Doing Disney Our Way

When people think of Disney, they may be picturing a Disney dream vacation. That's where you put together a package of Disney hotels, tickets and meal plans. While there is nothing wrong with these, they are very pricey. They may be handy if you are flying in and need to stay at Disney for transportation reasons and need to eat at Disney. But seriously, a five day Disney plan with hotel, a meal plan and tickets for our crew would be crazy. Right now they have a special that includes tickets, rooms and a meal plan. For fun I priced it out. For five people staying five days at Animal Kingdom, it would be $5,392. And there are more than five of us going. Crazy!

Paris Disney 1996/7 (we went to Tokyo Disney 1991 but I don't have the pictures scanned in)

So here's our Disney plan:
Drive down Thursday and go to Disney Friday and Saturday. Drive back Sunday. Sometimes we go half way home the second night but due to cheap rooms there, we are driving all the way back Sunday. Don't know how much money we'll need for gas. We normally stop at the Little Caesars that's just short of half way and get a $5 pizza and $1.20 soda to share. Since we have six of us going this time, we'll splurge and get 2 pizzas and 2 sodas. Still under $15 even with tax.

We are staying at Rodeway Inn about ten minutes from Disney. We normally all pack into one room, but I splurged and got two--one regular at 27.99 a night for two nights. And one deluxe at 34.99 a night for two nights. With tax $152.34 total for both nights. It's three times that for our crew for one night at a Disney resort. When I have points, we get a suite with two queens and a bunkbed, but I'm short points for that this trip and this is just as good. We will need a hotel for Thursday night. If we stop before we get there, we'll all shove in one room. If we make it all the way there, we'll see if we can stay at the Rodeway.

Food plan? PBJ, water bottles and chips taken in backpacks. Thankfully Disney allows outside food. The younger kids have saved some allowance money and the older two have job money so they can splurge for Disney food if they want. When they do that, they normally buy one chicken plate that has a half rotisserie chicken, ribs, mashed potatoes and green beans and split it out. If you're thinking your kids would never share like that, well, mine know that no one gets their own unless they foot the bill. 

Yep, we are cheap. But that's why we can go on trips. We were able to go on a cruise very inexpensively last June, and  I've been setting aside for this trip for a long time, although I didn't know exactly when it would be. And others have helped out. We got six 4-day hopper passes for way less than you'd normally pay for  2-day passes. And Jessica and Jasmine bought their own tickets. Adam got his as a present for his Marine boot camp graduation. My sister and brother kicked in for it with me. We are only using two days of the passes now and will use two days most likely in February.  

So that's the Cassel Crew way to do Disney. No sepcial rooms. No breakfasts with Mickey. And no one complains. We go to have fun together and to ride the rides. 

Again, not criticizing any one who does the Disney packages (I know of at least four families who have) because what works for one doesn't always work for another. And that means those families were probably really creative on how they saved money to do it.

So share your Disney strategy if you have one. And also your favorite things to do. We've gone lots of times, but I'm sure there are things we haven't done or rides/shows we've skipped because they didn't sound that interesting. Also, which parks you've been to. We've been to Tokyo Disney (Rick was stationed in Okinawa so it wasn't like we went from here!), and Paris (Rick was stationed in England and we drove to it) and Rick has been to CA. I think it would be fun to do a Disney hop tour to all of them now. Tyler had just turned two when we went to Tokyo and Jessica wasn't quite one. 

If you've never been to Disney, then you need to join us! I'll even share our peanut butter!