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Money Saving Disneyland Vacation Tips!
Planning a trip to the "Happiest Place on Earth"? Saving a bunch of money can make mom and dad the happiest parents on earth.
We have visited Disneyland countless times over the years, and have found the following tips essential to making each of trips affordable. 1) Housing – We have found that the best prices are always on Priceline. We always avoid going to Disneyland during the month of July, but every other time we have visited, we have consistently booked a 3 or 4 star hotel on Priceline for $45-$65 per night. Go to the “Name your own price” feature, and enter $45 per night if you are going off-peak season and midweek. $55 seems to be the price-point during semi-busy times (off-season weekends, and semi-busy midweek). We have friends that got peak summer for $70. Priceline is a great resource for hotels and rental cars – but I am not a big fan of them for air travel. Too unpredictable. 2) Food – The fine folks at Disneyland have really cracked down on brining outside food into the park. You could end up paying more to purchase 3 meals a day inside the park, then you do for the park admission. First key, whatever you do, make sure that you eat a very large breakfast – we usually skip lunch and have one meal inside the park mid afternoon. This allows us to avoid the food rush, and jump into line for the rides while everyone else is battling the food mess. We then grab a late snack going back to the hotel (Taco Bell). We will also take the monorail from Tomorrowland into Downtown Disney and eat at one of the restaurants there – our kids love the Rainforest Café. If you leave the park for a meal (which is not a bad idea), many restaurants are within walking distance just outside the park to the East. If they still have public parking to the south, just behind “California Adventure” park (I had heard they may eliminate this parking area), we have taken the parking lot shuttle to the farthest south of that lot, and walked to the restaurants near the convention center. Inside the park, we tend to avoid the fast food places, and try and take the extra time to rest and relax. The “fast food” inside Disneyland is not much less than the sit-down restaurants. 3) Parking – This is a little bit trickier. We have stopped taking the free shuttle service offered by the hotels. Going to Disneyland is rarely a problem. Coming back when the park is closed is a zoo. If you miss one shuttle, then you end up waiting for another half-hour until the next shuttle arrives. Can really create a frustrating end to an already tiring day. With small children, this can be a problem.
Parking is not cheap at Disneyland. We sometimes just go ahead and park in the main parking lot complex. My wife purchased a season pass this year (worth it if you visit more than twice a year), and included in that was a discounted parking lot feature. The shuttle center is really well organized and moves very quickly. For those staying at any hotel near the convention center, it really is not that far to walk. We used to walk from the Marriott into the south parking lot, and take the shuttle to the main entrance. Something that we have done to save money (very tiring) is to park at Downtown Disney. You get 3 hours of free parking at Downtown Disney (make sure that you park at the North Downtown Disney Parking lot – closer to the Monorail). We usually park at Downtown Disney, take the monorail into the park. For lunch, we take the monorail back to Downtown Disney, and eat at the Rainforest Café. While we are eating (or waiting for our food),I get our parking ticket validated (you get 4 hours if you eat at the Rainforest of ESPN restaurants), leave the parking facility and re-enter and park for another 3 hours free. I often have to travel all the way back to the parking lot (by myself of course) and re-park a second time. But we save $20! This process works great if you are only going for half a day at Disneyland. 4) Park Entrance Tickets – We have found the cheapest “retail” location to purchase tickets is Costco. The Disney Stores used to sell them, but they stopped a few years back. We have also found that AAA sometimes sells the park tickets to members at a discount.
One of the cheapest ways to get tickets is to purchase them on e-bay. This is also very risky. I have spent less than half on park entrance tickets through e-bay, and have never had any problems. Make certain that you are not purchasing a “partial week” ticket – in other words, someone was only able to use 3 days of a 5 day pass, and are trying to sell the “extra days”. Sometimes Disney gives out “promo” park entrance tickets to non-profits for fundraising. They also give them to employees. These often show up on e-bay. These will work, but will not work if you are looking for a 3 or 5 day pass. It is surprising the amount of people who are selling park entrance tickets because they had to cancel the trip. There are a lot of multi-day park passes available on e-bay, and many are legit. 5) Air Travel – We are close enough to Disneyland to drive most of the time, but have flown to LA plenty of times. Flying into the LA is typically very inexpensive because you have the option to fly into a number of different airports. The best website we have found for finding the lowest price is www.kayak.com. They all of the airlines, and all of the discount sites (like Travelocity and Orbitz), and give you a listing of all of the cheapest airfare available. Make sure that you click on the “search nearby airports” on Kayak to take advantage of the multiple airport advantage. I hope that you find these money saving tips helpful. Have a great time on your next visit to Disneyland!
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