disney world vacation cost breakdown

One question I see posed a lot on the Disney boards is how much to budget for a trip. I thought it might be helpful to share my family's cost breakdown for those in the planning stages. For reference, we could have done this trip for a lot less than we did. However, we knew this would likely be the biggest (and potentially only) Disney trip we ever took, so we opted to do things a bit "bigger."

We traveled from September 28-October 5, 2019. Our tickets were for 2 adults + 2 children (my youngest was under 3 and therefore everything she did - from park tickets to character meals - was free). We flew from Cleveland to Tampa and stayed overnight at this Airbnb the night of 9/28. We had decided to rent a van and drove it to Orlando from 9/29-10/5 where we stayed at this Airbnb with my parents + my husband's parents (so we split the cost). The day we arrived in Tampa we visited the Florida Aquarium which I highly recommend. It had a jellyfish touch pool (the big sell for our kids) as well as an outdoor splash pad! During our time in Orlando, we did 2 full park days (Magic Kingdom and Epcot) and one night at the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party (MNSSHP). Jon and I agreed we'd skip the party next time--there wasn't nearly as much open as we expected and it was a sold out night so it was crazy crowded.

Transportation
+Flights: We used Southwest Chase Visa credit card points, so all we had to pay was taxes + fees, which came out to $28 to fly to Tampa and $28 to fly to Cleveland. We did buy tickets for everyone, so this was for 5 round-trip flights.
+Rental Van: We rented the car through Costco Travel. I kept rebooking it as the price dropped leading up to the trip (this saved me over $200). It ended up being $321.87 for a minivan for 8 days. This was slightly more expensive than it could have been because we picked up at Tampa airport and returned to Orlando airport so it was at least $50-$100 more than if we had the same pick-up/drop-off location.
+*Parking: We decided to drive to the parks. At the time of our trip, regular parking was $25 per day. 3 days x $25 meant our parking cost was $75.
Total Cost: $452.87

Lodging
+Tampa Airbnb: $145.37
+Our portion of Orlando Airbnb: $614.52
Total Cost: $759.89 for 7 nights or $108.56/night

Disney Tickets
+*2 Park days: $437
+*MNSSHP: $266.26
+*Memory Maker: $169 (but family chipped in so we ended up paying about $115 of it)
Total Cost: $818.26

Character Meals
Note: I HIGHLY recommend doing these, especially if you don't want to stand in outrageous lines in the parks. They are definitely expensive, but for us the cost was proportionate to the experience we had. All the costs I listed here include the local taxes + a 20% tip.
+*Ohana (breakfast): $155.93
+*Chef Mickey's (brunch): $189.14
+*1900 Park Fare (dinner): $224.95
Total Cost: $570.02

Souvenirs
This out of pocket cost for us was actually $0. Since our families knew we'd be going, they had been giving our kids Disney gift cards to use in the parks at holidays and birthdays. Each child had $100 to spend which was MORE than enough and it worked out great because they knew they had $100 and once it was gone it was gone. Not once did they ask us to buy them something!

Food
I didn't track it religiously at the time, so I just looked at our bank accounts to determine what we spent on eating out (both at restaurants and within Disney) the entire trip. The total came out to $273.98 on dining out, or $34.25 a day. One of the huge perks to having stayed at houses with full kitchens meant we did a big grocery run the day we drove into Orlando and cooked our own food. This undoubtedly saved us a ton of money. I didn't include grocery costs here because that would be part of a normal budget for a week on vacation or not.
Total Cost: $273.98

Florida Aquarium
+5 tickets: $121.30

TOTAL COST: $2996.32

*Paid for with Disney gift cards that I bought at a 5% discount at Target / reimbursed the expense through Swagbucks or other money-making apps. Based on this 5% discount I managed to save an additional $104.58 by doing it this way.

Things of note:

• We did the character meals on our non-park days. This helped us get more "Disney" for less money. Our kids were almost 3, almost 5 and newly 7 at the time of the trip and 2.5 park days was a lot. You know your family best - some families can go every day for two weeks straight. I knew we were not that family and I am glad I didn't let the peer pressure of "you have to do every single park!" change my mind.
• I've heard a lot of people say to skip Epcot if you can't do all 4 parks and have young kids. Epcot was actually our 7YO's favorite park! We loved it too--my husband is vegan and we were there during the Food & Wine Festival and he went crazy sampling all the great vegan foods around the world. My girls seemed indifferent to it though I think Frozen was their favorite ride. Definitely glad we did this park.
• Memory Maker was worth it for us. To not feel like I had to constantly snap pictures at different experiences was great.
• I've heard so many people say that it's way cheaper/better to stay onsite. This was not the case for us. Our Orlando Airbnb gave us so much room to spread out, a private pool, and access to the resort pool (which had water slides, a lazy river, etc.) and the ability to cook many of our own meals. We liked being able to come and go as we needed (without having to wait for buses!) and the cost to park at the parks was nominal. 
• If you have dietary restrictions, Disney is incredible. Jon (vegan) never had issues finding something good he could eat. My youngest had a dairy allergy and Disney has allergen menus available if you ask. It was a great experience--something our local amusement park could learn from!
• Download the My Disney Experience app. We ordered a lot of food ahead in the parks so we didn't have to wait in line. Along the same vein, familiarize yourself with how Fast Passes work! Our Magic Kingdom day we never waited in line for more than 10 minutes because of the Fast Passes and by 3:30 pm when the kids were super hot and exhausted we felt like we had seen all we really cared to see and didn't have any qualms calling it a day.
• Be there for rope drop (park opening). We got so much done in the first 2 hours each day before it started to get crowded.
• Be flexible but have a general plan. I had extensively researched ride height requirements and studied the map of Magic Kingdom prior to our trip. I wanted to avoid zig-zagging all across the park so I had a general list of what rides I thought the kids would love the most and which "land" in the park they were in. This made our MK day so much smoother without the stress of a rigid schedule. 

If you have any questions or want me to share more specifics about anything, please don't hesitate to comment!