How I Saved Hundreds DURING Our Orlando Vacation!

In my last post “How I Saved Hundreds PLANNING Our Orlando Vacation“, I talked about all of the things that we did in order to get the most bang for our buck in our go all out first family vacation.  That was all of the preliminary items that would help in the planning stages and the tricks I used to make it work.  This post is going to be all about how to save money while you are ON the vacation!

1) Remember That Disney Gift Card/Credit Card Part?

You save 5% by purchasing Disney gift cards at Sam’s or at Target using your Red Card.  Depending on how much you plan on spending in the park, you really could get a lot of savings here by getting the cheaper gift cards at these locations.  Also, if you use your Disney Chase Visa, you get even more savings when you use it at certain places in the park.  Most days you save 10% on dining (of you don’t use my advice a little further down and get a dining plan!) as well as certain merchandise.  And let’s not forget the special meet and greets you get with the Disney Visa.  Oh, and the REWARDS too!  You get back 1% in Disney dollars for all your purchases and 2% at Disney locations.  That’s free Disney money right back at you that you can use on your trip or on your NEXT trip.  If you want to try the Disney Chase Visa out, send me an email or click HERE and I will get you some more information!

We used the extra gift cards we didn’t use to pay for the trip for tips at our table service restaurants and also for souvenirs!

2)   Utilize the Publix Gas Card Deals For Your Drive, and Use Fuel Rewards!

If you live in Florida or within pretty close driving distance to Orlando, that also means that you should have a Publix in some proximity to your house.  Quite frequently they do a deal where if you spend $50 in groceries, you can get $10 off a $50 gas card.  I always get the Shell cards because I can use my Fuel Rewards Network card.  You always save $.05 per gallon of gas regardless, but if you link a credit card to the account you can save even more per gallon just by using it.  I will pick up a gas card almost every time they have the deal and just put it away for our trip.  So I am saving money on the card itself, and then saving at the gas pump with the FRN!

3)  Dining Plans! 

As I said before, we are going all out on this vacation.  Last time we did Disney, we packed food and drinks to bring in with us.  We brought cereal and milk to eat breakfast before we left, and we did sandwiches and granola bars and snacks in the cooler.  We brought a huge jug of water.  This time, we wanted to E-A-T!  We are a family of eaters. Dru sometimes brings the #fooddrama, but we still like to eat.  Especially the baby.  We don’t call her Piggy Smalls for nothin’!  That’s why getting a dining plan at Disney was the right choice for us.  We got the table service, quick service, and snack plan. We didn’t have to pay for the baby who ate off all of our plates.  We dined at T-Rex in Disney Springs (an over $100 meal), did a character breakfast buffet at the Crystal Palace (an over $100 meal), and did a character dinner buffet at Chef Mickey’s (an over $100 meal). The quick service meals we ate were plentiful and included a drink. Once you add in all the snacks (we had tons of popcorn, pretzels with cheese, and STARBUCKS DRINKS!), we got more than our money’s worth out of it.  We actually ended up with 10 leftover snack credits so we got to eat lunch at the hotel before we left.  Cups of gumbo with rice (which were the size of a bowl) and sides of fries and fruits and veggies.  We were more than satisfied!

We weren’t sure if the Universal plan would be the best for us, so we decided to try it out for just one day and compare.  The best part is that we bought one day’s worth of dining with Universal, but we could split the meals up throughout our entire stay.  After all was said and done, we ended up saving about $40 on our food at Universal that we used for the dining plan.  Breakfast (including a drink) at the Three Broomsticks, Butterbeer, soft pretzels, Starbucks drinks, bottles of Powerade, and an over $100 dinner at Margaritaville which included drinks AND dessert!  Any little bit of savings is worth it to us.  And we most definitely saved some money.

4) ANNUAL PASSES!!!!!!

As I mentioned in the last post, we got us some Universal Studios annual passes.  If you purchase an annual pass, you are already saving money if you go for two days twice.  But you can also save money on other things while at the parks!  You get free parking and depending on your pass level, you can get valet for free as well.  You save 10-15% at certain restaurants inside the parks as well as City Walk (if you don’t get the dining pass – see above!) and you can save 10% at some merchandise locations, too.  You can also save 15% on tickets if you are purchasing for friends.  Being able to purchase passes on a monthly plan, without interest, is another perk as well.  Go ahead!  Do it!

It’s time to start LIVING!  With the power you have to save and control your own spending, anyone should be able to afford to go on a nice vacation.  Even if you do it on the cheap and crash at friend’s houses and pack your own food, you still are making some of the best memories with those that you love and share your life with.  What are you waiting for?!