How my family of 6 spent nearly $9,000 on a Disney vacation — and what we'll do differently next time

15.05.2024 - 17:43 / insider.com

Over spring break, my wife and I took our four children from Utah to Southern California for a week at Disneyland and Universal Studios.

For the five-day Disneyland portion of our visit, we spent:

Altogether, five days at Disneyland cost my family $8,767. Given families of four spend thousands on a typical Disney trip, we didn't do so badly for our group of six.

We would've spent more if we hadn't taken three important cost-saving steps, and we could've saved extra money by making four additional adjustments that we'll consider the next time we visit the theme park.

We saved money by driving to Disney instead of flying.

Based on the $336 round-trip ticket cost to fly Delta that week from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, our decision to spend a total of $251 on gas instead of $2,016 worth of airfare for our family saved us about $1,765.

That's not even counting the $100 or more we would've had to spend on rideshares from the airport to Disneyland and back if we'd flown.

Because we drove we were also able to add a mini vacation to Las Vegas to our itinerary, which our kids loved.

We saved even more by choosing a Disneyland good-neighbor hotel instead of one of Disney's three on-site resorts.

We picked the Courtyard by Marriott Anaheim Theme Park Entrance and loved it. Our room overlooked Space Mountain and Matterhorn Mountain, and we had a fantastic view of Disneyland's nightly fireworks display from our balcony.

The hotel also had a 20,000-square-foot water park far larger than any we've experienced at Disneyland-based properties.

Our room had bunk beds and two queen beds, so all six of our family members slept comfortably. Our favorite part, though, was that the Marriott hotel was only about a six-minute walk to the main entrance of Disneyland, which is as close to or closer to the park than any of the on-property Disneyland resorts we've stayed at before.

Plus, staying the same six nights at the Disneyland Resort hotel would have cost us $4,428 at the nightly rate that week of $630.90 plus 17% tax in a standard (non-view) room if the resort had even allowed it. Five people is the bed limit for Disneyland's standard rooms, so I'm unsure we would've been able to stay in one of these hotels anyway.

It's more likely we'd have had to spend $1,000 or more a night on a special suite or villa designed to sleep six or more people.

In other words, we had a great experience staying at the Marriott resort, and we saved at least $1,700 by doing so.

Yes, we saved even though we still spent a whopping $1,285 on meals and snacks in just five days.

It's worth noting that we've spent more than double this amount on food on previous Disneyland trips by doing three or four character-dining experiences and by allowing