I’ve been on around 150 Disneyland trips in my life. Some were planned, some were with school, others were a result of us not being able to control the urge to not turn around when we drive south on the freeway. Living so close, we have the privilege of going more than most people and I have to remind myself that Disneyland is a once a year, or once in a lifetime thing for a lot of families. With that being said, starting next week I’m going to be posting a series on my blog appropriately titled, “So I booked a Disneyland trip; Now what?” diving into the different things we do to plan for a more thought out Disneyland trip.

We’ve been annual passholders since our honeymoon in early 2015. Angelo and I quickly got used to the free parking, discounts, and perks. It made Disneyland extremely affordable for us and just worked flawlessly. It was so nice to look in my wallet at my AP and know that at any second, I could go to Disneyland and they’d let me in. We made it our mission to go every month or two, and even after Andy was born, we still made it happen. We didn’t renew this year with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opening, just because we know it’s going to be miserably crowded for months and everything will be unbearable. Living 6 hours away, it just wasn’t going to be worth the monthly payment if we didn’t go as often as we did before and that really tore me apart inside. I’ve lived the last 4 years of my life going to Disneyland every few weeks, and now we’re having to revert back to being standard ticket holders. I know it’s such a first world problem and I’m blessed to go at all, but it really does make me sad that our monthly trips have turned back into yearly trips. We’re going one last time this May for our anniversary before Galaxy’s Edge opens in the summer, and that’ll be it for the unforeseen future. I figured since this is our first longer, ticket based Disney trip, I could post our processes of planning, ordering stuff, and show how we get prepared pre-trip.

This is where I leave it to you guys; what topics are you most interested in when it comes to planning? Is it the methods of travel? Dining reservations? Outfits? How to get those cute matching family shirts? Custom ears? You name it, I have advice for it. Let me know in the comments below where I should dig in!

I’ve said it before; Disneyland is a universe in its own. There’s no amount of blog space on the entire internet that I could write every single tip or trick out there to save a buck in the Happiest Place on Earth. However, I’m here today to tell you some of my favorite BOOKING tips. These aren’t in-park tips; these are for those of you who are like me and can’t resist spending money that I’m trying to save. I can’t just save up 2k in cash and drop it on a vacation and don’t understand how people can just do that. GOALS! But personally, I just can’t do it. This is how to book an expensive Disneyland trip on a money managing budget.

VACATION. PACKAGES. OH MY LORD. I can’t stress enough that these things are so easy and convenient for the family on a budget who goes once a year or once every few years (or once in a lifetime!) They let you book your trip as far as a year or so in advance, ask for a small deposit of $200-300 to book, and from there, they let you pay it off whenever you want in random payments of $20 or more. You have by a month before your arrival to pay it off, so it lets people on a budget take more lavish and expensive vacations without having to drop a giant chunk of money at one time. Angelo and I did these for our engagement trip and our honeymoon (Trust me, a 6 day honeymoon is NOT cheap and we are NOT even close to being rich. It was AWESOME!) and they were SO easy to do.

There are so many travel sites on the internet that offer Disneyland ticket and hotel packages, but we’ve always gone directly through the Disneyland website. It’s comparable in price, we know the tickets are legitimate, and you get so many fun extra goodies in the mail all the way up until your trip.

This is a screenshot of the Disneyland “Price Your Vacation” tool on the main page of their website. This is where the magic gets started. Enter your details, make sure to select ALL HOTELS from the dropdown bar, and click Find Hotels. It will first show you this screen:

Now, I don’t know your personal budget and won’t judge one bit, but see those prices? EEEEEK. Go ahead and click that magical choice on the bottom that says “Or Browse Good Neighbor Hotels.” These hotels are all Disney selected, approved, and certified. They’re all very close to the park, and most have a shuttle for free or very cheap that runs between the hotel and the park so you don’t have to worry about paying and parking in the Disneyland parking! The best part? There are some as low as $100 a night. YAAAAAS savings!

Alrighty, so now we’re at the spot where we have to select a hotel. I can’t stress enough to set the filters at the top to your preferences; ESPECIALLY the hotel category. They mix up the hotels in the list so there’s $100 hotels right next to $400 hotels and it can get pretty frustrating when comparing prices. Since our family only showers and sleeps in our hotel, I’m going to go ahead and just select Moderate for my example. Once you do that, click on multiple hotels and find one you like!

I’m going to choose the Fairfield Inn by Marriott Anaheim Resort because that’s where we stayed on our honeymoon. It’s a really nice lightly Disney themed hotel, clean, decently priced, and it’s across the street from Disneyland. Literally walking distance. Keep in mind, the “package price” it shows when you select a hotel is NOT correct yet. They assume you’re going to buy the most expensive ticket option and automatically adds that as the package price. This price, once correct, includes your entire hotel stay combined with tickets and any extras you decide to add.

Past this point, they’re doing some updates to the Disneyland site and it won’t let me proceed anymore with my screenshots, but luckily we’re almost done so I’ll just describe what you do from here. You’ll select your type of room, click “Check Availability” and it will let you know if they have vacancy. If so, that type of room will be added to your vacation package.

The next screen is where you decide what park tickets you want to purchase. We’re going to Disneyland from May 2nd, 2019 until May 6th, 2019. Automatically, Disneyland wants to give us 5 day park hoppers with MaxPass because that’s the most expensive option that aligns with what hotel dates we selected. Realistically, we want to go 3 days, 1 park per day, with MaxPass. So I select those ticket options, and that will adjust my vacation package total.

The final page it brings you to is a review of everything in your package this far, and a list of extras you can add such as flights, airport transportation, car rental, and much more. Select the things you wish to add, and it will update your total. At this point, it’s time to talk numbers, and pay for your deposit. We’ve only done hotel/ticket packages so I’m unsure of how flights and car rentals work in these; (I’d assume you have to pay those in full at the time of booking, and then pay the deposit on the hotel and tickets.) On normal packages, you usually pay $200-300 for your deposit, and then have the freedom to pay whenever you want in amounts of $20 or more.

Here is an actual screenshot of our honeymoon package invoice when we booked it. This was in 2015, so definitely ignore the price total because of ticket and hotel price increases. Once you pay your deposit, you’re all done! Or are you?

FOOD. CHURROS. SOUVENIRS. SPIRIT JERSEYS. MINNIE EARS. How am I supposed to save up for all of these while paying for a vacation package? (Or if you’re like me and barely have any discipline when it comes to not touching money I’m trying to set aside for something. Hahaha)

Behold, the most MAGICAL card in all of budgeting for Disneyland trips. Whenever you have extra money, BUY ONE OF THESE. Pre-loaded at stores, they come as low as $25, but you can go to the Disney store and do lower amounts. These gift cards are accepted in 99.999% of places in Disneyland and California Adventure, INCLUDING THE IN-PARK STARBUCKS! AHHH. Disney gift cards are by far the best way to stockpile a good amount of spending money in my opinion. They’re also great for splitting souvenir money between kids and letting them have a little bit of financial freedom to get what they want (and discipline! When you run out, YOU’RE OUT. Sorry kid!) We even do this for Andy, and he’s only 2. BONUS! If you have a Target RedCard (credit OR debit), you can get 5% off of these babies and save even more money! Let’s all say it together: YAAAAAAAAAAS SAVINGS! Disneyland also doesn’t mind if you have a pile of 20 random gift cards. No judgement in what works! Now all you have to worry about cash-wise is parking (if you choose to park at Disneyland.), gas, and road/in hotel food.

I hope that this little bit of information helps y’all and that you’ve learned something from this today! This is only our opinion and what works for us, and if you find another way that works for you, that’s AWESOME! I love hearing about families finding their way to my favorite place in the world no matter how they end up there.

Comment down below and let me know if you do this! I’m so excited to see who gets to go to Disneyland now because of this money managing trick. 🙂