TripIt
One of our favorite travel tools is TripIt. TripIt is a web site (with associated mobile apps) that gathers details of your travel, including hotel reservations, airline tickets, cruise itineraries, rental cars, and other travel information. TripIt then presents you with a comprehensive itinerary in a simplified format that allows you to easily view the information.
Jacksonville Special
One of the tricks I’ve described before is to look at alternate travel arrangements. When considering whether to upgrade our tickets this summer to annual passes, I looked for economical travel/lodging arrangements for other possible trips. We had several school breaks to consider, including a Halloween-based trip (which includes some teacher work days in November) and an early February trip (using teacher work days as well). Since these were “quick” trips to fit into a fixed calendar, we needed to be able to fly down to Florida in order to maximize our Disney time.
Combining Disney Gift Cards
There’s great news for those that acquire numerous Disney Gift Cards through discounted means. The disneygiftcards.com website has been updated with additional functionality. Previously, the site only allowed you to check the balance on your Disney Gift Cards, and the interface was a bit clunky and hard to use. Since the site was refreshed, you can store up to 5 gift cards on the site at once. More importantly, you can also combine multiple gift cards together, transferring the balance from one to another. The most you can transfer and store on one card is $1000. You can delete emptied gift cards from the site to make room for adding more. Also, if you fill one of your gift cards up to $1000, you can also remove it from the site. Removing the card from the site doesn’t change its stored balance. You can always add it back to the site later as well. If you lose a card, you can call in and have them freeze the remaining balance on the card.
Save Money on Lodging (Disney World)
We are always looking to save money when visiting Walt Disney World. One of the primary expenses to consider when planning your trip is lodging. Any money saved on lodging can be directed to other expenses or set aside to upgrade your lodging on a future trip. Here are various options for getting your lodging costs down:
Rope Drop
One of the best kept secrets at Disney World and Disneyland is rope drop (with apologies to Disney Vacation Club for stealing your thunder). Rope drop is the time when the park opens. Arriving at the park for rope drop is one of the best ways to maximize your time at the Disney parks.
Cheap Cruises
Car Rentals
You’ve planned the perfect Walt Disney World vacation. Assuming you are staying on property, you’ve got your flights planned out as well as your Disney vacation package (complete with tickets, hotel and dining plan). Now you’re faced with another tough decision: should you get a rental car or not?
Prepaid Visa/Mastercards
Every once in a while, you will find discounts or cash back for purchasing prepaid credit cards. These cards will have the Visa or Master Card logo on them. These prepaid cards generally come in denominations of $25, $50, $100, $200, and sometimes more. They also come with heavy fees that total 3% of the card’s value or more.
Cheap Shopping Options (Disney World)
“Cheap” and “shopping” are two terms that are normally not used together when it comes to Disney. Most of the items at Disney are much more expensive than you would find elsewhere. However, if you plan ahead, you can spend less money shopping at Disney than you might have otherwise.