Is a 'bargain' trip even possible?

[dreamisawish]

Originally Posted by duchy

Dibbers can resist anything ... except temptation !

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I need this on a t-shirt! Would make for some good photos when I have to come clean to my family that I've booked this

[Bolto6]

**just realised how totally late to this party I was**

Totally do-able for £4500. The bulk of the cost will be in your park tickets and flights... I haven’t had to cost up Summer holiday flights (yet!) but my DD start school in September, however, we will get 2 weeks for October half term

Anyway, we went last September booking 13 weeks before we went (quite late for us) for 2 Adults and DD aged 3.
Flights - £1062 - Thomas Cook from Manchester plus Quidco cash back (£8 wooooo)
2 bed townhouse - £720 - for 2 weeks (I did get this through Interval as a getaway, so realise this is not an accessible price to everyone.)
Car - £308 - Alamo Brits full size
Disney Tickets - £1087 - direct from Disney with Toy Story magic bands plus Quidco cash back (c.£40)
Total - £3177

All in with food, eating out and in, I don’t think we went over £4500, we will have done with our shopping purchases, but for basic living stuff I don’t think we were near that number... I saw a post about keeping track of what you spend on holiday, I don’t really, which is why I don’t really know what we spent while there, but I’d check our bank account every couple of days and Revolut card daily.

Look for the deals, you may have to book later than normal to get a good flight price, are you willing to choose a charter like TC or TUI (we nearly flew TUI from East Mids, until I found the TC flights for £250 less, the lure of flying into MCO an airport and area we are familiar with was too great, than flying out of our local airport.) Be flexible with where you can fly from and to, my DH won’t entertain indirect unless the saving vs direct is significant, we’re talking £100’s here not a couple of £’s.

Use the cashback sites, I use Quidco, I don’t use it a lot, but the money I got back I cashed in and used towards our Christmas food shop, so while not a direct saving on our holiday, it helped me later on in the year.

[KermitThefrog]

To make things cheaper last year (and get more time out there) we did allocation on arrival last minute deals. We got a bargain deal 3 weeks for £720 each in April (there’s 2 of us) and the £960 each for 2 weeks in September. We bought annual Disney passes (no other parks) and just did Disney, we figured that as long as we got 2 trips out of it we were saving money, especially with inclusive car parking and 10/20% off Disney restaurants. We were aiming to perhaps get a third trip in at Christmas or March before the annual passes expire, but unfortunately the flight prices have gone up and I think we’ve missed the boat. We purchased a separate car hire insurance so we only had to pay tax when picking up the package car, I think around $120 & $80. We always previously did hotels so enjoyed relaxing at the pool more than we usually would in a hotel. We ate a lot of meals in the villa (1 Chinese take away, Burger King and stuff we cooked from the supermarket), did a couple of splurge meals (we love O’hana) and did happy hours in places like Bahamas Breeze and STK, plus ate at cheaper places like Steak N Shake, Five Guys and Panda Express. We love the food festival at Epcot also had a few of those as our dinner. We bought a few things to bring home but didn’t go too mad (flavoured vodka, handbag, few clothes which were cheaper out there and birthday presents for others). I’m sure you could do Europe cheaper but for me, I miss my Disney fix.

[dreamisawish]

I just wanted to pop back and say how happy I am with ATD. After some consideration of that hastily booked endless summer stay I realised my dates were wrong because we couldn’t do a Disney hotel beforehand and not run into labour day.

I emailed them today and had a response within a few minutes and they were happy to change my dates to five days behind so we could do a five day stay at Disney before we get there.

I’m not sure how companies usually handle this because I’ve never requested a change to dates but I was very happy with how quickly it was sorted and that there was no fee for changing. I was even told you get two free changes, so I’ve just used up one of mine.

Anyway, very happy!