seven Dwarfs Minetrain or Tron. We were fine with missing these three rides if the lines were too long, but I also had a plan. Guardians of the Galaxy offered a virtual queue, reducing the wait times and thanks to Disney Tourist Blog I knew when to ride Seven Dwarf Mine Train with only a 20 minute wait. We were going to Magic Kingdom on a party day so I knew the times for Tron would be much lower that day should we choose to ride that.

We also did our research and understood how Lighting Lanes work. I strategically booked our three to start with at 7 AM seven days in advance. The key is to book two popular rides and one earliest time available lighting lane. That allows you the ability to start booking more tier 1 lighting lanes early on in the day before supply runs out. Jamie was the king of using the refresh on the app to get us more lighting lanes and at better times. We were able to get a lighting lane for every single ride, thus maximizing the value that we spent on this product. Watch this video for an explanation of the whole system. It’s long but worth it.

6. Buy Memory Maker in Advance

Memory Maker is 25 dollars cheaper if bought three days in advance of your trip. If you know you are going to buy it, just do it ahead of time.

I asked Jamie and the kids to be cooperative about taking pictures in advance. We stopped at every single photo pass photographer we saw, unless there was a crazy long line. We ended up with over 200 photos and the majority of them were great. Using this service allowed us to have family photos with all four of us in it at the same time. Something we don’t have a lot of. On our last Disney trip I had one single family photo because a kind woman in Hollywood Studios offered to take it for us. If you are looking for family photos without purchasing memory maker the photo pass photographers will take a photo with your phone or camera also.

7. Buy Souvenirs Strategically

Typically our motto is experiences over things in life and when we travel. We don’t do a lot of shopping or come home with many physical souvenirs on trips.

This trip we did something a little different though. We bought the kids each a Disney gift card for their birthdays. We were going to spend money on a gift for them anyway, so we figured it would be fun for them to have their own spending money at Disney. Instead of having to hear us say no over and over again they could decide whether they wanted to buy something and if it fit into their budget. Their aunt also gifted them 25.00 dollars right before our trip to add to that souvenir fund.

We encouraged the kids to use this money not just for physical items, but also snacks or experiences they wanted to try that we would usually say no to. Any leftover money at the end of the trip was theirs to do whatever they wanted with once we returned home. We actually traded their Disney gift cards for cash once we got to the park and Jamie and I used them on food. That way they got the excitement of the gift card for their birthday with the flexibility to spend the money on whatever they wanted if they didn’t use up all their money at Disney.

We also were always on the look out for more intentional and affordable ways to buy souvenirs. Resort Community halls were great for this as they often offered an affordable activity that created a souvenir. Some of my favorite memories of this trip were doing activities at the community halls with the kids.

At the Bay Lake Tower community hall the kids and I each made our own button for a dollar!

At the Kidani community hall Anika and I both made our own African bead inspired bracelets for 7 dollars each. They were absolutely beautiful, high quality beads and we had so much fun doing this. Anyone can access these community halls, you don’t need to be staying at that particular resort. Each community hall seems to have their own unique activities too.

The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique Knight package is another excellent experience souvenir, only 19.95!

This strategy worked well for us and it was wonderful to see our kids make such intentional purchases. The biggest splurge on a physical item was made by a Jake, a groot shoulder plush, but he didn’t just impulsively buy it. Lots of thought when into the decision. Anika ended up coming home with the majority of her money. 🤣She got a couple of yummy snacks, made some cool things at the community hall and was content.

8. Buy Magic Bands in Advance

Magic Bands are just fun and honestly really convenient. Especially for the kids. It gives them the power to do things like unlock hotel room doors. Magic bands purchased in advance give you a bit of a discount. Also sometimes certain colors or styles are discounted online in addition to that discount.

9. Work Smarter Not Harder

There is so much to do at Walt Disney World and not enough time to do it in. In order to maximize the money that we spent on our trip I figured out ways to save time.

Magic Phone Number

Day 2 of our trip while at Epcot Jake decided he wanted to spend some of his money on a Groot shoulder stuffed animal he had seen earlier in the day. Naively thinking this was the only park we’d be able to find this in (I’m new to this…we don’t usually buy stuff at Disney) we spent a good 45 minutes of our park time figuring out where the Guardians gift shop was, walking all the way over there (because everything is Epcot is approximately 8,000 miles a part) only to have him agonize over the purchase and ultimately decide not to buy it that day because it was quite a bit of his spending money and we were early on in the trip.

Fast forward a day later at 8:00 PM when we wanted to spend our last dining plan snack credits on 2 Mickey Ice Cream bars to stick in our hotel freezer for the kids on a later day. Side note: this is a good tip on how to use up snack credits at the end of your trip, Mickey bars are pricey and an excellent use of a snack credit! We had until midnight and it was approaching 9 PM. We were out at dinner so I decided to try and call the front desk of our resort (Kidani at Animal Kingdom Lodge) to see if they could let us know if they were sold in the gift shop there.

I called 407-939-5277, a number that came up on the internet after a google search, and asked to speak to the Kidani Front Desk. A lovely woman let me know that there are no front desk telephones but she’d be happy to help me. I explained what I needed, thinking she would tell me I was crazy to ask her this and she was basically like, “I’m on it, we are going to find you those Mickey bars!” Before I knew it she had found out that they did in fact have them at the Johari Treasures gift shop and that they were opened until 10 pm. She was like get over there! It was such a pleasant conversation. I wish I had one of these magical numbers to call and help me with stuff in my non Disney life.

You better believe I used this magical number again during our trip, before running my butt all over Disney. Work smarter not harder.

This came full circle when on one of the last days in the park Jake, with plenty of souvenir money left, decided he did in fact want to purchase the Groot he’d been thinking about the whole trip. We were at Magic Kingdom. We knew they sold them at the Contemporary Resort gift shop, a 10 minute walk there and a 10 minute walk back that no one wanted to do in the heat. There was a chance they sold them in Magic Kingdom but we sure weren’t going store to store to find out. Not spending park time on stuff again.

While the kids finished eating a Dolewhip , I called that magic number. I asked if they sold Groot in Magic Kingdom or Animal Kingdom (the park we were going to tomorrow). She quickly let me know that I could find Groot in multiple gift shops in Animal Kingdom (she named them) and was even able to tell me how many they had in stock! The next day at our leisure we calmly went to The Discovery Place Gift shop and Jake bought his now beloved Groot. It took about 60 seconds of our day. This phone number is one of the most magical things about Disney.

Park Map Strategy

Days at Disney get crazy! It is so easy to loose focus and forget what you actually wanted to do that day. It would have been a huge bummer to splurge and spend a bunch of money on this trip only to miss out on half the things we wanted to do. We wanted to stay intentional with how we spent our time in the parks.

By day two of our park days I found the best way to make sure we stayed on track was to take a Disney Map of the park (easily available for free at parks and resorts) we planned to visit the next day and take a couple of minutes to highlight the must do’s in one color and the like to do’s in another. Yes, I brought highlighters with me on our Disney vacation. Yes, I am a big nerd. I looked up any showtimes and wrote those on the map and made notes if certain rides or attractions closed early, so we’d make sure to get to them earlier on in the day.

This also allowed me to plan out the best route around the park so we weren’t running around everywhere exhausting ourselves going from one end of the park to the other. We’d done plenty of that in Magic Kingdom and Epcot!

This was the best system I found to keep us intentional with our time during the crazy park days. I would refer to it throughout the day so we didn’t forget priorities. I would show my family and remind them so they didn’t get side tracked and lose focus of our plan for the day too. The kids absolutely loved this strategy because the park map was so visual for them and easy to understand.

10. Do your Research

Finally, do your research. Watch YouTube videos, read blog posts, buy a travel guide. Don’t go into Disney blindly. Disney has created their own biodome. They are basically their own state. They have their own power supply, own transportation system, pretty much made up their own language and practically have their own currency. I may be being a bit dramatic but it seriously feels like it when you are there. Learn about the different parks, the food, the rides and lighting lanes. This will save you time and allow you to get so much more for your money in the long run. Download the mobile app in advance and familiarize yourself with it. Don’t fight it. Just put on your magic band and surrender yourself to the magical ways of Disney.