Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

What's your budget for a week long vacation for a family of 3 down to Orlando, Florida?

Feel free to breakdown cost of airfare, hotel, excursions, food. Or just total them up.

Just need to set my own realistic budget for my upcoming September trip.

TIA.

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

This really depends on what you want to do. Are you going to Disney? Universal? Seaworld? Or just other little things? I've found that it's very costly to do a trip that involves going to more than one major theme park. For instance, one day at Disney is almost $100 a person. Seaworld about $75, Universal (not sure..but up there too). Whereas if you do an entire week at any of these three places it's less than $300.

Airfaire I would budget about $200 each. Hotel, you can find them for $100 a night or less. Or more. Depends on where you stay, and what you want.

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

Well it is kind of hard to answer your question because there are too many variables.

How old is your DC? That is important because places like disney under 3 are free.

Orlando is a big area - what are you interested in doing? Disneyworld? Seaworld? Universal? other?

Dining -too that really depends on where you want to go etc. If you are thinking disney - a good way to figure out how much you might pay for food would be to go to allearsnet.com They have a dining area - and they list every single counter service, table service and cart in WDW. It is fairly up to date so it will give you a pretty good idea of approximately what dining at WDW would cost.

Hotels also vary greatly as well. So where you plan to go might greatly change where you want to stay.

If you plan to go to various parks and not stay in WDW you will want a car. Mousesavers.com is a great site - it gives you all the various car companies and ways to save money when renting and even gives you codes and tells you how to mix and match them. BTW that site is also good for tips on doing walt disney world on a budget and how to get the most for your money and where to save.

As far as airfare. The cost has really gone up. We have been looking for end of August and it is considerably more than it was in the past. Most airlines have their Sept dates out now so you should start looking at that ASAP because for the most part the earlier you book usually is a better deal. Southwest for August was running cheapest about just under $1000 for 4. It used to be that $200 was a good deal - but the prices have gone way up. Delta, Jet Blue etc all wanted $1300 + and that didn't include luggage costs etc. If you can get airfare for $200 each that is pretty good deal. SW was about $100 down and $143 or so back (that included taxes per person).

You can keep costs down for example if you stay at WDW and do things like order from gardengrocer.com which is like peapod and will deliver to your hotel (I am pretty sure they deliver to non WDW hotels but not sure if those hotels will keep your things cold). This way you can have snacks, breakfast in the room and drinks taken care of if you wanted to save some money there (esp if you don't rent a car so you won't be able to do a grocery shop).

If you want to go to disney - the easiest thing would be to go to their website and price out some things. That would be their rack rates. Then you know what top cost would be and it would only go down from there. Sept there are pretty good deals out usually. Depending on your dates - there is often a deal at WDW where you get the dining plan for free (you pay rack rate for the hotel and tickets but you would basically eat for free). Then sometimes they have say 30% off the room rate, or other discount plan. If you book rack rate - and a code comes out (they don't have discounts released to the public for Sept yet) you just call and they adjust your package price to reflect the discount. If you DO want to do disney - go and register on their site, order their free trip DVD, price and save some packages and they will often send you a private code that only you can use. Right now I think I saw on disboards that there are private codes for free quick service dining, and some are getting a % off the room rate if they add tickets.

There are some discount places you can get tickets too so that is all something you would want to look into.

But before you can get any sort of budget you would need to know what you are interested in seeing/doing 1st to be able to guide you.

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

The above is great advice. because of the pricig structure itroduced by Disney a few years ago and mimicked to a point by everyone else, it's MUCH cheaper to add addtional days at one place, than to go to many.

How old is DC?

I thik if cost is a factor, I'd stay at one place, Disney of course, and stay at a Value hotel and use resort transportation and Magical Express.

For our last trip we had an AP rate for about $550 for 7 nights at Pop Century, and there was a VERY similar PIN code rate (sign up online, order maps, price out trips, and you may get a pin code discount). Airfare was $200 pp.

We have annual passes, which were $550 pp including tax, which we'll also use for our next trip, but an 8 day parkhopper is $337 for adults and $317 for kids on Undercover tourist. Cheaper with a mousesavers newsletter discount. You can see this is much cheaper than doing several 1 or 2 days passes to Disney, Universal, Sea World, etc.


I am NOT a fan of DDP, but it can be good if you have kids in the childre's age 3-9 who like children's meals. I feel it's a good bargain for kids. If you don't need to do a lot of sit down meals, you can save money doing more quick service and adding flavor packs to free ice water.

There are all kinds of ways to save money, it just depends on how you envision your vacation.

ETA: Our $200 airfare was booked about 3 months out for a December trip on Delta.

We have the Delta Skymiles card. We pay for it, but we get a companion airfaire every year. Since it was a cheap flight, we didn't get the best valuie out of it, but it saved us money PLUS you get first bag free and priority boarding.

We also let magical express take our checked bags, so we had a VERY smooth trip back ad forth to the airport.

Message edited 2/6/2012 10:45:15 AM.

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

Two and a half years ago we were able to fly as a family of three, stay at the Wilderness Resort and have the dining plan for 1500. In the end our OOP expenses were 1800 for the entire trip for six days. If I were to do it again I would want to stay at the Poly b/c you are on the monorail.

ETA: I agree with the PP, it is much more economical to do a longer Disney trip rather than break it up to do a few days at Disney and then the other parks. We went to Disney for one day this past summer and it was 600 for one day for 4 people. I happen to like the dining plan and thought it was a good value.

Right now Kayak.com shows non stop from JFK to Orlando as 216 per person Round Trip
Depart:
Thu 9/6
Return: Thu 9/13 (Trip spans 8 days) $216 American Airlines
JFK 7:59a ? MCO 10:39a 2h 40m nonstop
MCO 7:40p ? JFK 10:15p 2h 35m nonstop

So three tickets is 660 plus 100 for luggage = 760 for your plane tickets.
I would take the Disney parks bus so transport to/from the airport is free.
Tickets =285 for Adults for 7 days so 2 tickets = 570
Hotel = ?
Food = ?

Message edited 2/7/2012 2:50:53 PM.

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

Where are you planning to stay? I can help you look at some ideas. It can be a wide range. Anywhere from $600 for Pop Century to $3000 for a Garden View at the Poly. What's your week?

For the past few years, there has been a free dining offer announced in the summer for September. You can always book your room now, and then a good Disney TA will help by checking the discounts and switching it over to free dining when it comes out.

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

Hi all, thanks for all the tips. Sounds like one park is the way to go.

I have alot of air miles, 165k from signing up for 2 credit cards, so can probably fly free using them for this Orlando trip.

Maybe we'll do most of the trip in Disney and 1 day in Legoland since I've been looking forward to checking it out since it opened last year.

Staying at Disney sounds great if it means we don’t have to deal with driving. I’ll like to stay at a Disney resort that is a town in itself and provides all the amenities w/o the need to go out. Do I need to sign up on their website to get resort discount?

Is a budget of 2.5k for a week long vacation reasonable for a Disney resort?

Airfare – free from mile redemption
Disney resort - 1000??
1 day Legoland – 175 for 3
Week Pass for 2 adult, 1 child at Disney Parks - 805
1 day Car rental – 50/day
Food - $300-400

Am I missing anything? It'll be nice to stay at a resort with a kitchenette to reduce on eating out....

TIA!

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

When do you plan on going? That can make a huge difference in price. I think 2500 is on the low end though but you might definitely be able to do it - but maybe not quite the way you are thinking.

Your best bet to try and stay around that budget would be to stay at a value resort. But depending on when you are going that would be pretty tight. The values don't have kitchenettes or even fridges (right now you can pay to have a fridge - but I did read a rumor they might be adding them but I haven't seen anything firm on that). If you want a kitchenette you will have to spend a lot more. The cheapest is probably one of the family suites at the all star value resorts, followed by the new value resort which will be mostly family suites (but rooms there run more than most of the top moderate rooms). Otherwise you would want to go with a villa/DVC. You might be able to get a good deal by renting points from a DVC member - but there are a lot of strings attached to doing it and many people aren't comfortable with turning money over to a stranger and relying on the fact that THEY will make your reservation and have control over your reservation.

Disney is very expensive to eat at. $300-400 - do you plan to eat all or mostly counter service meals? If you plan to do character meals (one of those alone could set you back $100+ depending on which meal you choose).

Really it will be dependent on the week you want to go - if you pick a peak week it can run considerably more (couple hundred+) than one of the quiet value season times.

For example if you want to go say end of August - for 7 nights 8 days. Value resort, 7 day park hoppers. It would run about 1800. But if you want the Value family suite you are looking at about $2650 before adding in any food. But say you want to eat at Sit down places (some character meals for example) you might be better with the dining plan (but this really depends on where you want to eat) - if you add the dining plan to the regular value resort (non family suite) with the 7 day park hoppers - you are looking at $2500. You can cut some off the budget by getting rid of the hoppers but I think they are good to have - but they aren't for everyone.

I would say unless you plan to do almost all counter service meals - you might be better to budget closer to $3k if you are looking at value season not peak times. That is also if you don't include any purchases in the parks.

Not sure about the $50 for the car - I would think it might be more for 1 day - but I have never rented for less than the week and that was a while back so I wouldn't be the right person to ask.

As far as the resort like a town. Many people do gardengrocer.com which is like peapod for breakfast and snacks in the rooms.

Values have only counter service options where as moderates and deluxes have sit down dining options. They all have pools, gift shops, and bus service to the parks.

It is the kitchenette issue that I think will complicate things.

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

Wow, maybe Disney resort isn't the way to go then.
We're going during off peak season of September so that should cut down on cost.

Last year we went and I think we managed to stay close to a 2k. But the resort we stay at was a timeshare for 5 days. We rented the timeshare with kitchenette from a friend for $400 total. I think the bulk of our cost was for airfare and theme park tickets.

We also drove so we had more choices in cheap eats and even had food delivered to our resort a few times.

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?

You can rent points for a Villa. Also, a Moderate of above will have a fridge and you can order from Garden Grocer to save money.

I would say DH and I alone spent $1000 on food on our last 8 day trip. You can definitely spend less, but we love to enjoy all of the unique dining at Disney. The way I see it, instead of going out to dinner here, I'll save that money for a special dinner at Disney. Character meals, interactive and unique dining like Sci Fi, Prime Time 50's and HDDR, plus signature dining. I really want to enjoy it while I'm there

Re: Reasonable Budget for a Family of 3 to Orlando?