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Earlier this month, I took my family to Disney World.   That’s me, my wife, and my three kids (ages 8, 9, 16).    Disney is one of the most expensive vacations you can take in the U.S.

We went from one Saturday to the next, in the beginning of August.   August is just after peak season, so prices and crowds were down a bit from early summer.   During the school year is out of the question because my wife is a school bus driver at an understaffed company.  It was a bit hotter, but the price and family availability balanced out the heat nicely.

We stayed in a 1 bedroom resort on Disney property.  It was a bit more expensive, but the room slept all five of us, my wife and I had a separate bedroom, and it was equipped with a full kitchen and laundry.

This wasn’t cheap.

We spent:

• $1595.96 on airfare and car rental, as a package
• $75 on upgrading the seats on our flight one way, because those were the only seats available next to each other.
• $131.11 upgrading our rental car during pickup.   The third row seating was nice, both for our day trip to Cocoa Beach and for our grocery run with five suitcases.
• $4396.21 for the hotel, 4 days of Disney parks, and the included Magic Bands.  Magic Bands are the awesomest way to handle hotel rooms, resort tickets, and food.   You don’t need to carry a wallet in Disney World.
• $715.26 on things charged to our Magic Bands, including miscellaneous coffee, snack, and water purchases in the park, a few small souvenirs, approximately $380 at in-park restaurants, and a couple of gifts for the people who took care of our pets while we were gone.
• $15 for parking at the Cocoa Beach Pier
• $152.28 for lunch at the restaurant on the pier
• Roughly $350 on groceries and one fast food drive through meal one night
• $118.31 at the horrible Wolfgang Puck Express restaurant at the Disney Springs shopping center
• $31.59 on gas for the rental car.
• $47.35 for a movie to kill time between hotel checkout and airport check-in
• Total: $7628.07

We saved:

• $1404.14 by using signup bonus miles from two Chase Sapphire cards, bringing the flight plus rental to $188.82 plus upgrades.
• $1870.16 by using Capital One Venture card rewards.  A bonus reward on one card, and regular miles on another.
• Total: $3274.30

Grand Total: $4353.77

We had about $2000 of that saved before we bought the tickets and $2000 more budgeted to pay the remaining bill quickly.  $4350 spent on a trip with a $4000 budget isn’t too bad.

We opened the rewards cards more than a year ago to make sure we’d hit the sign-up bonus qualifications in time.

A few Disney tips:

• Your first day in the park, find a Disney Vacation Club booth.  Go to a timeshare sales pitch.   For real.   It’s a low-pressure pitch that’s over in 45 minutes if you’re not interested (and you won’t be.  Timeshares–especially at retail price–are stupid.  Don’t sign up.) that will net you three tap-and-go fast passes and a $100 gift card.    The fast passes alone saved us about 3 hours of lines.
• Install the Disney app.  You can get directions to rides and manage fast passes and dinner reservations.
• Subscribe to Touring Plans.  It costs $10 if you have a coupon, and there’s always a coupon.   You can plan out your day at each park, including fast passes and breaks.  It will give you wait times and walking times and suggest what is possibly the most efficient way  to see everything you want to see.    We saw 90% of everything everyone was interested in without running around.   You really can do all of each of the parks in 4 days.
• Take breaks.   We got there early, then left a bit after lunch time to head back to the hotel for food, rest, and swimming.    We came back shortly before dinner and spent the evening.   That skipped the hottest, busiest part of the day and helped avoid small children getting crabby.  Take breaks.
• Go to each of the parks on their least busy day.  It’s easiest to see it all if you plan to be there when fewer other people are competing for line space.
• Don’t waste your fast passes on rides with short lines.   We made it through the Pirates of the Caribbean line in 10 minutes.  That would have been wasteful.
• Try to book all of your fast passes in the morning, so you can schedule new ones for later in the day.  You can’t add new ones while you have pending ones on your account.
• Use the timeshare fast passes at Magic Kingdom.  They don’t have to be scheduled and must be used on a moving ride.   Magic Kingdom is the heaviest concentration of moving rides, and they have the longest lines.
• Have fun.  For real, don’t forget to have fun.   If people are getting crabby, pack up and head to the hotel for a few hours.   The only park that makes this a pain is Magic Kingdom, since they hide the park a mile away from the parking.   Don’t force the park experience, just let go and let things happen.   Says the guy who brought an optimized agenda to each park

This was a good time for us.   I’m glad we waited.  We’re in the short window where the girls will remember the trip and the boy hasn’t moved out and gotten a busy life of his own.