This post is meant to correspond with a video I made. I thought it may help to have things in a different format.
In the Disney Facebook groups I’m a part of, people often ask how much they should save or budget for a trip to Walt Disney World. This is actually a hard question because there are many variables. I like to look at it by categories to help break things down. Full disclosure, this is definitely influenced by the Birnbaum books’ budget because I grew up with those.
Here are my categories:
Travel
Lodging (Hotels)
Tickets
Food
Other
I do further break these down which is part of customizing your budget. I’ll take you through what I mean and how I customize mine.
Travel
This is how you’ll get to Disney. I fly so I put what average airfare is for me. Or if I plan on using my Southwest points I’ll enter that. You can check rates if you don’t fly often (Google Flights is a good aggregator if you don’t have an airline preference). Since I fly Southwest I also add the Early Bird option for $25 each way. If I flew another airline I would budget for baggage fees, too. I’ll also put airport parking in this category if I’m leaving my car there.
Lodging
I always stay on Disney property which helps narrow down my options. Often I know where I plan on staying but if I don’t I’ll find a nightly estimate for the category or hotel I’ll stay at (i.e. value, moderate, etc.) To get the total I’ll multiply that by the number of nights.
I also put housekeeping tips in this category. I just do $5/day.
Tickets
For this, it’s whatever park ticket you plan on getting. Are you adding Park Hopper? Are you buying an annual pass? And of course, you would want to multiply that by the number of people in your party. I have an annual pass which I choose to budget separately instead of dividing that over each trip or adding it to the trip closest to when I renew.
I would also put Genie+/Lightning Lane (Fancy Ride™) in this category if planning on using that. Personally, I think it’s better to plan/budget for it and not end up needing it.
If I’m doing a tour or event like a dessert party or Christmas party I will put that in this category as well.
Food
This is a category with a lot of variables as well. I plan for $50-60/day for my trips. I’ve come to this number after years of travel to Disney World. I usually bring my own breakfast and some snacks. I’m also a pretty cheap eater: bring my own water, no appetizers or desserts. If I know we will be going to a restaurant with a fixed price like Boma, I’ll usually build that in, too.
If you’ve never been before, I recommend taking a look at menus and making a rough plan of what you want to eat. That will help you get an idea of how much to budget on average. Disney has their menus on their website, but I’ve also used All Ears and Touring Plans in the past. I would always round up the dollar amount a little because over-budgeting is better than under-budgeting in my opinion.
I don’t drink, but I can tell you alcohol is expensive, especially in Disney World. So, if you plan on doing a monorail crawl or drink around the world, you may want to add more.
Other
Honestly, I just usually put $200-300 in here for souvenirs/incidentals. I also might put cash tips for things like bell services in here. Souvenirs are hard. If I would probably do $30 or $50/kid, but I don’t know. You know your kids better than I ever could.
So that’s how I budget each of my trips. Below is a screenshot of the Google Sheet for a hypothetical trip.
And here’s the video I did on this subject if that format is better for you:
No comments:
Post a Comment