Author: Nancy

Visiting Disney World at Christmas? Be Prepared!

Nancy Christmas Holidays, Disney Vacation Planning 0 Comment

I saw my first Christmas commercial the other day. And “pre-Black Friday” sales are out as well, lol, which means that the holiday season is right around the corner…..

Thoughts of Christmas cheer naturally lead me to think of Disney World, as we have visited there several times over the Christmas/New Years holidays, and while it is crazy…it is very, very fun. It is just not for the faint-hearted 😉

But, as I know that this is a popular time to visit Walt Disney World (in fact, it is the busiest week of the year!), I thought that I would devote several blog posts to some strategies for how to handle a Disney vacation with crowds that you never thought were possible.

Because while it IS The Affordable Mouse, and I do write about saving money…well time is money, isn’t it? And to me at least, one of the keys to a successful Disney vacation, is getting the most for your money.

And probably, at no other time of the year, is careful planning as important, as it is during the Holiday Season.

It is certainly one of the loveliest times of year to visit. The holiday decorations are beautiful, and so festive. One of the things that I love is that every resort is decorated to the hilt as well, which then becomes Affordable Mouse Holiday tip #1: Visit the resorts to see the decorations! It’s FREE! 🙂 On your list should be the Grand Floridian for the Gingerbread House, the Boardwalk for the Carousel, and the Wilderness Lodge and Animal Kingdom Lodge for the enormous trees. These are absolutely not-to-be-missed, and great ways to get away from the crowds for a bit.

If you are planning a Holiday vacation to Walt Disney World, then be sure to follow my blog posts for more Affordable Mouse Holiday tips, so that you know what to expect and can plan accordingly. =)

And if you know someone who has a Christmas/New Years trip planned, please send them this way!

Have a magical day!

Florida Residents: Here is Your Chance to Save Money at Disney

Nancy Discounted Disney World Tickets, Disney Vacation Planning 0 Comment
For those of you who are residents of Florida, news last week that Walt Disney World is offering a new version of the Florida annual pass may be of interest to you. Available only to use on weekdays…and with some blackout dates involved….while restricting when you can visit, if you are typically free on weekdays, this could be a huge cost-saver for you!

Learn all the details here.

Have a magical day!

Some New Ideas for Eating Cheap at Disney World

Nancy Saving Money on Food 0 Comment

On our recent trip to Walt Disney World, one thing I was especially aware of was our efforts to keep food costs down. In a previous post, I discussed how we integrated the Disney Dining Plan with the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. Food can easily be one of the most expensive items in a Disney vacation budget, so it is always nice to discover ways to keep that cost manageable, and not have to give up the magic of a Disney vacation.

With that in mind, I came across an interesting article this past week from Fox News.com:  How to Eat Cheaply on a Trip. Following are some of my favorite highlights:

Many of us grab our kids’ hands and race to the rides. Or, if you’re Melissa d’Arabian, who visited the parks last year with her husband and four kids, you grab the coupons you packed and race to the grocery store.
 
“I had planned out easy meals to make,” says d’Arabian, season five winner of “The Next Food Network Star” and host of the network’s “Ten Dollar Dinners with Melissa d’Arabian.”

Her money-saving vacation strategy had several parts. Aside from basing her family in a condo where she could prepare at least some of their food – “I never leave a place where I have access to inexpensive food without feeding everyone,” she says – her vacation groceries yielded meals denser in calories than what she’d ordinarily serve back home.

“At home I try to get the most water-filled ingredients possible [like] fresh vegetables,” she says, but when traveling, food needs to be dense, portable, and high on long-term energy, and it’s easy enough to hydrate inexpensively with water throughout the day.

High on d’Arabian’s list of vacation snacks is trail mix she mixes herself, almond butter “dense with protein and calories,” and her favorite go-to snack, whole-grain, high-protein pasta with fiber and flax seeds rich in beneficial Omega 3 fatty acids.

She notes that while whole-grain pasta is often twice the price of white-flour pasta, “you’re getting a lot of value” on the nutrition side as well as a snack that fills you up. As for when to deploy the snacks, that also differs from her home game.

“The whole trick to [your family] enjoying the vacation is making sure that you’re in preventative mode all the time, d’Arabian says,” which may mean that prior to heading out to a restaurant “you step outside your normal mode of ‘no snacks an hour before dinner.’” Bending your usual rules not only helps to avoid public meltdowns, but it can be a lot cheaper than the alternative. “It’s not a money-saving strategy to order everything [on the menu] and see if something hits,” she says.

You can read the rest of the article for more great affordable disney family vacation ideas.

Have a magical day!








Four Days of Eating Around the World

Nancy Food and Wine Festival, Saving Money on Food 4 Comments
Well we are back from Walt Disney World and Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival, and boy did we have a blast! I will say that, experienced Disney vacationers that we are, as Food and Wine newbies, we found the Festival awesome….and just a little overwhelming! But it was all good, and we are looking forward to returning again!

With only 4 days, we had to plan our strategy carefully…or rather I did, lol! My main thing, before we got to Disney World, was to be able to take advantage, as much as possible, of the many offerings of the Festival…and still have time to visit our favorite attractions too. We were successful for the most part, despite having a little monkey-wrench thrown into things….the monkey-wrench being central Florida experiencing record heat (think mid-August).

Once I realized that we were going to be doing the parks in “summer mode”…well it did kind of put a different spin on things.

“Summer mode” at Disney World, for us, means being at the parks first thing, eat an early (11-11:30) lunch, hit maybe a couple of the cooler attractions after lunch…when the heat really starts to build…and be on our way back to the resort for an afternoon at the pool. Back to the parks then in the evening.

But since we were on the Disney Dining Plan, we had already made dinner reservations for each night, and so our plan was to experience the Food and Wine Festival primarily for lunch on a couple of days. Now, being in “summer mode”, the challenge was how to do this and actually enjoy ourselves.

The solution meant that at 11 a.m. on the dot, we were at World Showcase, waiting for our chosen food kiosks to open. Why? Well, do you know how HOT World Showcase can get when the heat index is close to 100? Yeah. That’s why. =)

So our Food and Wine strategy then became: how to sample from each kiosk, while staying as cool as possible. And…how to also do it somewhat affordably, and not completely stuff ourselves in the process.

Here is how we did it.

For our first luncheon excursion, DH, college-age DD, and yours truly decided to each visit a different kiosk. DD was to use the snack credits from our Dining Plan, while I and DH each used a Food and Wine card that we pre-loaded with $25 each. We figured that was plenty to start. We split up and hit 3 different food vendors, each of us choosing one item from the menu, and then we met (in the nearest shady spot), sampled from each other, “rated” our favorites, and then moved on to do another 3. In about 30-40 minutes we were half way around World Showcase, full (but not too much), and pretty much done for that day. We hopped on the boat to go across World Showcase lagoon (seriously NOT walking the rest of the way around at this point), and headed back to the resort.

On our second day of Festival lunches, we repeated the process going in the other direction, and within another 30 minutes we had succeeded in completing our circuit around the world, having truly sampled something from every food kiosk. It was so much fun, and we had a wonderful time sampling things we probably would have never tried otherwise.

Best of all, we completed day 2 with the remainder of our snack credits and 2 original Festival cards, without having added additional dollars to either card. So we did truly eat our way around the World and managed to not break the bank in the process.

What did we NOT do? We did not do any of the additional paid programs, and I have to say that it was just too overwhelming to have even considered anything beyond the basics this year. We did attend a great free program outside Italy, about making pasta and a simple Italian meal. It was fascinating, and we learned alot.

We also truthfully did not do alot of drinking. It was just too hot to even think about it during the day…we just wanted water…and the two evenings that we were there, the lines were very long, and we were frankly quite full from dinner. I will say that the beer and wine tastings looked pretty awesome, and I would love to explore those more another time.

What would I do differently? Well our strategy actually worked well, and I am pleased that we did not eat ourselves sick, nor did we spend as much money as one probably could spend. I think the main thing I would do next time, would be to either not do the Dining Plan, or plan one evening where we did not have a table service dinner, and do some samplings in the evening as well.

And of course, hope for cooler weather. 🙂

With that in mind, I am, of course, already dreaming of our next visit!

Have a magical day!

Four Days of Food, Family, Fun….and a Little Pixie Dust: I am off to Disney World!

Nancy Food and Wine Festival 0 Comment

The Affordable Mouse is heading to Walt Disney World this afternoon, for a few days of Disney fun!. I am especially excited to be visiting for the first time during the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, so expect to be doing more than my fair share of eating my way around the World! =D

One of the things I will be looking carefully at on this trip, will be additional ways to save money, and will of course be passing on any new ideas or strategies to you. As I have studied the Food and Wine Festival offerings, I can see that this is potentially a budget-buster if one is not careful: each of the food samplings comes with a corresponding cost, so it is definitely possible to spend many American dollars on this!

Here is the strategy we plan to use going into it, and I will let you know how well it works. We are on the Disney Dining Plan, so have dinner ADRs (Advanced Dining Reservations) already planned for our 3 nights there. We love having table service meals at Disney so were unwilling to give up on this, despite the many food offerings at Food and Wine Fest. Instead, we plan to “lunch” our way around World Showcase a couple of days, and will be using snack credits to do so….at least at the start. We will use our counter service credits on these days for a more substantial breakfast.

It is evident that our snack credits will only be a start, so we plan to get one of the Food and Wine reloadable cards, and use it to swipe at the various kiosks where we eat. Gonna try really hard not to reload it though, for the sake of my wallet as well as my jean size lol.

One thing I also suspect will play a role, is the fact that central Florida is currently experiencing record-setting heat, so we will definitely be heading to the parks early, having an early lunch, and returning to the hotel for a pool break. When we get too hot, we will stop eating…and that is probably a good thing!

In any event, I will share our experiences, and hopefully some new ways to plan affordable Disney family vacations when we return. =)

Have a magical day!