Discount Disney Family Vacations – Strategies for Saving Money on Food
We love to visit Walt Disney World, and love even more to do it affordably! Planning a discount Disney family vacation is something of a hobby of mine, and in this article I will explore some strategies that we use to save money on food.
I have to say that visiting Disney World is, for use, a great excuse to eat! There are so many great choice, and most of the sit-down restaurants are good quality. In addition, it is so much fun to try new things, so we truly enjoy the eating experience at Disney World. But to do this, it can be expensive, so we have found a few ways that work for us to help save money while still enjoying the food options at Walt Disney World.
To start with, we signed up for the Disney Visa card, and we use the Disney rewards solely for food. Since our visits are usually about a year apart, over the preceding year we usually accumulate a pretty large amount of Disney dollars for our meals. It is important to note that I am NOT suggesting to open a credit card and run up the total just for this purpose. But a good strategy for us has been to use one card for all of our basic purchases, and pay it off each month. It works so well for us that it is not unusual for us to hardly pay anything out of pocket for food on our Disney vacation.
Second, I have to say that we love using the Disney Dining Plan. This is basically a pre-paid “meal plan” that allows you to choose from one of several levels of options, each providing snacks, counter meals, and in some cases table service meals: you choose the option that is right for your budget. The key is, it is only available IF you are staying on Disney property. Now our family enjoys having a table service meal each night, so we always choose the Plus Disney Dining Plan, which gives us one snack credit, one counter meal (entree, drink, and dessert), and one table meal (again entree, drink, and dessert) per person, per day. We use the snacks mostly for breakfast and the others for lunch and dinner, and have found that it is usually more food per person than we can eat! We usually end up getting dessert “to go” since we are full from the meal. This plan saves us quite a bit of money, as the cost per day for our family of 3 is less than we would have paid just for dinner.
Related to the Disney Dining Plan is another great way to possibly save hundreds of dollars on your Disney vacation: plan your trip to be eligible for one of the Free Dining promotions that Disney offers from time to time. In the past, this has been a traditional late summer/early fall offer, but the economic climate this year has prompted Disney to offer Free Dining for most of the summer, and now through mid-December as well. Is there any better way to enjoy Walt Disney World than by eating for free?
Needless to say, with all that food, we are glad to be doing all of the walking that is necessary at Walt Disney World. Saving money on our meals has really helped us to plan many wonderful discount Disney family vacations.
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August 24 2009 03:11 am | Vacations