DH and I are planning to go in late October 2019 for 7-10 days. This will be our first trip w/o DS and DD. DS should be in grad school and DD in her junior year of college then. We will be celebrating our 25th anniversary, which is actually in April, but we decided to put the trip off so we can hit F&W and a
MNSSHP. We did tell the kids they could come for the weekend, however they had to pay for their flights and park tickets. They are saying they will be too poor! Those two are GREAT savers, sooo not ruling that out yet! We hope to stay at WBC, will rent a car, and are going to purchase APs. DH and I both do SB so that will be a help (been doing the BB thing and will until it stops). The kids work with DH and pay us for gas each week. We also take advantage of the Kroger fuel points and they get in on that too. We usually have at least one $1 discount each month (sometimes two) so depending on how much gas everyone needs, we will take take three or four vehicles in and max out the discount. We pay for the gas, then the kids pay us for their portion. I’ve bee saving all the gas money they give me and use it to buy more gc. We have a cc that earns points, but I also will be looking into the SW cards later next year. I would like to get a companion pass, hopefully for 2020 and 2021. We are planning to go back in October and possibly May of 2020 and that would be a big help! If that works out, we will renew our APs and hopefully take two trips in 2021.
Having said all of that, I will get on with my estimated budget:
Tickets- 2 APs @ $1810 After this weekend, I will have $1400 in disney gc. At the rate I’m buying them now, I should be able to purchase the vouchers by the end of October at the latest.
Flights- $600 give or take. As soon as we get exact dates, I will be looking for release dates and pricing. Will probably fly SW and could possibly pay for these with points.
Lodging- Looking at a one bedroom @ WBC, booking 60 days out, $750ish. If we stay 10 days, add in about $400 extra, so let’s go on the higher end and say $1200 total since I’m not sure where we would stay for the extra nights.
Car rental- $300 plan to pay for that with points. May have to add in a little more for uber/lyft rides for epcot and MK days.
Food- $750 maybe? Plan to do a grocery run for breakfast items and sandwich fixins. We plan to spend a day or two on the gulf coast and will pack picnic lunches for that. We may make a dinner adr? We will do some qs meals and whatever at F&W. Should have disney gcs for that. Otherwise, we will mostly eat offsite for dinner.
Airport parking- $90 economy for 10 days.
Pug boarding- $150
Souvies- $750 max. Will want to purchase F&W items for ds, a couple of pick a pearls for dd ( hoping to be able to to get a pair of earrings - not sure on this yet), some stocking stuffers for Christmas. This may be high, depends on what I find.
So grand total estimate: $5650 have $1400 in disney gcs & $300 in points, so just need $3950. There’s still plenty of time to earn gcs and cc points. I will update as time goes on.