NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Booking a Dream Disney Vacation for Cheap

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Disney theme parks are some of the most magical places on Earth. But vacation-wise, they can also be some of the most expensive. From tickets to lodging and food, you can easily spend thousands of dollars on a Disney trip.  This episode, Sean and Liz talk with NerdWallet travel writer Sally French about how she booked her dream Disney vacation for cheap — and how you can, too. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail].

Welcome to the NerdWallet Smart Money Podcast, where we usually answer your personal finance questions and help you feel a little smarter about what you do with your money. I'm Liz Weston. And I'm Sean Piles. To send the nerds your money questions, call or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD. Or email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com. Hit that subscribe button to get new episodes delivered to your devices every Monday. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review and tell a friend. This week, we're talking with travel nerd Sally French about how she booked her dream vacation for way less than what most people would pay.

And since we're NerdWallet, we will also discuss the steps you can take to accomplish your own financial dreams, whatever they are. And with that, welcome on to the podcast, Sally. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about my two favorite topics, cheap travel and Disney. Yeah. Well, let's dive into it. Tell us about your vacation. For this trip, I did four full days and then five nights. It was me and my boyfriend. We went to all four of the parks at Walt Disney World in Florida. Honestly, it was an amazing vacation, waking up early, trying to go on every single ride. In fact, at Magic Kingdom, we went on every single ride that

was open. The caveat being Hall of Presidents, which is one of the longest attractions, was not open because it was closed to get the new President Joe Biden animatronic, which you can see now. Okay. Now the question is, did you get on the resistance? We did. And that is wild. The process to get on Rise of the Resistance is truly like winning the lottery. You have to log onto your phone early in the morning at 7am. We're ready. And we were clicking and already it was gone. We didn't get the 7am boarding pass. They go up in like two seconds. But they opened another series of boarding passes at 1pm. And at that point, we were in the parks. And so we were on our phone

trying to get the second batch of boarding passes. And what's so weird is that like 12 55 the park goes silent because everyone is staring at this starting to refresh it was wild and everyone is just looking down at their phone and then exactly at 1 p.m it hits and like people start cheering it's like also kind of bad because the people who are cheering obviously got the boarding pass for Rise of the Resistance. But then you have to imagine some people didn't. Luckily, we did get the boarding pass. It was totally worth the high blood pressure to try to get on it. The ride itself was amazing.

Yeah, if you don't know what's going on, that must be so strange that the whole park just goes dead silent. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere. It was truly bizarre, but it was like team mentality. We were all in it, all rooting for each other to get the boarding passes, as long as you yourself get one. That is so cool. And then you finally got it. So that's awesome. I'd love to hear about what made this trip your dream vacation. This was our first big trip since the pandemic. This trip happened in June 2021. It was just really, really nice to get out do something completely different. Of course, Disney is always this feeling of getting away from the real world. But I think especially in 2021, we really needed that. Yeah, man, I still remember the first trip I had post

the beginning of the pandemic and what a relief it was to be able to go somewhere new and see people I hadn't seen in a long time and feel like I could get out into the world a little bit. It felt so good to know that I have my vaccine, I can go to Disney and feel great and get lost in this magical world. All right, I do have another question for you about being around Disneyland and Disney World, how to avoid crowds. And this is something top of mind for me, because with my partner's family, his nephew goes to Disneyland every year that they've been able to for his birthday, barring the pandemic and all of that. And so far, I've had an out because I don't really like crowds. And also, his nephew was young

enough that I figured he won't remember it anyway, if I'm not there. Now he's getting older, and that's going to be less and less of an excuse. I think sooner or later, I'm going to have to suck it up and go to Disneyland. But again, I would like to avoid as many people as possible. So what are your tips for that? Oof, I mean, definitely always try to avoid going during times when schools are out. So summer and Christmas and spring break, those times are always going to be crowded. We did go in June. The caveat was we had to go to Florida for something else was a powerlifting meet. We were sort of tied to the June date. If I could do it again, I would not like to go in June. His birthday is in February. So I'm guessing that's off season.

February is amazing. And you know what, if you're going to Disney World in Florida, that is the best time because the weather is nice, but not extremely hot. So I think you're picking the best time. Yeah, I usually go out to Florida for my mom's birthday in February. But this is in California, they're going to Disneyland. Even California is so nice in February. My other advice is people think I'm on vacation, so I want to sleep in. Let's go to the parks at 10. That is not good advice when it comes to Disney. You should go as soon as it opens. We went on every single ride at Magic Kingdom. I will say probably in the first hour, we went on about 10 to 12 rides. And then in that nine to 11 window, we really only went on two or three because everyone's coming then. You've got to go as soon as it opens. And that's how you maximize rides.

My niece and her family were just at Disneyland and they took that advice. They were there at what's called rope drop. That meant getting to the park half an hour, an hour before the time it supposedly opens. They got to ride every ride that they wanted to go on. That makes a big difference. Wow. What I'm gathering is that between the Rise of the Resistance ticketing approach and getting there at Rope Drop, you really have to have a game plan for how to approach these parks. You have to have a game plan for sure. But luckily, Disney does make it easier to get in early.

If you stay at the Disney-owned hotels, at least in Walt Disney World, and then as well as what they call like good neighbor hotels, which are bigger branded hotels that they don't necessarily own and operate, but they partner closely with, those hotels typically allow you to get into the parks about a half an hour, sometimes an hour early, depending on when you're going. So even if a Disney hotel is more expensive than the Motel 6, if your priority is to get on rides and not wait in line, it can be worth it paying for the upgrade to get into the Disney hotels and then be able to get into the parks earlier. I've also noticed that the app is really helpful now. It's giving you wait times for all the rides and that can help you navigate the park and make sure that you're not standing in one 60 minute line after another. Liz, that's such a good tip because it's even kind of wild how the lines fluctuate. Often if a show just gets out, then the ride next to the show suddenly has

a giant line and you might not be cognizant of that, but the app can show you at some points, this one ride has a 20 minute line and then all of of a sudden, it has an hour line. And you're like, wait, what? The app better explains that to you. Sally, how did you wind up saving so much money on your last trip? That's what a Disney trip can easily cost by the time you pay for food, flights, tickets, hotel rooms. But for all those things, we paid $1,600 in cash. And then the rest was all covered by credit card points, other benefits that come out of having a credit card. Honestly, the $1,600 in cash, a huge chunk of that was just the theme park tickets, which are about $500 each. That was $1,000 in cash, a huge chunk of that was just the theme park tickets, which are about $500 each. That was, you know, $1,000 for the two of us.

And then, you know, $600 for other things. But thank you so much to credit card benefits and points. We spent very little money actually on the big portions of this trip. So before you even made your game plan for the theme park, you had a game plan for how you're going to deploy all of your various points to cover this vacation. Sean, I'll tell you how I did it. First thing is people want to know about flights. We flew on Southwest. I have a Southwest credit card. And as a thank you for signing up and spending a bunch of money on the card at the beginning. So that signup bonus gives you a whole bunch of points,

which I was able to book my flight through. And then Southwest offers this thing called a companion pass, which is basically a buy one, get one free airfare. Your companion only has to pay the taxes and fees, which are $5.60, $5.60. And then your companion, which was my boyfriend, gets to fly with you. The way you earn that companion pass is when you hit a certain threshold of points with Southwest. We use that companion pass for all my trips that I take.

Well, that's very cool. How did you cover the hotel? Did you stay at a Disney property? So we opted not to stay at a Disney property. The reason being is because I have a Hilton credit card on top of my Southwest credit card. And that card offers all sorts of benefits. So we stayed at the Hilton Lake Buena Vista, which I love staying at because it's in walking distance of Disney Springs, which is their shopping and dining district. And that hotel normally has a cash rate of $1,700 for the five nights we would have stayed. However, I also did not pay $1,700. I did have to fork over 140,000 Hilton honors points. However, NerdWallet on our website has a calculator of what your points are worth. And those points that would book $1,700 worth of a

room only cost me about $700 in value according to Novo Wallet's valuation. That sounds like a really good deal because Hilton points tend not to be worth as much as a lot of other programs. So you have to throw a bunch of them at any room that you want. So you said you got five nights for 140,000 points. That is a bargain. Exactly. What's awesome is when you book a room with Hilton on points, they actually waive the resort fees. And I think they were $50 a night. So you figure that's huge savings right there. Another really awesome thing is if you're a Hilton honors member, which is free to become a base level Hilton Honors member, and you pay with points, you get your fifth night free. So it's basically a 20% discount right there. And I think you mentioned that you were a Diamond level member. And that is so great to have. You're eligible for room upgrades. But one of the best

benefits is if you have diamond level status, they give you a daily food and beverage credit. That's actually new since coronavirus. And the price varies based on your hotel. For us, it was a $30 daily credit. The night before we went to the hotel cafe and we used our $30 credits just to get sandwiches to go, little yogurts and muffins and things. So that way we could get straight to the parks and eat our croissant in line. Very good. Oh, that's a great tip. I'll bet you have some other good tips for saving money on food. Food is always going to be expensive at Disney and there's no getting around that. When you're at Disney, get the Mickey bar, get the churro. You're on vacation. You should definitely splurge.

My best tip is be okay sharing food. Do you need to eat a whole churro or are you just as satisfied eating half a churro and sharing that with your travel buddies? That is one of my best tips. Get the food, but if you can just split some of it. Another tip that I have is that Disney actually does let you bring in your own food to both their California and their Florida parks. They explicitly say that's allowed. If you do find yourself just buying food simply because you're hungry and you should be hungry, you're walking around the parks all day. I recommend packing your own snacks, spring jerky, nuts, protein bars. So that way you avoid buying that overpriced popcorn bucket. Oh, wait a minute.

I love the overpriced popcorn bucket. Well, now, wait a minute. I love the overpriced popcorn bucket. And some of them are cute, but get the popcorn bucket if you want it, for sure. I know people that have a side business selling those because this was for Halloween and there was a Mickey that was dressed up like a mummy and those went like instantly. And I saw them afterwards, $150 online. Oh my gosh. Yeah, these are buckets that cost 20, 25 bucks. I think your next podcast topic

should be interviewing the popcorn bucket side hustlers. I want to know about them. Great idea. I also want to talk about souvenirs a little bit because that is my weakness whenever I go anywhere. I am a big sucker and I will happily spend more than I should for anything. The one time I did go to Disneyland, I bought myself a

nice Mickey Mouse wristwatch, which I adored, but I spent I think like $40 on it, which is embarrassing. So how can people save money on souvenirs when they're at places like Disneyland or Disney World? See if you can buy your souvenirs in advance online or at your local toy store. As long as you're not buying the $150 popcorn bucket online, you can find great Disney stuff online. The Mickey Mouse plush that they sell in the theme parks is probably very similar to the Mickey Mouse plush that they sell at Target or Walmart. The difference being at Target or Walmart, it's probably a lot cheaper. So if you're trying to buy souvenirs for your kids,

I recommend just get it ahead of time, stash it in your suitcase. Don't let the kids see it. Pretend like you got it and surprise them in the hotel room that night. They will not know whether it came from Tomorrowland or Target. That's smart.

Another thing you might try is to look online for a big bag of Disney pins, because pin trading is this huge deal. This is like elementary school kids. I don't know that your nephew is kind of old enough to get into it, but the bag online will be a lot cheaper than spending eight or $10 per pin. And then there are sites where the kids can trade with Disney cast members. So they can take a pin that costs you pennies, essentially, and trade it for one that they really want from one of the cast members. And it's a way to interact with the park that's really fun. It reminds me of Beanie Babies in a way. Yeah, it's a little bit like Beanie Babies.

Pins are better than Beanie Babies, Sean. Giving kids pointy things better than a Beanie baby. I may have to disagree with you on that. And there are how many pins do you think have been made like 1000s? Oh, gotta be Yeah. And they have them for every single character, every movie, every holiday, you could drill down on a theme and say I'm only collecting baby Yoda pins. And you can totally make that your mission. It's so fun. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your vacation story with us. And at this point, usually Liz and I will give our takeaway tips. But since this was your dream vacation that you achieved, can you tell us your takeaway tips for anyone who's looking to do the

same? Yes, definitely. My first tip would be to acknowledge credit cards with annual fees aren't for everyone, but they can certainly help you save money if you play your cards right, like I did. Number two, bring snacks. Disney lets you bring food and drinks into the park, so definitely do it to save money there. Finally, buy those souvenirs in advance.

If you have kids, you can save money by purchasing mementos at the retail stores rather than in the park. All right, well, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you. This was fun. And that's all we have for this episode. If you want your money questions answered on a future episode, turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD.

You can also email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com. Visit nerdwallet.com slash podcast for more information on this episode. And remember to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you're getting this podcast. And here is our brief disclaimer, thoughtfully crafted by NerdWallet's legal team. Your questions are answered by knowledgeable and talented finance writers, but we are not financial or investment advisors. This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances. And with that said, until next time, turn to the nerds.