Disney '10: Saving a Disney dime...

41 days until my family and I will be visiting the House of the Mouse...Disney World! Yeah! I'm so excited to see Disney World all dressed up in it's Christmas finery. Last month I told you a little more about my trip and where we are staying. During the summer I shared our dining plans with you. But I also promised to share a couple of money-saving tips, so here they are:

1. Plan your trip in advance. If you are a last-minute planner, you may miss out on some great deals! Special package offerings change somewhat frequently. Advance planning can save you a bundle. For example: we booked our package for December last spring, when I saw a discount code for 25% off the regular room rate. That adds up!
   
2. Use a travel agent that specializes in Disney.  For out last 2 trips, I've used Small World Vacations and I've used a different agent for each trip. Both have been great, super helpful, speedy, and best of all, their service is free. Yes, you heard me: free. Who doesn't love a little extra help when it's free? Our agent Sherri this year has been awesome, because in last summer  when a new discount code was released that offered us an even better deal than the room discount code we originally used, Sherri automatically upgraded our reservation with the new code, saving us $415! How awesome is that? Plus, Sherri booked some special dining packages for us the exact day they opened for reservations. Pretty cool, huh? Plus, it just makes me smile they way their agents end every communication by saying, "Have a Disney day!"
   
3. Be flexible on your travel dates. I'm not going to try to tell you that a Disney vacation is the cheapest vacation you'll ever take, but I will tell you that you will experience some of the best customer service ever. That level of customer service is fabulous whenever you decide to visit Disney World, but as long as you're spending the money it makes sense to try to maximize your dollar. Time of year makes a huge difference as there are different "seasons" at Disney World, so the same room or same meal can cost significantly less certain times of year. I love visiting during the value season, because not only is everything cheaper, but the parks are less crowded...which is also a huge bonus when you have three little rugrats in tow.
   
   For example, this year I really wanted to experience Disney's Christmastime magic. But the holiday season is the highest priced season of the year. We chose to stay at a family suite (which sleeps 6) at Disney's All Star Music resort. Those rooms run $355/night from December 25 - January 1. Back up a week and the rate drops to $315/night from December 17-24. Back up another week and the rate for a weekend drops to $210 and a week night drops to $190 for November 28 - December 16. We timed our vacation to arrive on a Sunday and leave on Friday the 17th...so we took advantage of the week night rates in the cheaper season while still experiencing all the holiday wonder. Not a bad savings for a little flexibility. Plus, the parks will be a ton less crowded, which will make three kids much, much happier than if they had to battle the peak holiday crowds.
   
4. Take advantage of the Disney Dining Plan. After using this, I would never, ever book a vacation at Disney World without it. For one thing, it makes it easy to estimate your food budget when you pay a set price per day for a specified number of meals. For another thing, it keeps the Old Man from whining about how much we are spending on food to how much we are saving with the dining plan. That alone is worth it's weight in gold.
   
   But I also love, love, love taking my kids to character meals. They are so much fun and a great way for the kids to meet and interact with characters without hearing them whine about waiting in line. Plus, you get to rest your feet and enjoy a good meal. I've been to tons of character meals at Disney World, and while some are definitely better than others, I can honestly say I've never had a bad character meal there.
   
   Now Disney has 3 basic dining plans: Deluxe (basically 3 sit-down meal credits/night of your stay + snacks), traditional Dining (1 sit-down meal credit and 1 counter-service credit/night of your stay + snacks), or quick-service (2 coutner-service credits/night +snacks). Those are each per person and are all pooled together. To me, the savings of the quick service plan is not worth it: you can't use those credits for any character meals, dinner shows or special packages, which is where the real "savings" comes in to play. In 2008, we did the Deluxe package, which was nice but was honestly just too much food for us...each sit down meal includes an appetizer, main course and dessert. Three times a day? Ug. Plus, I felt the need to book us lots of sit-down meals and dinner shows to really maximize our savings...which was fabulous, but the scheduling of it really restricted our freedom to go places and do things on the fly. So this year we're back on the traditional plan, which still lets us take advantage of character meals, special packages that offer reserved event seating, and dinner shows. This year we're doing 2 character meals, the Fantasmic dinner package which offers reserved seating for Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios and the Candlelight Processional package at Epcot, which gets us reserved seating for both the Candlelight Processional and IllumiNations (2 sit-down credits each for this one). Disney sayd the dining plan can save you up to 20%. I say if you work it right, you can save even more.
   
5. Consider how you're going to pay for your vacation. I'm a cash-only kind of girl when it comes to vacation. I mean, if I charge it and have to pay interest on it, I'd lose all the other savings I've gained! So paying cash is one way to save. But have you heard of UPromise? We have a UPromise account, which saves money toward Sissy's college 529 when we shop through one of their authorized merchants. Disney Store is one of those merchants, so we buy gift cards online in advance, and 3% of that goes back directly into Sissy's 529 account. Cool, huh? Plus shipping is free, and each of the kids, the Old Man and I have our own card with what we are "allowed" to spend at Disney World. Keeps us all on a budget and gives the kids some ownership of their spending, too. Cool new thing I learned too late to save me a bundle this year? You can purchase those gift cards and use them to pay for your vacation...even if you are using a travel service like Small World Vacations. Now here's a warning: Disney says it may take up to 15 business days for your gift cards to arrive, so order them in advance. If you buy enough gift cards to pay for a $2,500 vacation, that's $75 direct into the old savings. 

So those are my top 5 money saving tips. I'd love to hear your thoughts or your top money-saving ideas for Disney, too!