Telling friends you are going to Walt Disney World is like telling them you are about to buy a race horse: sure sounds nice, but the expense may outweigh the fun. Some airlines quote fares topping $1,000 for a round trip from Chicago to Orlando. Hotels may want over $100 a night for a room. Disney itself charges over $40 for single-day admission. Add to that food, parking, gas, car rental and souvenirs. A journey to the land where the Mouse is king can easily cost a king’s ransom.
There is one thing I would rather do than have fun: save money. You see, I’m cheap. Not normal, everyday cheap, but high miserliness worthy of a Dickens novel. I decided I would like to spend eight days at Disney World, but I wanted to keep my costs in the hundreds — not thousands — of dollars.
The first step for any miserly tightwad like myself is to avoid Florida’s tourist season. Prices escalate during peak time and drop dramatically during low seasons. Any time the kiddies get out of school, families flock to the Sunshine State. That means summers and Christmas vacations should be avoided at all costs. Winter can be disappointingly cool for swimmers. Spring brings college kids on spring break and baseball fans for spring training. My ideal time is autumn — any time from the start of school until the start of Thanksgiving week.
With that in mind, the next step is to check out the package deals available from several sources. Airlines, hotels, travel companies, late-night TV advertisers, Disney itself — all are among the purveyors of discounted package deals. But once broken down into their component parts, the hotel part of the packages generally made them costlier than what I could find on my own. When I asked if I could have the rest of the package minus the hotel, I was told it would not be a package if I started unpacking it.
Once you have slept in a sleeping bag in a youth hostel surrounded by a half dozen snoring Europeans for $15 a night, everything else seems expensive. Because the friend I had roped into traveling with me did not like the idea of snoring Europeans, communal bathrooms or morning chores, the idea of a youth hostel was out too. It’s hard being really cheap when you want somebody to go with you. But not impossible.
One of the best sources of information for tightwads going to the Disney World area is the Kissimmee-St. Cloud Visitors Guide (800-333-5477). It seems that Disney World is actually in Lake Buena Vista, about a half hour from downtown Orlando, the nearest major city. It is actually just down the road from Kissimmee, a smaller town that probably has more hotel rooms than residents. U.S. Highway 192 runs eastward from Disney World through Kissimmee and neighboring St. Cloud. It is bargain central for tourists looking for the best deal on hotel rooms.
The guide lists hundreds of hotels, motels and other forms of lodging from campgrounds to rental houses. Well-known hotel chains are listed as well as small independently owned motels. Dozens of discount coupons for accommodations are also included. I found I could choose from many motels offering rooms under $30 per night. These prices beat out the prices of nationally known budget motel chains in the area. I finally picked a motel about a 10-minute drive from Disney World for which I paid $22.99 a night plus a 12 percent hotel tax. This price included continental breakfast.
(A few words of warning to vacation shoppers: Carefully scrutinize the hotel rates. Most deals have blackout dates. Some places might list a good rate, but then charge an additional fee for more than one person — my motel allowed up to four people before charging more.)
Next, I turned my attention to flights. Luckily, few cities in the world are as blessed as Chicago in having so many low-cost airlines. Midway Airport is like a fertile garden for great deals. I hoped to keep my round-trip airfare under $200. Starting in late August, I called several airlines — and found fares for the dates I planned to travel in October were already over my target price. To find the bargains I wanted, I had to change my plans from October to November. Although I could have gotten a fare for under $180 if I planned my flights for Tuesday through Thursday, I settled for a more convenient Saturday departure and a Monday return nine days later, paying $193.
(Besides contacting the budget airlines, I did try one major carrier. It was then I was quoted a fare of more than $1,000. The fellow on the phone did not even have the decency to giggle with embarrassment as he told me that fare. When I told him the fares I found elsewhere, he hung up.)
Now that most perilous area of travel, the car rental. Why perilous? Because two years ago, I took a well-budgeted trip to Florida and the only trouble I had was with the car rental company. I had carefully searched for the cheapest deal, including taxes and other fees. But when I showed up at the rental office, a whopper of a hidden cost showed up in the renter’s sleeve. It seems they did not care for my credit card’s built-in rental car insurance, demanding documentation to prove my own personal car insurance would cover their car. Because I was counting on my credit card, I had no such proof and the result was about a hundred bucks in unexpected insurance costs.
Determined not to repeat that fiasco, this time I asked about insurance documentation. Once I made my reservations, I followed up with a letter confirming exactly what I had been told on the phone. This resulted in my initial rental choice writing back to say there was an additional per-day charge, despite two telephone assurances to the contrary. I finally settled on a company that rented 1- to 3-year-old cars. The cost: $181 for nine days.
Finally, I was ready for Disney itself. I planned to visit for eight days so I could take in not only the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT and the Disney-MGM Studios, but also spend some time at Disney’s three water parks, its island nature preserve and its night spots (this was last fall, before Animal Kingdom opened).
I bought a pass that allowed not only five days at the three main parks but also additional days at Disney’s other attractions. These passes officially sold for around $217, but discounters usually knock off about $6 to $10 — not a huge savings, but when you’re a tightwad, every penny counts. Reputable discounters advertise in Orlando’s Official Visitors Guide (407-363-5871), a useful source for other information as well even though it doesn’t list the many cheap motels that Kissimmee’s does. Disney often changes prices and ticketing policies, so it is smart to buy tickets well ahead of time before prices rise or policies change.
One thing many vacationers forget when budgeting their Disney World trip is that once you drive through Disney’s gates, you will need to park your car somewhere. Thought the Mouse would let you park for free? Guess again. Expect to pay $5 daily to park at the three main theme parks, though the water parks and other Disney-owned property let you park for free.
However, if you are a truly sly devil, you can get around the parking fee. Disney has surrounded its parks with its own hotels. Even they would not make guests pay to park there. Instead of the costly official parking lots, simply go to one of the free parking lots at the many hotels. Two near the Magic Kingdom — the Contemporary and the Polynesian — have guards who ask if you are a guest as you enter. Avoid those.
The Grand Floridian has one guarded lot next to the hotel and one unguarded lot across the street. There are no guards at all at the Wilderness Lodge parking lot. You can then go through either the Grand Floridian to catch the monorail or through the Wilderness Lodge to catch a boat to the Magic Kingdom.
The process is even simpler at EPCOT and the Disney-MGM Studios. Each day I ignored the signs along the road that pointed me to those parks and instead followed the signs to the EPCOT Resorts. Each time I visited either of these two parks, I left my car in the same lot in front of another hotel, the Swan. There were no guards at the entrance of this hotel’s lot. I then strolled straight through the Swan’s lobby, out the other side of the hotel to a dock where boats picked up guests bound for both EPCOT and the Disney-MGM Studios.
I managed to save on food as well by avoiding inflated theme park food. Each day, I simply brought my lunch — excuse me, a picnic. I had found a motel that provided breakfast and a refrigerator, so before leaving home, I watched for sales on granola bars, potato chips, cookies and the like. I also brought along a mini cooler made for six packs — the perfect size for a pair of sandwiches and a 20-ounce soda, all kept cool by blue ice packs. Across the highway from my motel was a supermarket where I was able to get sliced deli meat and cheese, fresh baked bread and fruit. It also had two-liter bottles of soda on sale, from which each morning I would refill my 20-ounce bottle.
If I did get a hankering for hot food, many restaurants near my motel competed for my business. Besides eating at typically cheap fast-food places, I splurged on a $19.95 all-you-can eat buffet that included everything from burgers and pizza to whole lobsters and crab legs. I had spent so little on food that this one meal more than doubled my food costs.
Finally, I promised myself before leaving that I would not buy a single souvenir. That’s right, I did not bring home a single funny hat, ill-fitting T-shirt or seashell paperweight. (If you do buy souvenirs, don’t buy them inside the parks; you can find plenty of lower-priced trinkets at the many tourist shops that line the highways nearby.)
My final cost? Considering that some costs like the motel and rental car were split between two people, the individual cost was about $650 for a 10-day vacation. An even thriftier vacationer would have saved by avoiding the lobster and by flying mid-week.
But even a miserly tightwad slips sometimes.
