What are your best booking/saving tips?

[hcox31]

What are your best booking and saving tips? packages? no dining plan? canadian deals? Let's hear em!

 

[bababear_50]

Hi Hcox31

A few things I do:
Starbucks Cards Gift Cards --Via AirMiles (use at Airports,Disney Springs and all the Parks).
95 Airmiles=$10.00 in Starbucks.
Many places at Universal Orlando to use them also.

Disney Gift Cards--Save on the exchange and use them to pay each years DVC Dues.
Most family and friends never have to worry about what to buy me for Holidays or Birthdays.

Credit Card that earns $ towards the flights and offers companion fares.(WestJet World Elite Mastercard).
I am actually giving this one up this year and switching to using a Airmiles related credit card
and plan to use Airmiles for flights.

Best Wishes to you
Hugs
Mel

 

[Disneylover99]

Free dining at a value resort for my family of four, with ten day tickets and two weeks stay. Longer stays are better value then shorter stays.

or

Room discount at a value resort, bring some groceries for breakfast, lunch, buy some kids meals, share adult meals, drink free water, lol. Skip the parkhoppers and buy discounted tickets.

The second way doesn’t sound quite as fun, but we’ve had a blast both ways.

Also, sometimes we will upgrade our ten day free dining package tickets to annual passes if we know we’ll be back a few times that year. Then when we take the room discount, we don’t need to buy tickets and we’ll use our AP discount for some purchases.

 

[grantclaire]

Hi, I like to book early especially for flights, use points from credit cards, air miles. Buy US money monthly and of course check Disboards daily!

 

[dis_guy]

Here's mine:
1. Try to get room-only discounts for your time of travel. It's not always possible but it helps.
2. Buy the Canadian Resident park tickets if you can.
3. Carefully evaluate if the DDP is for you. We pay less without it. And "free dining" is not free.
4. Limit your sit-down meals and limit alcohol at restaurant/park prices. Not only is it expensive but there are mandatory tips at TS restaurants that add up really fast.
5. Split meals if you're not a big eater. DW and I split the Breakfast Cuban at Spyglass (CBR) Grill for breakfast as well as a number of items at Flametree BBQ (AK). This can be done at lots of CS locations. WDW portions are usually on the large side.
6. Limit using a CC while there to avoid the dreaded "foreign exchange fees".
6a. Put away a little each month in a US$ savings account to mitigate the shifting exchange rate over time, or...
6b. Consider taking a bunch of Disney gift cards to pay down expenses as you put them on your Magic Band. Avoids the forex fees but you're stuck with the exchange rate on the day you use them.
7. Use a credit card that has cash back or points (or whatever you will benefit most from) that has comprehensive travel benefits so you don't have to buy flight/vacation insurance from third parties.
8. What everyone else said above.

 

[ElCray]

Here is a list of no foreign exchange credit cards and also ones whose benefits for foreign purchases exceed the fee:

https://www.rewardscanada.ca/NoFXFees/
We just ordered the Rogers World Elite Mastercard as our main card for our trip.