Tips about Air Travel, Food & Beverage and Resorts

Save money by ordering water instead of sodas when you dine. It's better for you, and the savings can allow you to purchase one or more desserts to split. Everyone knows Disney has great desserts! - Jane

Bring a soft-sided cooler for your room and fill it with ice from the ice machines to keep beverages and food cold. If you use large zip-top bags to hold the ice, you will keep the contents dry and make it easier to change the ice. This is a way you can keep the fixings for a quick, inexpensive breakfast in the room, and beer or wine for the evening. - Daisimae

ANIMAL KINGDOM LODGE - Each night at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, a Cast Member speaks about his or her own country in one of the lounges. They have storytelling each night outside around the Arusha fire pit, too (unless it's raining). - Jennifer

We like to do the character meals not only for the characters, but for the food as well. Many of the meals are buffet style, and that's great for children (and hungry men!). You know up front what it's going to cost. You're not limited to choosing one entree, and you don't need to wait to be served. The entertainment is just the "icing on the cake"! To me, these are plenty of reasons to do more than one character meal. It really makes you feel like you're in Disney!- Angela

Advice for avoiding late and delayed flights:

1) Try to book early in the day. You are less likely to run into delays in the morning.
2) Try to take a direct flight. Connecting flights offer more opportunities for delays and missed flights.
3) Check in early. This decreases your chances of getting "bumped".
4) Do not fly on the hour or half hour. If you have a choice between a 9:30 flight and a 9:23 flight, take the 9:23 (this has to do with too many airlines scheduling flights on the hour and half hour). Pam Forrester

ALL RESORTS - Some of the resorts have life vests (child size) that you can use for free at the resort pools during your entire stay. One year we stayed at Beach Club (prior to my daughter learning how to swim), and were told she couldn't go down the slide with the vest on. So she worked really hard and learned how to swim that summer. I just wanted to let you know that there may be some things your child won't be able to do if they are unable to swim "unassisted." Mary W

We like to order snacks from www.netgrocer.com and have them delivered. It's cheaper than buying them there, and as we are not big breakfast eaters, a cereal bar works for us and saves us money. - Jess

Trail's End Buffet at Fort Wilderness was fabulous! My son is a picky breakfast eater, but they had donuts with sprinkles, which he loves. They only charged us $0.60 per donut he ate and for his drink, instead of charging us for the whole buffet. It is a big difference in price, and nice for people with little money. - Jennifer Smith

FORT WILDERNESS - If you're staying at Fort Wilderness or any of the resorts on Bay Lake and plan on staying to the Magic Kingdom until closing, take the ferry back to the buses, rather than trying to take the resort launches or monorail. We found this to be a much faster and less crowded method. - Jennifer Smith

When we went through security at the Orlando airport, my carryon bag was thoroughly checked. It turned out that my can of Mickey's Hot Cocoa mix was the culprit. The security officer said that powders show up as gels in the security scanner. Fortunately he was very nice about it and I didn't lose my Mickey's Hot Cocoa. - Sherri

My wife and I took our nephews to WDW in September for seven days. We stayed at the All Star Movies. To save money on food we brought down individual boxes of cereal from Michigan to eat for breakfast and then just bought milk every morning. That was like saving almost an entire meal a day. We also brought a backpack that was insulated like a cooler. We filled it every day with combos and fruit snacks. That way during the day if they weren't starving, but just needed a quick snack they would eat combos or a fruit snack instead of spending two to three dollars per person every couple hours for a snack. This also cut down on the number of meals we had to eat because they weren't as hungry. Typically we would end up eating breakfast in the morning with our already paid for cereal, eat a couple of snacks, have a late lunch between 2-3PM, have some more snacks, and then eat a late dinner at our hotel when we would return from the parks. We also bought the all you can drink cups at the hotel which made dinner about $2.00 cheaper per person every night. That adds up over seven days. With the savings it afforded us to be able to do a couple of extra things like a character breakfast and eating at the sci-fi drive-in restaurant. - Rocky Barra II

Here is our tip for saving money on trips to Walt Disney World and any other hotel for that matter. First of all, we bought a Coleman about the size of a six-pack. It cost about $7 at Wal-Mart. Next we bought a small coffee maker, big enough to make two cups. I think this cost about $12. We buy a pint of milk a day and keep it in the Coleman with ice to keep it cool. We take coffee with us, and sugar for that matter, and not forgetting some plastic cups and we are able to make coffee in the hotel room and use fresh milk. What a treat. And guess what? The coffee maker fits inside the Coleman for transportation, couldn't be better! With coffee at about a dollar a cup at least, you can see how much can be saved on a vacation of a week or two if people have 4-6cups a day in your room. The cost savings will easily pay for the Coleman and the coffee maker just on your first trip. Needless to say, we take plastic bowls and breakfast cereal with us to have our breakfast before setting out to the parks. - Dave and Jane Young

If you are a Florida resident we have a great deal for you. My family and I are annual passholders and frequently visit WDW. We have the Tables in Wonderland and it save's us 20% at most sit down restaurants. This card is $125.00 for the year. We saved that in one weekend. - The Hill's

EDITOR'S NOTE: Tables in Wonderland is now available to all annual passholders as well as to all Florida Residents.

It is helpful to use http://expedia.com and http://travelocity.com to get low fares, but you can get lower prices without going to Priceline. Simply remember the airline and time of departure/arrival that you find from expedia or travelocity and then go to the actual airline's homepage. If you book that exact flight that you saw elsewhere, it will sometimes be $10 - $20 cheaper per flight!!! I used this philosophy to help plan my next trip to WDW and actually saved a total of $60. - Mike Faas

We just returned from WDW, and wanted to tell everyone interested in character dining to not give up, thinking it is too late to get reservation for a meal. My girlfriend called at 6 p.m. and got us a reservation for 7:30 p.m. at the Liberty Tree Tavern. So even on the day of, and just hours before, it is still possible. Never assume that it is too late. - Dustin Wilson