Our family is right now in Orlando doing the whole Disney thing. Mrs Credit Card as usual organized the whole trip and she has been savvy in coming up with a few money saving tips for this vacation. Here are a few tips you might take away.

1. Do not use the Airport Parking – While it is the most convenient thing to park at the airport (particularly the carpark right beside your departure hall), we found out it was much cheaper to park at at car parks just outside the airport. There were lots of them around and after much research on the internet, we found one that cost just $8.99 a day (with two days free if you park more than 7 days). This is certainly cheaper than $17.00 a day at the airport.

2. Do not rent a car from the Airport – Our flight arrived at Orlando at night. Mrs Credit Card felt that we should rent a car the following day rather than from the airport. We also had to return the car a day before we left. The car rental company Herts picked us up from the hotel and took me to their place where I collected my car. Turns out that this saved us about $300 (from $700+ to $400+).

3. Bring your own water bottles and snacks to Disney – Once you are inside any theme park, food and drinks cost double. Yep, a bottle of water will set you back at least $2. We brought at least 5 bottled water in our backpacks along with some snacks. To get an idea of how much food and drinks really are, here is a classic example. Today, we paid $23 for McDonalds (5 of us). This evening, we spent $30 at Olive Gardens – much better food!

4 Tell the kids in advance that you will not be buying a thing from gift shops – Where do you end up after every ride? At a gift shop – where your kids will be clamouring for you to buy them stuff. Every morning, we tell the kids that we will not be buying anything. In fact, I explained to my eight year old that this is a marketing technique called upsell that companies usse to get to buy more goods. He understood what I was saying and even tried to explain it to his younger brother!

5. Spend lots of time researching hotel rates – There are so many hotels and rooms in and around Disney that you have to put in the time and effort to get the best deal (not just the cheapest, but one that suits your family and plans). Mrs Credit Card spent about a week researching before she came up with what she thought best suited us. Without doing the research, we would have paid so much more.

Well, hope you find these tips helpful.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 03:50 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.