Your Wallet Will Thank You for Using These Money Saving Hacks in Disney World

A trip to Disney World can make that money add up quickly.

From the food, the souvenirs, the resorts, and now to skip the long lines, you end up paying a lot to spend a day (or five) in the Most Magical Place on Earth. We get it, it’s not cheap going to Disney and it can be really difficult to stay on budget once you walk through those gates.

At AllEars, we visit the parks every single day, 365 days a year, and we’ve learned a few things about how to save money and stay on budget while we’re having a zip-a-dee-doo-dah day. We want to share a few of these tips we’ve come across over all our years of visiting our favorite mouse.

Before we jump into our tips, we just wanted to share another secret of ours. We know planning a Disney trip can be stressful. So, if you’re looking for a travel agent to help with your vacation, we recommend our friends at Mouse Fan Travel. They’re experts in the field with over 20 years of vacation planning experience, and they can help take a bunch of the stress out of the entire booking process for you!

Once your vacation is planned you’ll want to check out these seven money-saving tips for visiting Walt Disney World.

Use Gift Cards

This may sound silly, but it works! If you buy a Disney gift card and only use that on your trip, you’re naturally limited to whatever is on the gift card. It’s a great way to stay on budget if you’re like us and usually convince yourself that you actually do need another Loungefly backpack.

We especially like the gift card budget trick when we’re visiting during one of EPCOT’s many festivals. Using a gift card at each of the food booths helps you not spend ALL of your money on cheese (is it just us?).

Buy Gift Cards From Target

Oh, Target, how we love thee. If you’re going to go with the gift card hack and you’re a Target REDcard member, you get 5% off  Disney gift cards! This means if you buy a $50 Disney gift card, you’re actually only paying $47.50. But in the parks, you have $50 to use.

The more you spend on the Disney gift cards, the more your savings add up. Disney gift cards are accepted almost everywhere on Disney property. This is a pretty great way to easily save some money on your trip.

Share Food

There are so many great food options inside and outside the parks. A lot of these places offer large portion sizes, especially for lunch and snack-style options.

For breakfast, snacks, lunch, or even dinner, you could pick one of these locations that offer larger portions and split it between two (or maybe more) of you. That way you only have to pay for one meal but two of you are getting full. It’s a great way to save a bit of money to use to splurge on another meal in the day.

Bring Your Snacks

Disney isn’t like a lot of places where they don’t let you bring in outside food or drink. They’re quite the opposite, you’re more than welcome to bring food and/or drinks into the park with you. Because of this, it might be beneficial to make a quick run to a supermarket or order grocery delivery to your hotel.

Stock up on Uncrustables, carrot sticks, or cereal bars and pack them right into your park bag. This will definitely save you some money in the parks! However, while this is a great money-saving hack, we do recommend MANY of Disney’s treats. If this is your first trip to Disney or it’s been a while, plan to budget some money to try some of the delicious options they do offer.

Popcorn Buckets

You know we love them. Popcorn buckets can be so ADORABLE! Disney comes out with so many cool buckets that we’ve started collecting them. But in terms of saving money, they’re pretty useful for that too.

If you love popcorn and you know you’re going to want to buy it several times while on your trip, you might want to consider investing in a popcorn bucket. Once you’ve paid for the bucket, you get a discount on every refill of popcorn for the duration of your trip. For all of us popcorn lovers, this is a useful hack!

Don’t Pay For Water

At many spots at Disney World, water is free. Many of the counter service and Starbucks locations offer free water cups!

If you don’t want to search for free water at any of the stands, you could also bring in your own refillable water bottle (remember that whole you can bring in your own food and drinks thing?). So, don’t pay for bottles of water if you don’t have to!

Use Disney Transportation

Disney offers a vast network of transportation all around their massive property. And the best part about it is that it’s all FREE.

You can drive to each park, but then you may end up paying the hefty parking fee. Instead, you could hop on a bus, the Skyliner, or the Monorail and get to wherever you need to go as long as it’s on Disney property. This can save you some time, money, and gas.

We hope you like these tips and hacks we frequently use to help us save a little money on our Disney trips! It can be hard to not have it all add up so quickly, that is the way of Disney. Hopefully, you can enjoy your Disney vacation!

For more Disney planning tips, check back to AllEars.net!

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Do you already use one of these money-saving tricks? Let us know in the comments!

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