What is the biggest expense of your trip?

[Pastalady]

Just curious! Is it the flight, hotel, park tickets or food and souvenirs?
For us the hotel is the biggest expense, then flights, park tickets are pretty close to flights, then food/souvenirs.

 

[JandD75]

Park tickets. We choose the cheaper motels, eat breakfast in our room to save money on meals, and drive to Anaheim. It boggles the mind when I recall that one day admission was $13.00 when I started going to Disneyland.

 

[Aladora]

If we fly from Victoria, then flights are the biggest expense by a good margin. If we drive to Seattle and then fly, then it's a close tie between our parkhoppers and travel.

 

[mikana876]

Park tickets.

We are close enough to drive and get there in one day.
We stay at BWPPI.
We're doing a couple TS meals but not enough to catch up with the price of tickets.

 

[Phoenixrising]

Here's our most expensive based on most expensive to least:

1. Air
2. Hoppers
3. Hotel
4. Souvies (we don't go to DL often so when we do we tend to spend alot on them)
5. Food
6. Taxi
7. Misc.

 

[Swtonscrappn]

For us it can be food or general activities (including park tickets). We tend to stay for a week, and are foodies, so if we can afford it, we eat in the park almost exclusively. Or we put our money towards extras like preferred seating or little day trips in the area. We are willing to skimp on a hotel that we dont spend much time in, in order to spend more in either food or adventure

 

[DHSbutcher]

This trip its our flight. Disneyland is one leg on our journey and the one way flight from orlando to LAX was 250 per person, plus the one way flight from LAX to mexico was around 300. Were using hyatt points to stay at the hyatt regency OC for 3 nights, and for our last night we got a room by LAX for 100, so not bad at all. Our tickets are comps. As for food, we don't have a set budget as this is a grey area, if we think the meal is worth it we will spend, but not excessively. We don't want to count our pennies on vacation, and if we so happen to buy a lot of snacks, we bought a lot of snacks and so be it. I'm estimating about 50$ a day per person on food, and this is a rough guess and not something we plan to follow. We don't buy souvenirs or gifts for family, and it is just me and my mom traveling. We are going straight to mexico after LA so we have no room to bring anything with us, as our bags are already packed for 2 weeks of clothes!

Edit:
Forgot to mention transportation costs. We hire a town car for about 80 each way to and from LAX. Sure a shuttle is cheaper, but this is just one of those things we don't mind putting our money towards. The peace of mind is great, and your not packed in a van with 10 other people. Our hotel offers a shuttle to and from DL for 5$per day per person, so we plan on using that.

 

[5forMickey]

1 - Hotel by far - I'm spoiled and love it -- DLH Club Level.
2 - Food - expensive for a big family
3 - Tickets
4 - Gas, we drive, but you can fit a lot of us in that big Excursion instead of needing two vehicles (so don't hate on us cause it takes a lot of gas - we have got some death stares in "green" Calif before).

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

For us it's usually

1) Hotel - we like staying onsite
2) Tickets - we have APs, but even the monthly plan x6 adds up
3) Food - we usually do one table service per day of our trip, which can add up
4) Air - if we can get good airfare or use our rapid rewards points, we fly. Otherwise, we drive.
5) Souvenir - because we are lucky enough to go at least once a year, this have become limited over the years.

 

[RainyDayPixie]

Park Tickets. (And we even fly!). They're getting so expensive! I feel like I used to squeak out a budget $1,000 trip for me and 2 kiddos. Now we're $3k for the four of us.

 

[leslieboehm]

I haven't seen the price breakout between hotel and tickets, but it will be a toss-up between those two (I know DLH is expensive, but we got 4 day hopper passes AND MHP tix on the most expensive night, so could go either way, I think). After that will definitely be food, my little family LOVES good food

 

[Dot2Vegas]

Just curious! Is it the flight, hotel, park tickets or food and souvenirs?
For us the hotel is the biggest expense, then flights, park tickets are pretty close to flights, then food/souvenirs.

We drive to the parks and stay off site. We usually take one-three day trips, so meals are not a big deal. Our biggest expense is 5 park tickets!

 

[GatorChris]

On our last trip, it was the hotels. We stayed at Paradise Pier, at a pretty good rate, and still payed $1250 for 5 nights, tax included. That was more than tickets for 4 for 4 days. And we drive, so that's cheap. Our next trip we're staying at HoJo, so park tickets will be the big expense. Well, kind of. We got APs so our first trip is very expensive and all subsequent trips are virtually free.

Now when we go to WDW, it's the flights. It would cost us $2K just to go there..... which is why we're going to DL for the next year or so.

 

[tlovesdis]

For me it's a tie between hotel and food.

When I go lately, it's usually just me and one of my nieces. I have an AP so I only have to buy their ticket, usually a two day-one park per day ticket.

We like to eat lunch and dinner in the parks and we stay somewhere under $100 a night, with snacks, our food budget it about the same as our 3 night hotel budget! LOL

 

[rootbeer]

Here are the two budgets I'm considering for our next trip (Hopefully in March '15). One for staying onsite, the other at a GNH. Just DW and I. Airfare is cheap because we have Alaska air miles to use. This is for 4 nights hotel, three day PH passes -

Onsite --- GNH

1800 - hotel - 700
550 - passes - 550
300 - airfare - 300
150 - rental car - 150
800 - food - 800
600 - souvenirs - 600

$4200 - total - $3100

 

[Renae De Liz]

I've gone 3 times as an adult so far (once about every 3 years, so lots of time to save) and as we have very long trips (7-8 days) the hotel is the most expensive by far, but only because as we go rarely, and we opt for the Grand Californian Downtown Disney view. So multiple thousands of dollars for that. But if we chose to stay at, say, HOJO or a like hotel, it would only cost $1300 for the entire weeklong stay!

Airfare from Maine to California RT is around $1200 ( if you're REALLY lucky!) to $2000. I always get either Southwest or Jetblue so I get some free checked baggage.

Ticket price REALLY stinks ever since they got rid of the extension options past 5 days. For my family of 4 to go 7 days it goes somewhere around $1800!! Needless to say, when we move to CA we're getting annual passes! Much more cost efficient.

Finally, FOOD and ITEMS... I budgeted $150 per day for my family of 4 last trip, and had difficulty staying within that amount. We would often get one "sit down" or character meal a day, and the rest was whatever we felt like grabbing. This ALONE was almost our entire budget for the day! So any items we wanted took up over-budget. Next time aiming for $250 a day if possible. I'm sure this is lower for families who are more savvy with their food, but as we don't go very often, we only wanted to try all the different Disney fare and character meal experiences

As for extra costs, I'll budget a little for "arrival goodies" for the kids at the hotel (they love the little pirate cake and balloons!) and will get Disney pajamas from Disneystore.com ahead of time for the kids (much cheaper online). Also the transportation on the Disney bus was around $100 RT from LAX. Next time I might splurge a bit more for a private towncar, as if you stay at GCH the bus will first stop at DLH, where you get out, get your luggage, then get put an ANOTHER bus just to go next door. Quite the hassle!

 

[Sparkleshine]

Park tickets for sure. Best price I could find so far was on Way.com and it was $1088 for 2 adult and 2 child 5 day hoppers (We have 1 2 year old).

I book early so our hotel (D I&S) is $760.60 for 5 nights.

Food should be run around $750 - $1000. We aren't big shoppers.

So our 5 day trip should run around 3K for the 5 of us.

Oh, and we drive as the tickets for 5 from PHX doesn't outweigh the gas cost and convinience of driving($721.80 on Southwest right now).

 

[Cruise Ship Man]

The Park tickets!

 

[tania7424]

Park Tickets. (And we even fly!). They're getting so expensive! I feel like I used to squeak out a budget $1,000 trip for me and 2 kiddos. Now we're $3k for the four of us.

That's what we're at flying from Washington state, staying at HOJO, with 5 day PH's. Not including spending money, Halloween Party, GK, etc.

 

[NoIdea]

Flights. Definitely flights lol. We are a family of four coming from Australia though so that's to be expected