We have season passes for Walt Disney World in Orlando - one of the perks of living an hour away. As a result, we go over there a lot! When you make as many trips as we do, and you live so close, you learn a few tricks about saving money. Yes, it’s easier for us because we can bring a cooler or supplies from home, and people who fly in and don’t rent a car can’t do the same. But if you can hit an offsite grocery store for supplies, you can save a bit of cash too. You can even buy a few things at the resort - the gift shops sell some food and gallons of milk, etc.

We usually bring doughnuts and cereal for breakfast each morning. It saves time AND money to eat quickly in the room before we head out. The moderate and deluxe resorts come with a fridge, but you can request one in the value resorts for $10 a day. We also bring water, lunch meat, peanut butter, jelly, etc. If we’re out of the room early, we buy a snack at Disney (popcorn or pretzels) and come back to the room around 1 for lunch and a rest. We also take our own water bottles into the park.

One thing that’s a great value at Disney are the kids meals. For $4 you get something like chicken or macaroni and cheese, plus fruit, crackers, and a drink. It’s cheap AND healthy.

One thing that’s NOT a bargain are the fixed priced character meals. Anyone over the age of 9 is an adult, and most kids don’t have an adult sized appetite. If you’re willing to fib, say that your 10 year old is only 9, and you’ll pay half price. Charging a 10 year old for a $28 dinner is just insane!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

The weather was perfect this weekend, we were kid free, we ate, we drank, we laughed. What more could you ask for?

I will be calling the resort with a few small complaints. The first one is that we were out of our room from 8am til 3pm on Saturday. When we returned, I was a little disappointed to see our room hadn’t been cleaned yet, but no big deal. We really only needed fresh towels. Jim left, and I laid down, after I put the do not disturb sign in the door. No sooner did I doze off…and the maid was knocking. Ugh! Do not disturb means DON’T disturb!

Also, when we kicked on the a/c Saturday night, it was SO loud. Like someone was running a vacuum in the room. We sucked it up and didn’t do anything about it then, because it was midnight. I didn’t want someone up to fix it at midnight, and I didn’t want to move to a new room at midnight. But, I will be calling to let them know!

We’re heading out of town tomorrow morning, but before I go, I wanted to share a few things that popped into my mind. So here’s my unofficial list of 6 tips to help you save money on travel!

1. Use Priceline. It can be tricky getting deals with airfare and hotels with Priceline, but if you don’t mind when you’re flying, or the layovers, or where the hotel is, you’ll do fine. I prefer to use it for car rentals, since you get to specify the type of car, and where and when you want to pick it up. My husband and I recently rented a convertible for a week and paid under $300. List price for the same rental when paying retail? $600!

2. Consider flying into different airports. It would have cost us big bucks to fly to Canada for our summer vacation, but I found a great sale from Tampa to Detroit on Northwest. Since we planned to rent a car anyway, it wasn’t a big deal to fly into Detroit and drive a few hours to our destination. Especially when we ended up saving $250+ per person! Likewise, if you live in an area serviced by several airports, you may save money by going a few miles out of your way.

3. Don’t be afraid of smaller airlines. We have a lot of little airlines in our area that fly out of the smaller airport (St. Pete / Clearwater) You can often get great fares on these budget airlines to major cities. A friend of mine used to travel between here and Cleveland, Ohio for $60 each way. Regional airlines have a lot of deals that will beat the big guys!

4. Take food! This one is especially important if you’re traveling anywhere with small kids. Snacks cost money. Snacks in airports, big cities, and theme parks cost even MORE money. When we go to Disney World, for example, we take a small backpack in with snacks, or even sandwiches. It really cuts our vacation budget!

5. Look for deals for residents of your area. We’re lucky to live in Florida, because so many theme parks give discounts to Florida residents who buy season passes. Residents of other states with theme parks may get the same deals. We recently saw a great offer for Florida residents to get passes to Universal on the cups at Wendy’s!

6. Research before you go. Having a plan in mind of what you want to see when you’re traveling will help make the trip that much enjoyable…especially when traveling with the family. You’ll also be able to get an idea of what things cost, so that you can budget. Nothing is worse than getting somewhere, realizing you didn’t budget enough money, and having to cut sites, tours, or extras out of your dream vacation.

My next trip isn’t going to take me very far from home.

My husband and I are headed to Orlando in 2 weeks for our anniversary. We’re staying at the Port Orleans Riverside Resort, which is a moderate resort located on Disney property. The reason we picked it? Well, we honeymooned there 11 years ago, so we wanted to go back to the same place.

We’ll be eating dinner on the night of our anniversary at Victoria & Albert’s, which is located at the Grand Floridian resort. It’s a splurge, but how many times do you celebrate 11 years of marriage?

We live only an hour or so away from Disney, but trips like this (without the kids) are always fun and we get to do a lot of things that we wouldn’t normally see or do on a family vacation.