*Updated* How Much Does a Trip to Orlando Really Cost? | September/October 2019 | Pre-Trip Report

[twogoto]

Hi everyone 👋

We are due to head off for our third 'once in a lifetime' holiday to Orlando later this month and after reading so many useful trip reports over the years, I thought I'd finally do my own!

I'm not sure if this will turn into more of a dining report (all we seem to be talking about is what we're going to eat when we get there) but my aim is to help in answering the million dollar question, for ourselves and others - how much does a trip to Orlando really cost?

A bit of background...

We've been to Orlando twice before (September 2015 and September/October 2016) and both trips were very different for us cost-wise.

The first, being our first 'once in a lifetime' holiday, cost us a ridiculous amount of money (in total I think we spent around £10K for the two of us, including everything - flights, tickets, hotels, food, shopping, activities etc). At the time of course we thought it was worth every penny we spent as we never dreamed we'd be able to go back (and we never would be able to go back if it cost us £10K every time either!) 🙈

We got the bug and booked the second 'once in a lifetime' holiday as soon as we got home to get over the Florida blues. We decided Disney wasn't for us - I've never even seen the Lion King *shocker*, and we didn't like stressing over having to be at a particular place at a particular time for a dinner reservation we'd booked 180days before, or a ride we'd booked 60 days before - so we just stuck with Universal and Seaworld.

This second time around was obviously a much more chilled trip, finished with what was supposed to be a few days in Miami at the end of the three weeks. I say supposed to be because we didn't see much more of Miami than the hotel before we had to get an early flight home due to Hurricane Matthew approaching. I'm not sure what we'd have done if we didn't get on that early flight home though - we had no money left to be able to stay any longer anyway! Our budget for this trip was very, very tight and there was no shopping at all, so we have experienced both ends of the spectrum in terms of a really expensive and really cheap, budget trip. After our experiences, I do believe that a trip to Orlando can be as cheap or as expensive as you make it!

While we're going into this 2019 trip more comfortably, we love a good deal and will make savings wherever we can. I actually have a remote-based job as a Deal Hunter (that is my actual job title), so I'm accustomed to never paying full price for anything!

I'm aiming to keep track of everything we spend and include prices for all food, shopping and activities in my trip report to:

a) help us know exactly what to budget when we go on the fourth once in a lifetime holiday 😉 - when you book things here and there and pay in instalments I think it’s easy to lose track of what it’s costing you and how the cost compares to previous trips. Hopefully this will help us, and

b) help any Orlando newbies to form a realistic idea of how much spending money they might need, and give my money-saving tips along the way!

Hopefully it'll be of use to somebody!

Who are we?

We're travelling as just a party of two! 👫

💁🏻Me (Chief Planner and Fussy Eater) - I'm 27 and work from home, meaning I live in PJ's and this holiday will be the first time I've been properly dressed for more than two days in a row in a long time! 🙈

I have three part-time 'hats' as an independent contractor - in one job I hunt down deals for a student audience, in another I teach English online to Chinese students, and more recently I've started training to become an Independent Travel Agent (which is already saving us a fair chunk of money as you'll see later in this PTR). I’m looking forward to going full out-of-office for two weeks!

I've always loved rollercoasters but have developed an irrational fear of heights/falling from a height which has made them more challenging in recent years! Will still give anything a go apart from Rip Ride RockIt - I just can't deal with that climb! 🙀Mainly looking forward to riding Gringotts again, hopefully riding the new Hagrid ride and having the holy hell scared out of me at Halloween Horror Nights!

👨My other half (Plans Nothing and Eats Anything) - He's 30, a little bit ginger (burns on a cloudy day in the UK and so sunbathing is his idea of a nightmare) and has recently started a new job that has him walking 30,000 steps a day, so he's not looking forward to walking around too much 🤭

He is looking forward to experiencing Volcano Bay for the first time, eating his body weight in shrimp tacos, and also having the holy hell scared out of him at Halloween Horror Nights.

We've been together almost 10 years and have been to Orlando together twice (he also went once as a child).

What we’ve booked & what it’s cost/what we’ve saved so far…

Package - We’ll be flying out with Thomas Cook on 26th September from Manchester. We booked as a package, staying at The Avanti Resort (which we’ve stayed in on both previous trips and love for its location) which should’ve been £1,750 for the two of us. We used a code for £150 off and paid £1600 in total, including £92 for selecting our seats.

Airport Hotel - As it’s a relatively early flight (11am) and we live around 3 hours drive away, we’ve booked to stay at the Holiday Inn Express Manchester Airport the night before. This should’ve been £76 for the night, but we used some of our Tesco Clubcard vouchers to get £30 off and paid a total of £46. Never stayed here before, and to be honest our past Holiday Inn experiences haven’t been great (we stayed in one in Liverpool once and walked into our room to find a semi-naked man perched on the end of the bed which was a bit awkward). I’m sure some other Dibbers said they’d stayed here though and recommended it.

Airport Parking - For airport parking, we’ve chosen the JetParks 3 (mainly as it was the cheapest and we liked the idea of keeping our keys with us). This should’ve been £99.99 + a £1 booking fee, but we used voucher code I found online for £20 off so paid a total of £80.99 for 14 nights parking.

Airport Security Fast-Track - We’ve used the click & collect service offer at Manchester Airport to get 2 free fast-track security passes, which should’ve been £12 in total. A small saving but it all adds up! This is not something we’d have purchased out of pocket as we’re likely to be at the airport way ahead of time.

Park tickets - As we always do, we’ve booked our park tickets through Attraction Tickets Direct. We’ve got:

- 2 x Orlando 3 Park Explorer Passes (Universal & VB) £270 each (£540 total) - should’ve been £294 each but asked for best price
- 2 x HHN Frequent Fear Plus Passes £109 each (£218 total) - should’ve been £119 each but asked for best price
- Free Eat & Play Card - should’ve been £13, asked for it to be added as free gift in place of the free gift offer they were running
- Free VIP Shop & Dine4Less Gold Card - should’ve been £15, asked for it to be added as free gift
- 1 x Seaworld 3 for 2 £111 - should’ve been £117 but asked for best price
- 1 x Seaworld 3 for 2 for FREE - should’ve been £117 too! (I got this for completing Seaworld’s Training Programme as a Travel Agent, which is a great perk!)

So for all tickets, we should’ve paid a total of £1,088 but after getting my free Seaworld ticket and asking for best prices on the other tickets, we’ve paid a total sum of £869. I’m happy with that!

Our travel insurance is via our bank account so I won’t include that here as we haven’t had to pay anything above and beyond for it. We’ve also paid for and had our ESTAs approved, but again I haven’t included them as they’re a flat fee for everyone.

So, if my maths is right, for all of the above we’ve paid a total of £2595.99 for the two of us. It's not the cheapest trip in the world but without the discounts everything listed above would’ve been £3026.99, so we’ve saved £431 which will go nicely towards our spends.

Other purchases/savings made before travelling…

We’ve picked up a couple of Groupon deals via the US site:

- We’ve paid $24 for $50 to spend towards drinks at Howl at the Moon (we love this bar, have some amazing memories here and it’s right across from our hotel)

- We’ve paid $15.80 for $40 to spend towards dinner food at Señor Frogs (again this is right across from our hotel, though we’ve never visited before)

We’ve also both (well, mainly me) bought a ridiculous amount of new summer clothes in the lead up to this trip. I wouldn’t even dare begin adding that cost up 🤭 Most have been bargains in the sale though!

So, here we are with 20 days to go... and time is going so slowly all of a sudden!

I'm planning on doing this as a live report via the app but we'll see how it goes! If anyone has any tips for me it'd be appreciated!

Thanks for reading if you've got this far!

Update - 18/09/19 - Dollars and Dining Plans!

Dollars
I've been exchanging dollars here and there via the Revolut app as/when the exchange rate looks OK (or as OK as it can look right now, bring back $1.5 to the pound! ). I thought it might be helpful for us to be able to look back on how much we got for our money, so here's what we've exchanged so far and what we've got for our money:

- 30th August -> £500 to $609.27 (rate of $1:£0.8206)
- 5th September -> £250 to $308.15 (rate of $1:£0.8112)
- 9th September -> £100 to $123.63 (rate of $1:£1.8088)
- 10th September -> £200 to $247.06 (rate of $1:£0.8094
- 13th September -> £200 to $248.56 (rate of $1:£0.8046)
- 18th September -> £200 to $249.60 (rate of $1:£1.8012)

So as of now we've exchanged £1,450 to $1,786.27.

I'm waiting for OH to sort out his Revolut card (he's forgotten his login details and needs to request a new one anyway due to the old card expiring - but at this rate, it probably won't come until after we leave!). If he does sort this out then I'll transfer half of the USD balance to him so we have it split across the two cards. Usually, we do this and then take out cash in the hotel reception every few days, and keep the cards 'locked' via the app just incase.

We've both also got Starling cards, but I prefer the way in which you can lock in the exchange rate with the Revolut, which you can't do on the Starling app unfortunately.

Dining Plans
We sat and tried to make a list of places we both wanted to eat at last week and it only made it even clearer that two weeks is not enough - while we both can certainly pouch, there is just too many places to fit into a two week stay, especially as we'll be at HHN for a fair few evenings!

We usually have breakfast and dinner as main meals, with a snack for lunch if we are hungry. We learnt the hard way after both putting on a stone in weight despite walking miles every day the first time we went to Florida - it was insane! We just weren't expecting the portions we got. I remember my first ever breakfast at Denny's being listed as including a 'slice of ham' (alongside my bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, toast etc) - it arrived with a massive gammon steak on the plate along with everything else!

Anyway, on our (still to be shortened, somehow) list, we have the following for evening meals. Those in red are places we've not yet visited on any previous trips:

- Bahama Breeze
- Miller's Ale House
- Outback
- Senor Frogs (to use our Groupon)
- Longhorns
- Bubba Gumps (to use Landry's credit)
- Joe's Crab Shack (maybe, if we can't use both our Landry's birthday rewards at Bubba Gumps)
- Blaze Pizza
- Polite Pig
- Teak Neighborhood Grill
- Cowfish
- Shake Shack
- Margaritaville
- Hopdoddy's
- Cafe Tu Tu Tango

For breakfasts, we've got:
- Denny's (always a first day tradition for us)
- IHOP
- Friendly's (we've been once before to the one next to the hotel, but there was no atmosphere at all, might try another one)
- First Watch
- Perkins
- Cracker Barrel (though not sure we'll ever be near one)
- Pretzel Kitchen at Seaworld
- Golden Corral
- Hash House A Go Go

Any advice on those items in red is welcomed - let us know if we've missed anything you think we MUST try, too!

Now back to the waiting game... this time next week we should be at our airport hotel in Manchester! We can't wait!

[Wismgari]

I love this! Some amazing bargain hunting I am always looking for a bargain, but this puts me to shame really! Looking forward to following along. Have a great trip!

[Trusty ian]

It's quite alarming when you add it all up. Esp if you are not a high earner and save for quite a while before the trip

[colin39]

We , me n wifey do it on a budget, so this years flights less than £800 for both of us on a 3 week break. Car hire £600 intermid suv
Annual universal pass holders dunno the cost, thats a wifey question
Seaworld did a 3 patk 14day pass inc parking £90 something each.
The biggest expence is the villa for 3 and a bit weeks 24days £1800.
Oh and bloc hotel and parking, hotel through booking.com and parking through ncp with discount code from somewhere for £90.0 for the 25days.
Then its spends we bring 3k and normally have enough left to book either next years flights or drop a lump on the villa.

[twogoto]

Originally Posted by Wismgari

I love this! Some amazing bargain hunting I am always looking for a bargain, but this puts me to shame really! Looking forward to following along. Have a great trip!

See more...

Thank you - see you have a similar countdown. Enjoy New England! 😊

[twogoto]

Originally Posted by Trusty ian

It's quite alarming when you add it all up. Esp if you are not a high earner and save for quite a while before the trip

See more...

If definitely can be. We don't save as such as we very much live from payday to payday but just pay bits here and there as and when we can, so often don't realise what we've actually spent as its never one huge chunk going out at once. I'm interested to see what our final cost ends up being!

[twogoto]

Originally Posted by colin39

We , me n wifey do it on a budget, so this years flights less than £800 for both of us on a 3 week break. Car hire £600 intermid suv
Annual universal pass holders dunno the cost, thats a wifey question
Seaworld did a 3 patk 14day pass inc parking £90 something each.
The biggest expence is the villa for 3 and a bit weeks 24days £1800.
Oh and bloc hotel and parking, hotel through booking.com and parking through ncp with discount code from somewhere for £90.0 for the 25days.
Then its spends we bring 3k and normally have enough left to book either next years flights or drop a lump on the villa.

See more...

I wish we were going for a three week trip again, two weeks just doesn't seem long enough after going for almost three weeks last time haha.

[Bootrip2]

Reading along, love a bargain trip!

[twogoto]

Originally Posted by Bootrip2

Reading along, love a bargain trip!

See more...

Thank you!

[Jaspercat10]

Looking forward to reading along x