Let’s talk about transportation after you get to Orlando International Airport.  It is our opinion that having your own transportation during a Walt Disney World vacation is a vital requirement.

Lesson 1: You need your own car at Walt Disney World.

If you have hotel reservations off WDW property (a.k.a. “Off-Site”), renting a car is the only reliable way to explore the Disney property. Getting to and from the airport will require a taxi or a shared shuttle (that will make several stops before getting to your hotel). The shuttles offered by most hotels only take you to the theme park gates – or sometimes only to the Ticket and Transportation Center – and are generally not reliable from a time perspective. If you want to go anywhere else, you will have to pay for a taxi. Instead, you should consider using your cab and shuttle fare to rent a car for your stay.

If you are staying at a Disney resort, you may be tempted to rely on the Walt Disney World Transportation System. We strongly advise against this. One of our guiding principles at Dis on a Dime is that time is money, and the more you have to stand around waiting, the less value you get out of the vacation you spent your hard earned money on. Disney’s Magical Express – which is a paid service much like a shared shuttle to and from the airport – will make several stops before getting you to your resort, with the added bonus of waiting hours for your luggage to be delivered. In certain situations Disney Transportation buses will get you to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom Park earlier and faster than driving – but that also depends on your resort and the number of bus stops on that bus route.

Think about this – after a long day at a theme park and waiting in line for attractions, your feet are hurting, your kids are cranky, and you can’t wait to get to your room. Would you rather hop in your car and go, or wait some more for a bus, shuttle, or taxi and make several stops before getting there?

Another advantage of your own car: you can get your supplies, food, and gifts for less money off-site. Sunscreen at a drug store, groceries for meals in the hotel and on the go, cheap breakfast at Waffle House, and fun gifts at the kitschy shops along US192 in Kissimmee.

So, now we know we need to rent a car. How do we get one cheap?

Lesson 2: Choose the smallest class car your family will fit in.

Though this may sound obvious, the easiest way to start is to only rent enough car to meet your needs. All you are really looking for is four wheels and an engine for a short period of time. There are two big advantages to this:

• Rental cars are priced by size “class,” from the least expensive smallest (“economy”) to the most expensive largest (vans, sport utility vehicles).
• The smaller the class of car you reserve, the better your chance of getting an upgrade. Rental agencies will only purchase a limited number of “economy” class cars, and will carry a large “midsize” and “full size” fleet. Pay for a small car, and you may likely get a larger car anyhow.

If you are a 2-person party, do not let a rental agency’s threat of a Hyundai Accent or Chevy Aveo scare you. First, these cars are perfectly capable of getting two people and their luggage around WDW for a week. Second, you probably won’t get one anyhow. My recent “economy’ size cars have included two Toyota Corollas, a Pontiac G6 sedan, a Saturn Ion, and a Mazda 3 sedan. I have still not been given an Accent or Aveo to rent.

For a family of four, you will most likely also be able to get by for a week in an “economy” rental. A family of four needing car seats for small children could consider moving up to “compact”. For larger families, “compact” or “midsize” should be your starting point.

Lesson 3: Use a credit card with car rental insurance for your reservation.

Do not pay for Loss Damage Waivers (LDW) or other types of rental car insurance from a rental agency. Most credit cards (including American Express) include some type of rental insurance, as well as many auto insurance plans.

Lesson 4: Use these two methods for the best price.

We only use one of two methods for reserving a car. In order of preference:

• Priceline. Unlike a hotel or a flight, I don’t care which vendor I purchase from. With Priceline, you choose your rental car class and how much you are willing to pay per day, and rental car companies will either accept your bid or deny it. If your bid is denied, you can try a different car class and bidding price, or wait 24 hours and try all over again. This process may take some time, so this strategy works best when you have 4-6 weeks or more of time before your vacation to secure a rental car. Bidding on Priceline is a bit of a science, and could take up an entire post in and of itself. Use BiddingForTravel.com to see what bids have recently been successful on Priceline to help choose an opening bid. Also, use sites like Hotwire to get an idea of what car rental rates per day look like for the dates of your vacation. Generally, bids in the $14 – $18 a day range will be successful in most seasons. On average, I pay around $150 – $190 to rent a car a week using Priceline – less than one night’s stay at most on-property Disney resort hotels.
• Deep Discount Coupons. Occasionally we have used a deep discount coupon to secure a better price on short notice than we could get on Priceline. These coupons can often be found from your auto insurer, auto clubs like AAA, and occasionally from the Entertainment Book. Never buy directly from a rental agency without a coupon!

The one major exception to these rules is if you travel for business regularly, in which case you may be able to use loyalty program points and status for upgrades and discounts.

Lesson 5: Fill ‘er up before you take ‘er back.

Rental car agencies will absolutely gouge you on gas prices if you forget to fill your car’s tank before returning it. Make sure to fill up at one of several gas stations around the Orlando Airport before returning your rental car.

A word of caution: DO NOT use the on-property Walt Disney World gas stations to fill your car before returning it to the Orlando Airport! Rental agencies consider those stations to be too far from the airport, so your full tank will not be “full” once you reach the airport and you will be charged for at least one gallon of gas at inflated rates.

Enrichment: Free Parking for WDW Resort Guests

As Syd mentioned in a recent quick tip, guests staying at a WDW resort can park free at all theme park lots.

Welcome to our latest edition of Dis on a Dime 101! Today we’ll be talking about transportation to the Orlando, Florida area. Generally, it is more cost effective for families to drive to WDW than to fly. However many families will want to save time – and in many cases, sanity – by flying.

Here is a strategy we use when looking to travel by air:

Lesson 1: Be flexible

Flexibility on your departure date, your return date, and the time of day your flights take off are easily the biggest ways to save money on airfare. Of course, it requires a certain degree of coordination with your lodging reservations in order to truly realize savings. Sometimes flexibility just isn’t practical due to school and work schedules, however when you free yourself from the box of what days and times you can travel, you have more room to find the best deal on your airfare.

Lesson 2: Plan early and watch trends using Bing Travel / Farecast

Use Farecast at Bing Travel to watch trends and help determine the optimum time for buying fares to Orlando International Airport (MCO). Farecast uses historic fare data to determine a confidence level of how likely a fare will increase or decrease and by how much. Using this information, you can determine the optimum time to purchase your airfare. For example, I looked for flights from Atlanta to Orlando leaving on September 1, 2009 and returning September 8, 2009. Farecast explained that today’s round trip fare of $119 was the lowest price in the past 7 days. It also explained that there was a 94% chance that fares would be raised by $53 to $97 within the next 7 days. Obviously, today would be the day to buy these tickets if these were your dates and departure location for a Disney World vacation!

(I am planning a special trip to Disneyland the following month, so I can’t go. Shucks.)

Lesson 3: When it’s time to buy, use SideStep to find your fares

SideStep is an airline flight aggregator. You enter your travel dates and times and SideStep searches all of the airline’s direct websites to find you the lowest prices on your travel. It has handy filters along the left side of the screen to filter your results in real time. Bing Travel, Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz all have a similar capability, however some of these services tack on extra junk fees and service charges. I have been using SideStep for years and prefer their site when the time comes to pull the trigger on an airfare purchase.

Enrichment: If you have frequent flier miles and other airline perks, use them!

I’ve seen it happen more than once: you have a free companion flight or a plethora of airline miles, but you forgot to use them because you were focused on the lowest price. Don’t forget those miles! One certainty in air travel is that airline loyalty programs are reducing the benefit per frequent flier mile regularly, so use them as soon as you can. Make sure you factor any savings or free flights in with any other searching you may do.

This is a fairly general process but it is a strategy that works well for us. Be sure to search the web for other resources on saving money on airfare. Go forth and get yourself flying!

Welcome to Dis on a Dime 101! In this series we will discuss strategies for saving money on your trip to Walt Disney World. Let’s start with probably the most difficult place to save money, Walt Disney World theme park tickets.

First, a brief overview of the WDW theme park ticketing program, called Magic Your Way. Magic Your Way first starts by choosing your base ticket. You can purchase base tickets with a number of theme park entry days available, ranging from a 1-day ticket to a 10-day ticket. After buying your base ticket, you can purchase add-ons such as Park-Hopping (multiple theme parks on the same day without using multiple days on your ticket), Water Park admission, and the valuable No Expiration option.

Lesson 1: Be Prepared to Buy No-Expiration Tickets in Bulk

Each base ticket “day” gives you entry to one of the four WDW theme parks for one day. The money saving tip here is a little like going to your local warehouse club – if you live outside of Florida and you intend on taking more than one Disney World vacation in your lifetime, you save big money by buying in bulk – but only when buying more than 3 days per ticket. Now, there are some options here:

• If you plan on spending 3 days or less at WDW theme parks in a single trip: buy 4 or more days per ticket with the No-Expiration option.
• If you plan on spending more than 3 days at WDW theme parks and intend to use ALL of your ticket days during a single trip: buy only the tickets that you need without the no-expiration option, which expire 14 days after using your first day.
• If you fall outside of these two situations, buy the maximum number of tickets you can afford with the No-Expiration option.

So, how much more do you really save? Let me illustrate based off of today’s prices:

• A one day base ticket costs $75.
• A four day base ticket with No-Expiration costs $67.25 per day – about a 10% per day savings.
• A six day base ticket with No-Expiration costs $50.83 per day – a 32% per day savings!
• A ten day base ticket with No-Expiration costs $43.70 per day – a 42% per day savings!

Obviously, Disney is banking on the fact that most families will only be visiting 2-3 theme parks per visit. While Disney tends to change prices every year and may change the structure, the fact remains that you need to buy more than three days per ticket today to truly save money.

Lesson 2: Other Ticket Add-ons Are Mostly Useless

A bold statement, for sure! Here’s the scoop:

• Park Hopper should only be considered if you are staying in a Walt Disney World Resort offering Extra Magic Hours (EMH) and everyone in your party intends on taking advantage of that privilege. Generally speaking, when a theme park offers EMH, you should either be hopping out of the park when the park opens for all guests after Morning EMH, hopping to the park when the park starts Evening EMH, or avoiding that park all together as it will be the busiest of the four WDW parks that day. We typically avoid EMH all together, therefore we never need Park Hopper.
• Water Parks and More should only be considered if everyone in your party plans on visiting Typhoon Lagoon or Blizzard Beach AND will be visiting DisneyQuest or Wide World of Sports or will be playing golf. Otherwise, I recommend buying admission to each of these separately.

Lesson 3: Consider Buying Tickets Online Before Your Trip

A word of warning: there are quite a number of “gray-market” tickets floating around on the web and in the Orlando area. Disney World tickets are non-transferrable once the first day is used, and your thumbprint is stored by the theme park entry turnstiles and verified each visit after that. Do not buy “used” tickets, they will not work!

Instead, before arriving at WDW, consider using a ticket wholesaler such as Maple Leaf Tickets, Official Ticket Center (not really “WDW Official”), or Undercover Tourist. These wholesalers may save you even more money in addition to buying in bulk.

Also, be sure to have examined Disney’s special vacation packages before buying tickets. The recent “Buy 4, Get 3 free” promotion is an example of one of those rare packages that is very difficult to beat, even with with careful planning.

Lesson 4: Plan in advance!

Like anything else in WDW, you will get the best value by knowing what to do long before you get there. Do not go to the ticket counters not knowing what you intend on purchasing – you are assured to pay more than you intend that way. Some planning resources:

• The Walt Disney World tickets web page.
• TouringPlans.com Least Expensive Tickets Calculator

One thing you may be thinking about: what about Annual Passes? There are situations where Annual Passes can make more sense than buying a 10-day No-Expiration ticket, especially if you live in Florida. We will talk about those in a future post.