Will we go to Disney for free?

We're coming down the home stretch! Just about 30 days from our arrival day and we are so excited!

I cashed out on all the apps, they truly do add up! You can find out more about which ones I used here. Please consider using my referral links to help us both earn more points faster!

When I set out I wanted to pay for as much of this trip without pulling from our personal finances as possible, as the date quickly approached I decided 1/2 of the cost would be a pretty big win in the time frame we had.

I started getting nervous as all the apps I'm using weren't amounting to much and we really have so many other things we NEEDED to spend money on. But then I went in and added it all up, what we have earned and what is currently pending. Our total is $1,265!!! The majority of it came from unconventional ways but was well worth a little bit of effort and time to make it happen. You can read about that here. The rest came from all these little things adding up over a few months. You could do any number of things, if you use cash and have lots of coins, if you do a yardsale, make something and sell at a fair or online. I wrote about some of the little things that added up for us here

I'm following the ideas from the book and choosing methods that are worth my time.

Our total trip cost for resort and tickets is $1,570, this means we're only $305 short of going to Disney for FREE! Can we get the other $305 in the next month? Probably, but we do have some other costs to consider!

Food

Transportation to WDW and back

Flights

Dog sitter

Tim traveled for over 7 years for work and still does occasionally so we were able to use his points/credits to book our flights! I know this is not the case for most people so I apologize that I don't have any money saving tips on this one. I'm sure that will change as we hope to make Disney and annual trip!

Food in Disney is EXPENSIVE... Like $4.50 for a bottle of anything, even water! Whatever you think of as reasonable for food, double it. Now I will say that the food in Disney is the best I've ever had, like ever. Not the quick service, that's your average fast food. I'm talking about the sit down meals. We picked just a couple of our favorites and one new one to try, planning to eat cheap for the other meals and budget a total of $500 for food at Disney. We'll need to bring some cash for the meals on our way to and from MCO, thankfully that won't be a whole lot.

Fingers crossed we found a great dog sitter (we're giving her a trial run this weekend) who is affordable! Tim has put in some hours Ubering which should cover this expense, while it wasn't "free" money it's still not money from our regular income.

There are a couple options for transportation to and from MCO, unfortunately the Magical Express is no longer one of them. The last time we took The Sunshine Flyer! That was fine and we had no issues. That trip was a gift so we were not pricing out options, this time we took a look at how much each option cost and Mears was the best priced. Plus we noticed lots of Mears buses come and go as we waited for our Sunshine Flyer bus to pick us up.

So while I don't think we'll have quite enough time to make this trip for free, I'm confident we could do it in the future if we gave ourselves enough time!