The best way to get the most from your Disney World budget is to plan ahead. Don’t turn up at each park and buy an individual ticket. Buy a multi-day pass that will allow you unlimited entry into all of the parks for the amount of days for which your pass is valid. You will save money on the day rate entrance fee, but you’ll also get other perks – such as multi-park entrance in any one day, free transportation between the parks, time saved at the ticket queue, and in some instances you might even be allowed extended time within the park.
Using the multi-park feature of your multi-day pass allows you to visit more than one Disney World park in a day. This is great because it allows you to visit one of the more famous parks, such as the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, MGM or the Animal Kingdom in the morning and then spend the afternoon cooling off at one of the Disney water parks such as Blizzard Beach. You can always return to the larger park either later in that day to watch the firework show, or decide that as there’s still so many rides that you want to enjoy you’ll spend another half day there.
Disney World isn’t cheap to visit and so it’s important to know what you’re going to pay for once you enter the park. For example, you will need to budget for meals and drinks – especially in the Florida heat – but if you plan your visit you can schedule your park times around meal times. You might need to pay out for drinks inside the park, but a budget tip for this is that if you’re taking children into the park, take some picnic cups with you, and then purchase one supersized drink and divide it between the appropriate amount of cups. Leave the park at mealtimes unless you want to do something special such as have a character meal at Cinderella’s Castle (you may need to make a reservation for this at least 3 months in advance so planning is an absolute necessity), and then return after you’ve eaten.