Saving Money on your Disney Vacation Part 4: Disney Cruise Line

I honestly have been working on this post for almost a week.  But it's been a very busy week at our house so it's taken me this long to get it finished and posted.

From the time I was just a little girl watching The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday evenings, I have always loved Disney.  But it wasn't until I went on my first Disney Cruise that I really began to appreciate just how amazing the Walt Disney Company really is.  I know, it's just a business, in it to make lots of money for its shareholders.   And lots of people will say it went away from Walt's original vision many, many years ago.  But this one quote by Walt Disney sums up everything I love about a Disney vacation: 

"Disneyland really began when my two daughters were very young. Saturday was always Daddy’s Day, and I would take them to the merry-go-round, and sit on a bench eating peanuts, while they rode. And sitting there alone, I felt there should be something built, some kind of family park where parents and children could have fun together.”

And the Disney Cruise Line has followed this same vision.  It knows families.  It anticipates what families need and want and it caters to the entire family.  Kids clubs? They are spectacular! Adult only areas? Also amazing.  Worried about how your children might behave in the dinning room?  They won't be the only kids there, and the wait staff know how to keep them happy.  And I think my favorite part was not worrying about what content might be included in the evening entertainment:  all family friendly but still entertaining.

I knew we made the right choice within 30 minutes after we boarded our first Disney cruise.  Spencer has always been a very anxious child and getting on the ship freaked him out.  We had gone straight to the lunch buffet and he was getting himself very worked up about everything from his food allergy to the safety of the ship.  James happened upon a uniformed crew member and asked him if he would stop by our table.  He came over and introduced himself to Spencer, got right down at his level and talked to him about the ship and its crew.  Then he got on the phone and double checked that Spencer's allergy was noted on our reservation and he called our head waiter and told him to take extra special care of Spencer and his family.   He also told Spencer to be sure to come up and say hello to him when ever he saw him on board. Turns out this uniformed crew member was the officer in charge of food services for the entire ship.  That an officer, who must have had a million things to do right at that moment, would take the time to talk to an anxious child reaffirmed everything I love about Disney to me.  (And he did say hello to Spencer whenever he saw him on board and even called him by name.)  And that was just one magical moment of a very magical week on board the Disney Wonder.  And one year ago this week, we were aboard the Fantasy for an equally magical voyage.

I could write an entire post about how detailed and beautiful the ships are. They are masterpieces in Art Deco and Art Nouveau styling.  Disney has thought of everything and they never do anything half way.  And Disney also has it's own beautiful private island in the Bahamas that is not to be missed.

Castaway Cay

 But like everything Disney, you can pay a premium for the level of service and detail. Disney Cruise line is very small compared to all the other well known lines.  It only operates four ships: two smaller ships called the Magic and the Wonder and two larger ships called the Dream and the Fantasy. Compare this to Royal Caribbean and Carnival which both operate around two dozen ships.  A smaller line means that Disney can keep quality and the level of service very high but it also means it can keep prices high too.  And the price just keeps going up.  I don't blame Disney at all for that. Staterooms continue to sell out at those prices, so why should it stop raising prices? It is a business after all.

If you want to book a Disney Cruise, it might help to know how Disney allocates its ships. Historically, the Wonder spends the summer in Alaska, fall in California and Texas and winter and spring in Florida and Puerto Rico.  The Magic does European itineraries in the summer and generally sticks to Florida the rest of the year with a few special itineraries out of places like New York or Puerto Rico.  The larger ships sail out of Port Canaveral with the Dream handing short 3-4 day Bahamian itineraries and the Fantasy doing 7 day Caribbean itineraries.


It's easy to get sticker shock when you see the price of a Disney Cruise.  There is some value hidden in those numbers if you consider everything it includes: a well appointed (although small) state room; all the food you would ever care to eat, pretty much available whenever you want it (including pizza and ice cream for the young or young at heart); all the soda pop you can drink (most cruise lines charge you for this); first run movies, including premiers if you happen to be on board when a film from any of the Disney brands is released; family-friendly Broadway-style musicals; deck parties with fireworks on some sailings; extensive youth activity program for those 3-18; a water roller coaster on most of the ships; amazing personal service from your stateroom steward and wait staff; nonstop games and other family entertainment; etc. etc.

All the food you'd ever care to eat, including ice cream!

So what isn't included?  Gratuities, alcoholic and other specialty beverages, shore excursions, photos, bingo, specialty dining and a few other on board experiences like the spa, and child care for those under 3.  The only mandatory thing that isn't included in your base price is gratuities (and some travel agencies charge you for these up front anyway).  It is possible if you prepay those to not owe the cruise line another dime when you disembark.
 
So now, let's get down to the nitty gritty of saving a buck or two on your cruise.  I do have a few suggestions to consider:

Cruise Off Season

I mentioned this in my post about the basics, but it is even more true for a cruise than it is for the theme parks.  Because Disney caters to families, it knows it can charge more anytime that school is out of session. Expect to pay double for the same cruise itinerary on the same ship in July as in January.  For what it is worth, I recommend taking a cruise with your children when you can still easily pull them out of school to do it.  One of the reasons we don't have another cruise booked is because we have a junior high student on traditional schedule who doesn't do well making up work.

Book Early

Disney prices only go up, with one exception that I'll get to in a minute.  Opening day prices are almost always going to be the very cheapest rates you are going to pay for a Disney Cruise.  As staterooms are booked in a category, prices start to creep up.  Yes, this means you need to plan 14-19 months in advance.  The next batch of cruises that will be released will be Summer 2017. If history is any indication, that will happen sometime in the second half of March with the rest of the year coming in mid-May and the first part of 2018 released in early-October.  You can follow Disney Cruise Lines on Facebook to see these when they are announced or sites like the Disboards or DisneyCruiseLineBlog often will have the information a day or two ahead of the release date too.

Should you wait for a Kids Sail Free or other special to book?  No. Disney has not offered a Kids Sail Free promotion since early 2013 and that was limited to a few sailings out of Galveston.  Again, the staterooms are selling just fine without that kind of promotion so why should they offer it?  The only general, non-restricted specials I've seen in the past couple of years are for lower deposits.  So you are paying the same over all, you just have to put less down at the beginning.

However, if by some small chance the price of your sailing does decrease before the paid-in-full date, you can rebook at the lower rate.  Once your paid-in-full date happens, you will probably lose more in penalties than you'd save by booking any special last minute deals.   

Last Minute Bookings

And now for the exception.  For the past few years, the only discounted rates Disney has offered to the general public have come AFTER the paid-in-full date for that cruise has past.  Generally, they offer a special rate to military personal and Florida residents first and if there are still unsold state rooms, then to the general public.  So I would not book a flight to Florida months in advance hoping to catch one of these last minute rates on Disney because they may or may not come up.  I have also heard that frequently, you aren't saving much over those that booked on opening day, even with these rate, although that will vary depending on the time of year.  These rates are for general room categories (inside, ocean view, balcony) so you can't pick you stateroom or even the deck it will be on.  And you may not even have a stateroom assigned to you until right before you board.  You also run the risk of missing out on booking the more popular amenities like special dining opportunities or excursions since you are trying to book these after everyone else has had the chance. 

Travel Agency Perks

Unlike other cruise lines, Disney strictly controls the cost of their staterooms.  It also doesn't sell blocks of staterooms at a discount like some other cruise lines do. This means that you pay the same price if you book the cruise directly through Disney or through a travel agency.  However, different travel agencies offer different perks, mostly consisting of shipboard credits.  Some offer more than others.   Instead of a shipboard credit, Costco Travel offers a rebate in the form of a Costco Cash Card based on the price of your cruise.  It's between 7-8% of the cost of your cruise. I am not aware of any other travel agency's shipboard credit that comes even close to that. To me, it's the best deal going.  After our last cruise, we used the cash card towards a new TV that we'd been planing to  buy for a long time.

Fill Your State Room

Stateroom prices are based on two adults in the same stateroom.  If you cruise alone, you will pay the price of two adults (minus taxes and port fees on the second fare).  If you are the only adult in your stateroom traveling with children, one of the children will pay the full adult price.  Additional people traveling in the same stateroom are always charged less and if they are children ages 3-12, you are charged even a little less.  Most staterooms are designed for four people with a queen-sized bed, a couch that converts to a narrow single bed, and a bunk-type bed that pulls down from the ceiling.  There are a few rooms on each ship that only sleep three and a few other rooms that accommodate a fifth person in another fold down bed. 


Onboard Booking

Once you are on your cruise, you should seriously consider booking another cruise before getting off the ship.  Disney offers a 10% discount on cruise fares (with a few holiday and special sailings blocked out), a discount on your deposit and an shipboard credit of $100-200 depending on the length of the cruise.  Not sure when you want to cruise again?  Disney offers a "place holder" option for a $250 deposit.  This can be applied to any future cruise within 24 months of booking.   You can name your travel agency when you book to get whatever perks it offers as well.   And there is no penalty to cancel if you decide not to go on another cruise. Simply cancel for a full refund. 

Don't forget the Gift Card Trick

See, this is why I made that part one of this series about buying discounted Disney Gift Cards.   It really is the key to saving the most money.  You can pay for your entire cruise fare with discounted cards if you don't mind reading off all those numbers to your travel agent or cruise line representative.  You can also use the discounted gift cards to cover any extras in your shipboard account.  We generally put a set amount on our account when we first board the ship and then settle the account on the last day.  Just be sure to hang on to those gift cards. If there is anything left over in your account, they are credited back to the original card.


Do Your Research

There are several sites around the web that can help you pick the right Disney Cruise for you and your family.  Of course, the Disboards has a Disney Cruise Line information page and a discussion forum full of questions and answers.  However, I would start with these:

For general information, visit Disney Cruise Line Blog (not affiliated with Disney Cruise Line) for a plethora of details about each ship and itinerary.  I love that the site has menus and Personal Navigators (the ship's daily schedules of activities) from previous cruises so you can see what food and activities might be available on your cruise.

For information on pricing, visit Cruise Fish.  On the left side of the screen, you will see a list of Disney ships.  If you click on each ship, you will see the different itineraries that ship cruises.  Click on an itinerary and you'll see dates that ship is sailing it.  If you click on each of those, you'll see how much the price each category has increased since the first room was sold and how many of the stateroom categories are sold out (the percentages listed).

Our Disney cruises were by far my two favorite vacations we've ever taken.  I would highly recommend it to other families.  If you have questions, post them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them in a future blog post.

Disclosure: I am not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company or any of the other mentioned companies or websites in any way (other than memberships available to the public).  I receive nothing from these posts but the satisfaction of helping others enjoy the magic as much as I do.

Saving Money on Your Disney Vacation Part 3: Lodging and Tickets

I'm back with some more thoughts on saving money on your Disney vacation.  I originally planned to post this on Friday, but my life got in the way.  Sorry! We are in the middle of planning our epic summer road trip and it is taking a long time to plan.  But more on that another day.

Today I'm going to talk about lodging and tickets and whether you should book them together as a package or separately.  The easy answer (or not so easy as the case maybe) is it depends.   I know, that's not the answer you were looking for but read on and I'll try to explain. Over the years, we've booked packages with various travel agencies including AAA, Costco, GetAwayToday and another local travel agency.  We've also booked each piece individually on our own using online travel sites.  We've also stayed onsite and offsite at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World.  Once again, I'm here to say there is no right or wrong way to do it.   But I'll share a bit about all our experiences and try to be as concise as possible.

Also, this post is just about theme park vacations.  I have much more experience with Disneyland than Walt Disney World but I'll share a bit about both.  I'm working on an entire post on Disney Cruise Line I'll share soon.

Lodging at Disneyland

In a perfect world, we would always stay at the Grand Californian (or even the Disneyland Hotel or Paradise Pier) at Disneyland.  Being fully immersed in the Disney bubble is awesome.  And you can't beat the location or the bonus extra hour perk for onsite guests.  But let's face it, the world is not perfect and if we spent that kind of money, we'd go a lot less.

For years, I feel like we've tried to find the perfect balance of location and cost for lodging at Disneyland.  I've tried to do it as cheap as possible (let's not talk about the terrible mattresses my friends and I could not fall asleep on one night when we got a great deal on Hotwire).  We've used Hilton Points to stay at Embassy Suites South which is just fine, but no where near the parks.  If you forgot your sweatshirt, you'll lose an hour of park time to go get it.

We finally came up with our preferred location: on Harbor between Manchester and Disney Way and as close to the crosswalk to the transportation plaza as you can possibly get.  We have friends who don't mind walking a little further and pick between Manchester and Katella.  I like to be as close as possible. And there are a dozen or so motels right there so you have some choices.  The one we have stayed at the most is the Tropicana Inn & Suites.  But Disneyland regulars all have their favorites.  Our family must have queen beds instead of doubles, so it limits our choices a bit.  Some motels right there even offer family suites that sleep up to 8 people if you need that.

To get the best deal, I will often start with a site like Kayak or Orbitz to get an idea which hotels have the best price.  Then I always visit the website for that hotel to make sure they aren't offering an even better rate.  For instance, the Tropicana Inn & Suites website often has the best deal for trips of five nights or more.  Orbitz with a promo code (often featured on its homepage) is often a better deal for a shorter trip. 

Lodging at Walt Disney World

Now Walt Disney World is another story completely. Walt Disney World is bigger than the city of San Francisco. I have also heard that the entire Disneyland Resort would fit into the Magic Kingdom parking lot.  That's a lot of real estate to cover without a car.  So for us, it boils down to staying off site and renting a car or staying on site and using the transportation system to get around.

The nice thing about onsite at Walt Disney World is you have a lot of options at many different price points.  The value resorts offer over-the-top themes and start around $100 a night for two double beds depending on when you go.  Some even have family suites, featuring a queen and two double pullouts.  Watch for seasonal discounts and promotions. In the off season, they can be as high as 30% off.  We chose the Port Orleans Riverside Resort last year because of the queen bed issue.  It's considered a Moderate resort and we would stay there again under the same circumstances.

If your Orlando plans call for visiting Universal Studios or one of the other non-Disney amusements,  then staying off site might make more sense.  There are hundreds of vacation rentals available in the greater Orlando area. everything from condos to large houses with pools.  And they are usually a very good deal compared to staying in a hotel, especially if you have a larger family or are traveling with a large group.  And how nice is it to have access to a kitchen and washer and dryer on vacation?

A Word about Disney Vacation Club

You might be wondering if we go to Disney parks so much, why aren't we Disney Vacation Club members?  We did sit through the sales pitch and even met with an agent who really tried to convince us that it was going to save us a lot of money in the long run.  If you go to Walt Disney World annually and always stay in a deluxe resort, then you will see savings by purchasing a Disney Vacation Club membership. Otherwise, to me, the math doesn't add up.

Since we primarily visit Disneyland and generally stay offsite, the annual maintenance fees are more than it would cost us to stay in our offsite hotel of choice.  Would it be nice to stay in a villa at the Grand Californian?  Sure, but it's not easy to book them since they are the only DVC property at Disneyland.

If you want to try it out, or even if you just have a larger group traveling who wants to stay onsite in a deluxe resort, you can rent points from an owner.  Just be sure you are doing it from a reputable site.  I don't have first hand experience with this so I'd recommend checking out one of the many threads on the Disboards if you want more information.

Tickets

What your mom always told you applies here double: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Do yourself a favor and never buy tickets off of Craigslist or eBay or any other classified site.  You have no way of knowing if these are real tickets until you are standing at the gates trying to use them.  If they don't work, you're out the money you paid for them, plus now you have to buy full price tickets at the park.


There are legitimate travel agents that sell discounted tickets to Disneyland and Walt Disney World.  In general, these discounts are going to be about 5-8%.  If the discount is more than that, be VERY skeptical.  You are likely dealing with an unauthorized seller or you are going to have to sit through a lengthy time share presentation before you actually get your tickets.

So where can you buy them? The last time we bought out tickets separately, we bought them from Velocity Tours.  I was a bit concerned because they were fairly new in the Disney ticket arena, but they are physically located in my county and that eased my mind a bit.They turned out to be totally legitimate and even called me to follow up on the tickets.  And when I had a question, I called them and they were very helpful.

Other popular sites include Orbitz, Way.com, Undercover Tourist, aRes and Getawaytoday. Each of these sites has different deals at different times and different availability of tickets.  I would check them each and see what they have and which has the best deal for when you are going.

But none of those deals can beat buying your tickets from Disney directly if you are using the discounted gift card trick. If you have time to accumulate enough gift cards to cover the price of your tickets and your spending money in the park, then you will save the most money that way.

Park Hoppers or One-Park-Per-Day

Again, it depends.  At Disneyland, we always get hoppers.  The parks are directly across a plaza from each other and it's so easy just to hop on over to the other park.  This is especially nice during peak times of the year when the parks are very busy.  Disneyland has very tight corridors and does not absorb crowds very well.  However, California Adventure was designed with crowds in mind.  When I start feeling claustrophobic at Disneyland, we just hop over to California Adventure. However, if you are going on a short trip and are on a budget, you can certainly choose to save a little money and just buy the one-park-per-day tickets.

At Walt Disney World, we've never purchased hoppers.  Again, remember how big the resort is.  It takes some serious time to get between the parks, especially if you are relying on Disney transportation.  If you are planning to be there for a full week, and have your own car, than hoppers might be a good idea.  Otherwise, save the money and just pick one park each day to visit.

Packages or Purchasing Separate

So now, we are finally getting somewhere.  I mentioned before that we've done it both ways.  So how do I decide for each trip? Spreadsheets.  I'm kind of a nerd this way.  Once I figure out when we're going, I decide which perks are really important to me and whether this is a budget trip, or a bit of a splurge.  Then I visit every website under the sun (really only four or five) to figure out the best deals and chart them all on a spreadsheet so I can see it all clearly.

Here is a peak at a spreadsheet for hypothetical trip to Disneyland over spring break, March 28-31, for my family of four, (who are all adults in Disney's eyes).  Three nights of hotel and four days of park hoppers.   Just for the fun of it, I ran the numbers for a standard room at the Paradise Pier Hotel which is onsite, the Anaheim Fairfield Inn and the Tropicana Inn and Suites, both offsite on Harbor across from the park. This really only took me about 30 minutes to do, so it isn't a huge amount of time to invest to save a buck or two. (Click on it it see it a bit bigger and clearer). 

Looks like booking separate pieces on my own would clearly save me the most money.  But keep in mind, if I book through Disney, or a Disney Travel affiliate (which includes Costco), I can use discounted Disney Gift Cards to pay for the total which could bring it down to the same price or even less than booking on your own.  Plus if I decide to stay at the Fairfield or Paradise Pier, Costco throws in a premium Character Meal and a $40 gift card as a bonus which could tip the scales.  (Costco does not book value packages, including the Tropicana Inn and Suites).

If however, you don't have enough time to use all those fuel points to realize the savings and a character meal is not up your alley, you can see that booking on your own is clearly saving you money.  And the Internet makes it so easy to do and is generally pretty quick.  Just print out your confirmation sheets or save them to your mobile device so you can keep track of your dates and numbers.

Hopefully you've found some useful information to help you plan your next Disney park vacation.  Check back for even more savings tips soon!

Saving Money on Your Disney Vacation Part 2: The Basics

I'll admit it: when I started this series last week, I knew I had tons of ideas to share, but I really didn't think through how to share them in an order that makes logical sense.  Like maybe this "basics" post should have come before the Gift Card post?  However, the Gift Card post is the biggest way I have found to save money. And when used in combination with some of these other ideas, it can save you even more. So it was a little bit of a chicken, egg debate.  Gift Cards won. But now we'll back track a bit to some other more basic suggestions.

Maybe you need a little more background too.  For us, travel is our thing.  We don't snow or water ski or have another hobby the involves expensive equipment.  Our kids don't play competition or travel league sports.  We don't own dirt bikes or ATVs, a cabin or a timeshare.  We don't even have a fancy home entertainment system or iPads.  None of those things are bad in any way.  Whatever is your family's passion, follow it.  But life is about choices and we choose Disney vacations over all of those things.  Also, there are only four of us in our family.  We all fit in a passenger car and in a single hotel or state room. That alone saves us more money over larger families that have to rent minivans and multiple hotel rooms.

But if you do have other passions and a bigger family, one or more of these tricks may still help you get on a Disney vacation.  And if you aren't into Disney, they might help you get on a another grand vacation instead.  Some of these fall under the category of saving for your vacation rather than on it, but that works too, right?

Travel Off Season: This is probably a no-brainer, but you can save some serious cash this way.  Last year, I priced out how much it would have been to take the same vacation in July that we did in January (a week at Walt Disney World followed by a seven day Eastern Caribbean Cruise) and the difference was close to $8000.  That's enough for another vacation right there.  And it was one of the reasons I was OK with year round school.  Now that we have a junior high student on a traditional schedule, who struggles to stay caught up even when he's in school, it seriously restricts our ability to take advantage of this savings.  So when is off season for Disney?  Pretty much any time children will be in school.  I'm not saying Disneyland won't be crowded on school days (because there is no such thing as a slow time at Disneyland.  Just days that are a little less crowded than others).  But you can generally get better deals on hotel rooms and packages during these non-peak times.   I'll talk more about when to go in an upcoming post too.

Your Children's Age Matters:  I've heard lots of people say they were waiting for their children to be the perfect age for a Disney vacation.  Here's the truth: there is no "perfect age."  AJ had just barely started walking the first time I took him to Disneyland.  And it was just as magical as the last time we went when he was twelve.  Sure, he remembers the last trip and not that first one. But it also cost me A LOT less to take him then than it does now.  Children under three are free at Disneyland.  Children over nine are considered adults at Disneyland.  Now the difference between a child's ticket and an adult ticket is only $6-$16 depending on the type of ticket you buy.  However, a 10 year old pays adult prices for fixed-priced meals.  Dream of eating breakfast with the princesses?  If you child is 10, it will cost you $18 more than if they were still nine.  So by all means, wait until they are the "perfect age" but if you want to save some money, go before they turn 10. 

Priorities: I mentioned this above, but it bares repeating:  if you want to go on a vacation, sometimes you have to give up something to do it.  For us, we cut way back on the amount of restaurant meals we ate and impulse purchases we made.  When my kids were begging for pizza, I'd ask them "would you rather have pizza or go on a cruise?"  And if I saw something in a store that I might have otherwise just purchased, I'd ask myself if I wanted it more than I wanted to go to Disneyland?  It worked for them and for me.  

The $5 Bill Trick: Trick sounds like you are doing something bad.  You're not.  You're simply tricking yourself into saving money.  The idea is that every time a $5 bill comes into your possession, you put it in an envelope and save it for your vacation.  If you have a little more financial resources, you could even change it to a $20 bill trick.  I have a direct sales business and some of my customers pay me in cash.  In a really good year, I was able to make this a $50 and $100 bill trick.  (But don't go that high if you need that money to pay your bills.  It only worked for me because it was truly my best sales year and I had the money to cover my business expenses without it.)   

Target Gift Cards = Disney $$  Target frequently offers $5-10 store gift cards as rewards for purchases.  Often, these are for common household and personal care items you would buy anyway.  I noticed this week they have a bunch of offers on everything from laundry detergent to vitamins and pet food.  So check the ad weekly and stock up on what you need when it's part of this offer.  Then you can stockpile the gift cards until you have enough to buy a $50 Disney Gift Card in store.  Or you can combine them with your Target Gift Cards you bought at the grocery store using last week's trick and buy Disney cards online. 

Frequent Traveler Programs:  If you've gottem, usem.  Obvious, right?  We spent years stockpiling Hilton Honors points and finally cashed them all in last year for random nights on our trips.  I'm a little sad not to have them to spend again, but we wouldn't have been able to do it all if we hadn't had them.  And I believe our total cost for four of us to fly to Florida was $100, including baggage thanks to SkyMiles. If you or your spouse travels for business frequently, be extra sure to take advantage of these programs.

Reward Credit Cards: We are one of those that puts everything on a credit card and then pays it off each month.  It works well for us.  I know it doesn't for everyone.  For years, we just used our credit union card that gave us cash back.  In 2014, we opened a Disney Visa when they had a good bonus going (I believe it was $200 Disney Gift Card after your first $1000 in purchases in your first three months.  It might have been $2000.  I don't exactly remember).  And then we used the rewards when we traveled to Disneyland and Disney World.  The Disney Visa also offers discounts at select locations throughout the parks but you do actually have to use your Visa or a Disney Rewards Card (the "gift card" you get that has your reward dollars on it) to be eligible for the discount.  (We would save the Rewards Card for eligible purchases and use the gift cards we bought for everything else).  Also those with the card also can usually book promotional deals a day or two before the general public. But it doesn't have to be a Disney Visa either.  There are lots of other rewards programs out there and some are better than others.   Our dining companions on our first Disney Cruise were in construction and had a Southwest Airlines Rewards Credit Card for their business expenses and used the rewards to do their Disney traveling. There is no one right way to take advantage of these cards.  It's just something to consider if you aren't doing it already.

No Debt for Vacation: This is a very personal thing and I hesitated to even bring it up. I'm not saying don't go on vacation if you HAVE debt. If you can pay your debts each month and have enough extra left over, by all means, enjoy a vacation!  But I am saying maybe you shouldn't go into debt to PAY for your vacation.  Paying interest on your vacation bill does add to the overall cost of your trip.  Now that being said, the Disney Visa does offer zero interest on "Disney Travel" for six months.  This does not include purchase made in the park, but it does include the cost of packages, cruises, etc.  I don't recommend this method either though unless you know the money is going to be there within those six months.  And if you use it, pay very close attention to those dates. Otherwise you end up paying all the back interest too. And that significantly increases the over all cost of your vacation.

Road trip: Driving from Utah to Florida in the middle of winter is probably not the best idea.  So we flew instead.  However, driving to Anaheim from the Salt Lake area is not too terrible and even for one person, it's cheaper than flying. And I love a good road trip.  We have family in St. George at about the half way mark so it's easy for us.  I know several people who would never think to drive to Disneyland, even from the San Francisco Bay Area.  But it can save you some money, especially now that gas is cheaper than it's been in years.   For us, we take two things into consideration when we decide if we are going to fly or drive: weather and how long it takes to get there. James' job comes with a generous amount of paid vacation so we don't lose much by him taking an extra day off to drive somewhere.  But if you don't have paid leave or it's very limited, take that into consideration when deciding whether to fly or drive.

Some of these may seem very basic, but maybe something struck a cord with you.  I have more posts on this subject coming soon.  I have a rough idea of what I want to address, but I would love to hear from you if you have other suggestions or topics you want me to cover.  If I don't know the answer, I'll find it!  Just leave a comment below.

My VidAngel Review

Maybe you have seen the ads on Facebook or elsewhere on the web for a movie rental streaming service called VidAngel?   Or maybe you saw their very clever JarJarBinks filter commercial on YouTube?

I did, and I was curious.

First, a little history: we were cord cutters and binge watchers before they were cool.  Thankfully, the video streaming services came along and made it all a little less painful.  In addition to those services, we relied on RedBox to watch newer movies.  But have you ever tried to get a new movie through RedBox on a weekend?  Even if you get it reserved, sometimes you have to wait in line at the kiosk for quite awhile to pick it up and to return it.  And how many times have you rented a movie from RedBox and then forgotten to take it back the next day, or even the day after that?

History lesson #2:  We are super picky about what our kids watch.  Like to the extreme.  We wouldn't let our preschoolers watch PG movies and have always had a no-PG-13 movies before your 13 rule at our house.*(see postscript)  AJ cannot wait for his 13th birthday weekend next month so he can binge watch all the Marvel movies.  We've already warned him that just because he's 13, doesn't give him a free pass to all PG-13 movies.  There are many PG-13 movies I won't even watch.  Call me a prude, that's OK. For the sake of brevity, I won't go into all my reasons for this.

So when I heard that VidAngel was about the same price as RedBox, but you never had to leave your house to use it, I was intrigued.  Then I heard that you could use their services to filter movies for language, sex, and violence and I was very intrigued. 

The way VidAngel works, and what makes the filtering legal, is that you must purchase the movie first, usually for about $20.  They explain this is a very clear way on their website. (Hats off to the team there for making it very easy to understand).  When you are done watching the movie, you sell it back, minus a small rental fee of $1 for SD and $2 for HD per day you have the movie.  You can set this to automatically happen so you never forget, or it prompts you when you get to the end of the movie.  Instead of refunding the money back to your credit card, it credits your VidAngel account the difference so when you want to get another movie, it only charges your credit card the difference between the cost of the movie and what's in your VidAngel account.

And yes, you can absolutely choose to watch any movie on the site without any filter at all, just like if you were renting it from RedBox or a streaming service. It's still easier than RedBox and cheaper than the rest.  But the filtering system is very well thought out too.  You can choose the level of filtering that you want, even down to specific swear words you do or don't want to hear, the level of violence and the level of bodice-ripping scenes you are comfortable watching.  It even tells you for each movie exactly how many times each word appears or how much of the movie you'll miss if you have the violence or sex filter set to different levels.  It's completely user friendly and you have the option of setting universal filters for all the movies you watch, or setting a filter for a specific movie.  Another hat's off to VidAngel for that.

So this weekend we tried it out.  Our movie of choice was Back to the Future. I was about the same age as my oldest was when Back to the Future came out and I remember loving it the first time I saw it.  There was a boy at my junior high  that had the same exact outfit as Marty McFly and I thought he was about the coolest thing ever.  So three or four years ago we thought it would be a fun movie to show our kids.  Holy cow, Marty McFly has a POTTY MOUTH!  Did we really swear that much in 1985?  Surely not in 1955!  I don't think we even finished the movie that time through.  So I thought it would be a great movie to tryout VidAngel.


We rented it in SD because I'm cheap.  No really, I wanted to see if I would even notice it was in SD and I did not (but I am not a video-quality snob either).  The video and audio were crisp and clear and even on our moderate DSL connection, the video never lagged.  It started as quickly as Netflix and the quality was on par with other services we've used.

The filter worked well too.  Since I have seen Back to the Future a few dozen times, and I thought the violence and sex scenes were pretty mild, I only filtered for language.  (I picked what many would consider a family friendly movie in the first place.)  Let's be clear here though, the filters job is just to blank the word out.  In a movie with lots of swearing, you just hear quiet where the word was suppose to be.  It isn't like watching a TV-edited version where they dub a G-rated word over the top.  That kind of takes some getting use to, and of course, my lip-reading 12 year old had no trouble figuring out what word or string of words filled in the void.  But I didn't have to hear the words and that made the movie more enjoyable for me and less squirmy about showing it to my boys.

Over all, I would recommend using VidAngel to watch movies, whether you want to filter your movies or not.  We will continue to use it in place of RedBox for movies that aren't available on other streaming sites, or for movies we'd like to be a little more family friendly. 

While I am not affiliated with VidAngel, and wrote this blog piece based on what I really think of the service, they did offer me a referral code to share with my friends that will earn my family free movies if people use it this week. So if you think it might be something you are interested in trying out, feel free to use this link: https://www.vidangel.com/vip/d9d2qkua/u


*We did break our own PG-13 rule and took our boys to see The Force Awakens.  But it wasn't a decision we took lightly.  We talked to several friends and neighbors we trust who had already seen it about the content of the movie first. And they were right, the movie was about the same level of violence as the first three moves that were PG and there was no extreme language or bodice-ripping scenes in it at all.  However, before the movie started, they showed previews for movies that were too intense for my 10 year old and regretted having him sit through those.

The Prequel: Our Year of Disney Magic

I occurred to me that I should maybe explain how we ended up with so darn many trips to Disney between August 2014 and August 2015.  Believe it or not, even though I love all things Disney, it didn't exactly start out as a plan to see how many times we could get there in one year. So we'll just consider this the prologue or prequel to my series on Saving Money on your Disney Vacations.

Our first Disney Cruise: November 2013

It actually started with our first Disney Cruise in November, 2013.  I never suspected we would enjoy cruising as much as we did.  And Disney offers a 10% discount and a $200 on board credit for your next cruise if you book on board.  So we booked a "place holder" cruise, planning to move it to an Alaskan Cruise for the summer of 2015 which we did actually booked as soon as we could and started to get really excited about.

Then, my brother, Hyrum, decided we needed to go to Disneyland with him in the Summer of 2014.  (Truth is, we had discussed maybe going in August right after Orange County and LA Unified went back to school and before we did.) I hemmed and hawed because I wasn't sure how we'd pay for Alaska and Disneyland, even if they weren't in the same year.  But Hyrum and his cute family live in Texas and we don't get to see them nearly as often as we'd like.  And he got right on top of planning it and was texting me so much, I actually had to change my cellphone plan to keep up. (True story!). Then not too long after he launched the plan, my cousin's husband died and she asked if she could come with us and bring her toddler.  How do you say no to all of that!?!

Disneyland, August 2014 with my brother Hyrum and his family (including his brother in law), and my cousin Carol and her son.

To make a very long complicated story short, we then found out the boys' school schedule would not allow us to take that Alaskan Cruise we had booked.  (We thought we were going to transfer to a traditional school but God had plans for us to stay at a year round school.)  Ugh!  Even our backup plan to go on the West Bound Panama Canal Cruise fell through.  However, a four week break from MLK Day to Presidents Day would be a great time to visit the Caribbean.  And since it was much cheaper than Alaska,  we could pay for Disneyland too!

Formal Night on the Disney Fantasy, January 2015

Next, We toyed with the idea of spending an extra week in Florida before or after the cruise. After all, we were paying all that money to get to Florida in the first place and the boys were out of school for FOUR LONG WEEKS in the middle of winter.  To make another long story short, my good friend Angie told me her family was going to Walt Disney World the week before our cruise. Shut the front door!  How fun would it be if we were there at the same time!?!?!  And that, in a nutshell is how out week at Walt Disney World came about.

Walt Disney World, January 2015 with our North Carolina besties, the Pegrams and Hatleys.

Then, we talked about how we would not want to miss the Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration.  After all, we went for the 40th and the 50th.  And since the boys were on year round school why not just upgrade our tickets for our August trip to annual passes so we could go a few more times during their breaks.  When would we have another chance to visit the park so many times during non-peak times?

At Mickey's Halloween Party, Disneyland, October 2014

Riding Splash Mountain, April 2015

Celebrating the Diamond Anniversary: August 2015

You can see, like so many other things in my life, what started off as a trip-of-a-lifetime to Alaska morphed into our Year of Disney Magic.  And no, I never grew tired of it.  Neither did my kids.  (James is another story.  Ha ha!) I would do it all again given the same circumstances.

I'm planning to share my next post on Saving Money on Your Disney Vacations next week so stay tuned! If you missed the first post in the series it's here: Saving Money on Your Disney Vacation Part 1: Gift Cards

Saving Money on Your Disney Vacation Part 1: Gift Cards

I know what you might have thought when you read we went to Disneyland four times in twelve months with a trip to Disney World and a Disney Cruise smack in the middle of those twelve months: who can afford to do that?  No, we didn't win the lottery. And no, a rich relative didn't pass away suddenly leaving us a small fortune.

However, we did do some little and not so little things to pay for our Year of Magic and some of those things might help you pay for your next grand adventure, Disney or not. Today, I'm sharing a just one way you can save money on your next Disney vacation.

I learned this trick on the DisBoards.  (If you are a Disney lover like me, or just planning a once-in-a-lifetime Disney trip, that website should be your new best friend.)  And just a disclosure here: a lot of people think this trick is too much work.  But when you can get $252.37 in Disney Gift Cards for $207.50, that's a savings of more than 17%.  And to me, that is worth it.

First, a very simple way to save 5% on Disney Gift Cards: buy them at Target with a Target Red Card (either Debit or Credit).  But wait! It says right in the fine print that gift cards are excluded from the 5%!  Target does not code Disney Gift Cards as "gift cards" in their system.  They are actually coded as "entertainment cards" so they qualify for the 5% savings with your Red Card.  This is the sole reason I signed up for a Target Red Card.  Entertainment Cards are usually excluded from other discounts including the bonus 5% pharmacy coupons and the occasional 20% coupon that they have around Black Friday.  The major drawback: most Target stores only carry the $50 Disney Gift Cards so you could potentially be carrying around a very large stack of gift cards.  The good news is, Target's online store started carrying the $100 cards so that's half as many cards to carry around.  

Another way to save up to 16% is to buy your Disney Gift Cards at a grocery store that gives you fuel points back. It's marginally more work than the Target way, but still not too complicated.  I personally wait until our local Smith's Food and Drug (a Kroger affiliate) is having one of its 4X fuel point promotions.  If you buy $250 worth of Disney Gift cards during that promotion, you get $1 off up to 35 gallons of gas.  Now in the real world, we can only get about 30 gallons between our Pilot and our Camry when both cars are about as empty as we dare drive them and fill them back to back. (I have heard some stations will only let you fill one car in a transaction so that will make a difference if your station won't let you fill up two cars back to back.) Since I would have had to buy gas anyway, I count that as saving $30 on that $250 gift card.  The drawback here is that your fuel points will expire at the end of the month after you buy the card.  So you lose the savings if you can't use up all the fuel points before they expire.

Now here is where it starts to get a little more tricky: there is away to combine these two savings.  I'm going to stay with my $250 example, just to for simplification purposes, but you could change it up depending on how many fuel points you can use in a month.

• During a 4x Fuel Point Promotion, purchase a Target Gift Card for $237.  (Bonus if you use a cash back credit card but more on that in a bit).  I generally have purchased enough groceries to make up the difference to get to the full $1 off during the month anyway.  
• Use your fuel points to save up to $35. 
• Log on to Target.com and be sure your Red Card is tied to your Target account. 
• Place $250 in Disney Gift cards in your shopping cart.  In this case, you'll have to do 2-$100s and 1-$50. After you get to your cart, click "proceed to check out."
• On the right side of your screen, you should see your total of $237.50 ($250 minus the 5%).  Just underneath that is a list of options including "Pay with a Target GiftCard."  When you click on that, you can enter in your Target Gift Card information and click save.  The remaining $.50 will be charged to your Red Card.

This trick does not work in stores.  You do not save 5% on anything in store if you use a Target Gift Card, only on the portion of your total that goes on the Red Card. So this only works online.  I have heard others say that you must charge some portion of your total to a Red Card in order to keep the 5% savings, thus the $.50.  I don't believe I've ever tried to put the entire cost of the Disney Gift Cards on a Target Gift Card before.

I have also heard others complain that the cards they received from Target online were not activated when they arrived.  I have purchased over $1500 in Disney Gift Cards this way and I have never received one that has not been activated.  I do always check them with the Disney Gift Card website when they arrive.  Be sure when you do that you have revealed all the numbers behind the silver scratch off part.  The last four digits of the card number are on the left side of that silver section and sometimes get missed.

And wait, I said $252.37 for $207.50.  Where does the extra 2.37 come from?  For us it's in the form of Disney Visa Rewards since I use that card to purchase the Target Gift Cards at Smiths. If you have a different card that gives you more money back at Grocery stores, you might end up even better off than that.

I start doing this as soon as I know I have a Disney trip coming up to spread the cost out over several months.  Sure, there are people who walk into Target and buy all the Disney Cards in stock at that store.  I don't do that.  Target.com does occasionally sell out of Disney Gift Cards so don't wait until right before your trip to do this.  Allow plenty of time for those cards to get to you and for you to check that they have been activated.

So now that you have a stack of Disney Gift Cards, what can you do with them?  If you are booking a Disney vacation directly with Disney or through a travel agent that books directly with Disney, you can apply the gift cards towards your package.  It can take some time to apply all those gift cards to your account but there is no limit on the number of cards you can apply.  However, if you need to cancel your vacation and get a refund, they will go back to each individual card so it's a good idea to keep them until you have completed your vacation.

You can also apply them to a Disney Vacation Account.  I've been meaning to try this, but it gets mixed reviews so I haven't just yet.  In this method, you just enter the gift cards into the website for your account and then have your travel agent apply the funds to your package.  I have read that excess can be put back onto a gift card for you to spend on extras on your vacation.

If you are staying off site and have booked your vacation on your own, you can use gift cards to pay for nearly everything onsite: park tickets, parking, restaurants in the park or at one of the Disney Hotels (and restaurants at Disney Springs at Walt Disney World too), any food vendor with a card swipe machine, trinkets, PhotoPass, etc, etc.  If you are cruising with Disney, you can apply them to your on board account to pay for anything you can charge to that account (excursions, drinks and snacks, photos, tips, etc, etc).

Truth be told, I don't use this trick to pay for packages or cruise fare.  Frankly, I could not use all those fuel point in the amount of time I have to use them and the thought of giving 50 gift card numbers to a travel agent makes me crazy!  But we do use the cards for almost everything else when we are at the parks or on board.

So are you going to try this method?  Do you think it's too crazy?  It's OK if you do.  I have other ways of saving money that I will post in the coming weeks that you might not find to be quite so crazy. I'll be sharing them soon so watch for it.

In case you are wondering, I am not affiliated with the Disboards (other than being a regular plain old member), Target, Smiths, or Disney in any way, shape or form.  I am getting nothing from the post, other than the satisfaction of helping someone else enjoy the magic as much as I do. 

Wright Holiday Traditions

I trust everyone had a wonderful holiday season and is doing their best to fight off the post Christmas blahs.  Around here, the inversion has set in and that always drives me to the edge and leads me to ask the following questions: when will winter finally be over (I know, it's only two weeks old officially); and why, oh why, don't we have another vacation planned to warmer climes this January?  (Darn Jr. High!)

But as we start to take down the Christmas decorations today, I've been reflecting on the little things we do every year that bring us closer together as a family and provide some consistency from year to year.  (However, I did discover last night that my kids don't actually remember we do these things every year and get them all confused anyway, so I'm not entirely sure why we bother sometimes.  I suppose it's just so we can say we have some traditions.) It's probably a little strange to post these after the holidays, but here it is anyway.

Our biggest and most elaborate tradition is our Christmas Party.  It came about because after we moved to Farmington, I made of list of "neighbors" I felt we should do something for at Christmas time. It was 25 people long by time we included all our immediate neighbors, primary teachers and scout leaders, visiting/home teaching families, those we served with at church and a few others we started to call our friends.  Yikes!  So we decided the next year, to just do a big party instead of neighborhood gifts.  So far, it's always been the Friday before Christmas.  We pretty much invite everyone we know that lives anywhere near us or is willing to drive to it.  We don't let others bring anything for the party itself because it really is our gift to them.  We do however pick a charity and encourage those that want to bring something, to bring it for that charity and then we deliver it.  And one would think I would stop to take pictures of this party, or at least the food.  But it never happens.  I'm always so caught up in making sure all the food trays are sufficiently full, that I don't think of things like taking pictures.  Maybe next year.  (Although every year when I nurse sore knees and feet for a couple of days and carpel tunnel from whisking and scooping for a week after the party I swear it will be the last time we do it.)

Our other traditions are much simpler than this.  At Christmas, we generally have our big meal on Christmas eve.  I think this actually came about because one year when AJ was very small, we all had a stomach bug on Christmas Day.  We stayed in our PJ's all day and did nothing.  While the stomach bug part wasn't fun, the doing nothing part was heaven!  So unless we have family in town, that's exactly what we do on Christmas: as little as possible.  Obviously we eat, but just breakfast and left overs.  (Although this year we DID break that tradition a bit by going to see The Force Awakens on Christmas Day.)

One tradition my boys don't forget is that they aren't allowed to open their presents until we've had breakfast on Christmas morning.  While I'm making Christmas Eve dinner, I also prepare a breakfast casserole for Christmas morning.  Then we eat that and Rhodes orange rolls (because who has time or energy to make orange rolls and mine never turn out as yummy anyway).  The boys do get into their stockings before we eat, but not unless I'm there to take a picture.

 

Another Christmas time tradition at our house that I brought with me from my own childhood is jigsaw puzzles.  My family would always have a puzzle out over Christmas break.  So as soon as our party is over and all the presents are wrapped, I start itching to do a puzzle.  Unfortunately, my family does not enjoy them and isn't as practiced at them as I am.  So I usually end up doing them mostly alone. Sure they will come put a few pieces in, but when they can't find any easy matches, they walk away.  I have become terrible about stepping away from a puzzle when it isn't complete so twice last week I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish a 1000 piece puzzle I started earlier in the day.  The second time, it was the brand new puzzle that we got for Christmas and my family was a little bit sad that they didn't get to help.  So we took it all apart and put it back together again as a family (again, in one day because I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until it was complete, again!)

Our other traditions revolve around New Years.  On NYE every year, I make all our favorite finger foods and we play games together (usually the ones we get for Christmas) and try not to make each other crazy before the ball drops in New York City so we can go to bed.  This year, the boys got Clue for Christmas.  We decided last night that we are all terrible Clue players (I dropped my cards so everyone else could see them) and make it too easy to figure out whodunnit.

Then on New Years morning, just when everyone else is starting out healthy, we have Utah scones for breakfast.  (All those health goals can just wait until the kids go back to school!)  If you aren't familiar with Utah scones, they resemble more of a sopapilla or beignet than what the English would refer to as a scone.   In the past, I've just used either Rhodes dough or just regular bread dough.  But this year I followed an actual scone recipe I found on Pinterest from the Creme de la Crumb Blog. Seriously so much better than years past.

 

James and I also celebrated our 20th anniversary on December 29.  I guess you could say that's a tradition too.  This year, we gave up on any hope of finding someone to take the boys and decided to make it a fun family day instead.  We drove down to BYU for the Norman Rockwell Exhibit and then went to one of our favorite family-friendly restaurants, Tucanos.  Who doesn't love meat on a stick, especially when that meat is turkey wrapped in bacon.  Yum!

 This all makes our Christmas break seem rather idyllic.  I assure you it hasn't been.  You know when they wrote that song with the words, "and mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again" they were talking about me.  Two weeks is just too long for them to be home and us not to be out exploring something far from home (impossible this year because James took so much time off earlier this year).  So Monday cannot get here soon enough!  Happy New Year!