Before our summer trip to Universal and Walt Disney World, we started thinking about converting our Disney tickets to annual passes.  In order to justify the cost, we needed to see if we could add some additional trips in throughout the year.  One way we could keep the cost down for these additional trips was to look at alternate flying locations around Orlando that might be cheaper than flying to Orlando.  Thus was born the Jacksonville Special.

We had identified two separate occasions where we could fly into Jacksonville instead of Orlando and save a significant amount of money.  The math worked out as follows:

• Upgrade Tickets to Annual Passes: $800
• Flights: $1100
• Rental Car: $287 (might go lower)
• Hotel: $196

Total Cost (Minus food and gas) = ~$2383

So, how did the trips go?

Trip 1

Our flight ended up leaving Dulles three hours late, so what should have been an easy drive at 6 pm from Jacksonville to Orlando ended up taking place at 9 pm.  That put us at our hotel at about midnight.  Not horrible, but not the best.  We took this trip over the Halloween weekend and managed to work in a visit to the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween party.  We absolutely loved this trip.  We got to see the Disney parks at Halloween, which we had never done, and we enjoyed the party as well.   We also attended the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, eating ourselves stupid around the world.  We will have another post related specifically to this trip.

The costs for this trip ended up being pretty much what we anticipated:

• Upgrade Tickets to Annual Passes: $800 (this was a one time expense that we paid in the summer)
• Flights: $540
• Rental Car: $117
• Hotel: $0 (We used Hilton HHonors points)

We did end up adding in tickets for the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at $70 per person.  We also spent a good amount of money for food at the parks, dining in some of our favorite places, and eating at Epcot.

Trip 1.5

After looking at our holiday plans, we decided to do something we had always kind of avoided.  We were going to go to Disney World for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, which is one of the most crowded and expensive times to visit the parks.  We really wanted to see the Christmas decorations at the parks.  We fully understood that what we were getting ourselves into with the large crowds.  We will have a separate post about this trip as well, but overall, it was fantastic.  We took things at a slow pace and tried to concentrate on doing new things we hadn’t done before.

The costs for this trip were really low.  We couldn’t find cheap airline tickets near Christmas, so we decided just to drive our own car.  Fuel costs have dropped through the floor, so we didn’t spend more than $200 to drive round trip.  We probably did spend money eating on the road going down and coming back, but it was certainly cheaper than any meal we had while we were in the parks.  We found a Hilton Garden Inn near Sea World that didn’t require a ton of Hilton points, so we were able to get the room for free!

• Upgrade Tickets to Annual Passes: $0 (We upgraded them in the summer)
• Flights: $0
• Gas: $200
• Rental Car: $0
• Hotel: $0 (We used Hilton HHonors points)

We spent additional money in the parks eating at various places.

Trip 2

This was supposed to be our second trip during the early February time frame.  While we were at Disney in the summer, I received a notification from United Airlines that our flight times had changed for this flight.  It was going to arrive 6 hours later into Jacksonville than we had planned and then leave from Jacksonville three hours earlier.  We were going to lose valuable park time due to an airline schedule change.  I called United to see what we could work out.  After spending 30 minutes on the phone with a representative (and their supervisor), I was able to get our flights back to their original time — but flying into Orlando, rather than Jacksonville!  This change in itinerary would save us from needing to travel back and forth to Jacksonville.  I was pretty excited about this.  I did have to get a rental car at the Orlando airport, which was a bit more expensive.

We had originally booked the hotel room and used Hilton points.  We were short some of the points we needed for all the nights, so we spent $196 to get enough points to cover the 5 nights for this trip.  It turns out we didn’t need the points because we earned more later, but since we spent the money, we will count it as an expense on this trip.

• Upgrade Tickets to Annual Passes: $0 (We upgrade them in the summer)
• Flights: $540
• Rental Car: $207
• Hotel: $196 (We used Hilton HHonors points)

We used the same hotel we used during the Halloween trip, since it was very close to Disney World.  There wasn’t anything new going on during this trip, but we got to visit all the parks and had a great time.

Summary

So, here is the total cost for the 17 days we spent in the parks, not including the 8 days or so we did during the summer:

• Tickets: $800
• Flights: $1100
• Rental Car: $324
• Gas: $200
• Hotel: $196 (We spent this amount to buy some Hilton Points)

Total Cost (Minus food and rental car gas) = ~$2,620

I think spending $154 ($2,620/17 days) per day for the entire family in the parks, including transportation (flights/rental cars), park tickets and hotels, is a great savings.  We did spend more money in food costs and shopping while at the parks, so that wasn’t our total costs.  Also, if these trips has been combined into a single trip, the costs could have been lower as well (we would have paid for a single set of tickets instead of two).

Have you found a great way to save money while visiting Walt Disney World?  Let us know!

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