My post vacation buzz is just about to wear off, but I’m going to fight to enjoy every last ounce of it. In fact, my vacation has inspired today’s money saving post. I already told you about how cruising is the best budget vacation out there, but man cannot live on cruising alone! On this vacation my friends and I took a short cruise bookended by visiting my favorite place on earth – Disney World.
The admission price for Disney has slowly risen to a wallet snatching high of $94.79 with tax. In my experience the ticket price is the toughest sell involved with a Disney Vacation. On our recent stay we got a rental car for less than $20.00 per day, a decent hotel with a theme park shuttle and hot breakfast for $50.00 nightly, and we ate in the parks for a surprisingly non inflated price. Meanwhile, those ticket prices remained stubbornly high.
Just before the vacation, I had a breakthrough. For a few years now I’ve been feeding my Disney addiction by following a great website called MouseSavers. The site has regular updates on Disney deals, attractions, and everything else a Disney nerd like myself could hope for. One of the great resources MouseSavers has shared is a legitimate discount theme park ticket service called Undercover Tourist. I tried them out on this recent trip, and you have my word – they are prompt, reliable, and NOT a timeshare program.
Undercover Tourist is an online retail vendor for theme park tickets where you can save several dollars off gate prices. The available deals change from time to time, but there is often a deal where you get extra days in the park for free. This was the case with our recent trip. I was able to purchase a four day Disney ticket for myself and my husband for the price of a three day ticket – which means we saved $34.00. Also – the tickets were mailed to us, so we never had to stand in line to purchase tickets, which was an added convenience. Saving $34.00 was great, but this was just for me and my husband. Imagine how the savings would add up if you were shopping for a family of four or more.
Our tickets came in a few short days, without an expiration date. It was such a treat to get an extra day at Disney, which allowed us to visit all four parks. The savings don’t end with Disney though. Undercover Tourist also sells tickets to all kinds of other Orlando attractions like Universal Studios, Cirque Du Soleil, Sea World, and Kennedy Space Center. I can’t vouch for these tickets, as I haven’t purchased them – but if they are anything like the Disney tickets, then they have my seal of approval
I found this resource too late to share it with my travel companions, so I’m hoping to make up for it by sharing it with my readers. For those of you planning a magical vacation this year, I have anoher tip. It isn't money saving related, but it is no less awesome. Try booking dinner at Cinderella’s Royal Table in the Magic Kingdom. Normally reservations are insanely hard to get, but New Fantasyland opened this year, which has a few new attractions including the castle from “Beauty in the Beast”. The castle has a new themed restaurant that is all the rage, and reservations there have decreased some of the demand for Cinderella’s Royal Table. My party had the most happy accident ever with our 7:15 pm dinner reservations at Cinderella’s Castle. The park’s firework display was scheduled for 8:00 pm, so I was disappointed that we might miss the show. No worries though! We saw every amazing moment of the display from inside the castle – the most perfect view, since many of the fireworks are set off from the sides of the castle itself. The dining staff even turned town the lights for us and piped in the music that the fireworks are choreographed to. You can see a picture of our amazing view below. It was truly magical, so if you can get a reservation at Cinderella’s Royal Table after 7:00 pm on a day that park closes at 8:00pm – you will be guaranteed a memory that you and your family will cherish for a long time. Confession – I may have teared up, just a smidge.
So start dreaming about a visit to the happiest place on earth. There are smart ways to do it on a budget, and we all need a little more magic in our lives.
