Warning: this post contains a bunch of math.
I was chatting with a group of people about Christmas presents for our kids and budgets for gifts, and I mentioned that a certain electronic gadget that is popular with kids does not fit in our budget. And then someone said to me, "If you can afford to go on a Disney cruise, you can certainly afford to get that for Christmas!" That statement reminded me that a Disney cruise can be quite expensive, and I guess because we are going on one people might have the perception that we are loaded with discretionary spending money.
But that couldn't be further from the truth! Last month I wrote about
10 Tips to Save Money on a Disney Cruise, and we used many of those tips to save on our out-of-pocket costs on our next cruise. And just to keep this real for my fellow frugal readers and vacation enthusiasts, here are some hard numbers on our savings.
Back in February 2013, Disney released itineraries and schedules for the majority of 2014. Since prices go up as the ships are filled with reservations, this opening day is usually the cheapest price you will see a future cruise. I checked out the price for a 7-night cruise on the Disney Fantasy for the first week that my kids are out of school for the summer. The price was $8058 for the cheapest stateroom for my family of 5. But for a true picture of the cost, I would have to add in tips ($420 which is added to our on-board account automatically) and airfare for 5 from Dallas to Orlando (approximately $1000 for 5 people when a good deal strikes).
So the base line price for my family of 5 during the first week of summer vacation (and the cheapest week of the summer) was
$9478. Ouch! Almost $10k.
But then I started attacking this cost in every possible way to reduce it and make it affordable.
Savings: Time of Year
So the first thing is that we decided not to cruise over the summer at all, and we booked a cruise when our kids are in school. We have had great experiences pulling our kids out of school for a week on previous family vacations (despite living in Texas, one of the strictest states when it comes to truancy laws). Moving the cruise date to the fall saved us
$2961, and it was the biggest chunk of savings.
Savings: Booking on board
We were also able to save an additional
$470.40 (10% of fare excluding port taxes)
off the cruise fare by booking a cruise while on board our 2012 Disney cruise and moving it to our new date. Disney Cruise Line also gave us
$200 in on-board credit for booking on our 2012 cruise that we could apply to our tips (or excursions, souvenirs, etc.).
Savings: Using a travel agent
We booked our 2014 cruise with a travel agent that gives on-board credit. We received
$150 from
Travel on a Dream just for booking with our agent (instead of booking through Disney directly). The cruise was the same price whether we booked through Disney or through an agent. Since we referred several of our friends to our agency, we also received
$140 in referral credits that we can use on our cruise. Woohoo! The cost of our tips is now completely covered with all of our on-board credit.
Savings: Credit card rewards
We used Southwest Rapid Reward miles to book our flights to Orlando for (almost) free. Each ticket only cost $10 in taxes, so we saved approximately
$950 on airline tickets. I
applied for 2 Southwest Visas back in 2013 and earned a companion pass, so that one person in our family travels for 0 points and $0.
My husband and I also had over 100,000 Delta Airlines Skymiles (from opening Amex Delta credit cards in 2013) that we could not use due to limited flights and availability out of Dallas. So we decided to cash those in on the Delta website for
$700 in Amex gift cards, which we then applied to our cruise balance.
We had some Disney rewards sitting on a Disney credit card that we opened up back in 2011 which totaled
$253.15 that we applied to our cruise balance.
My Discover card also wooed me to spend more money on it over the Christmas holidays last year. I have owned a Discover card since I was in college and I don't want to close it since it's one of my oldest accounts. But I rarely use the card anymore since there are cards with better benefits. However, I received an incentive letter in the mail (snail mail) from Discover for a
$75 gift card if I would reactivate my expired credit card. I also received 2 incentive offers in the mail for extra cash back if I spent $1000 a month on the card during the holidays. So we shifted our normal spending to that credit card and received another
$275 in Discover cash back that we applied to our cruise balance.
Note: We do not carry any balances on our credit cards, so we do not pay any interest or fees.
So the math looks like this:
Summer cruise with tips and airfare for 5 people:
$9478
Savings/Deductions:
Time of year -$2961
Booking on board 10% savings -$470.40
Booking on board credit -$200
Travel agent credit -$150
Travel agent referrals -$140
Airline miles for travel -$950
Airline miles for Amex cards -$700
Disney reward dollars -$253.15
Discover gift card -$75
Discover cash back -$275
Total savings: $6174.55
Out-of-pocket cost of trip:
$3303.45 (65% savings)
Although some people might still think that $3300 is a lot for a 7-day vacation for a family of 5, I think it's not a bad deal considering it's almost all-inclusive. That price includes our airfare, entertainment, stateroom, food and drinks.
Optional extras include a hotel night the night prior to the cruise if we choose to fly in a day early (which we are, it's hurricane season and we don't want to risk missing our cruise due to a flight delay), transportation from the airport to the port (which we are sharing with another family on our cruise to reduce costs), alcohol (we don't drink alcohol, but if we did, we would bring our own since Disney allows that), shore excursions (we have a few cheap ones planned but they will not break the bank) and souvenirs. But those extras are the same no matter what time of year you cruise.
We booked the actual cruise 20 months prior to the sailing, so the $3300 in out-of-pocket expenses breaks out to about $165 a month to save. It's also about the money we save over 2 years by
mowing our own lawn and
providing our own pest control.
So there you have it.
On our next vacation in early 2015 (which is NOT a Disney Cruise, shocker!) we are working on free flights and free hotels for the entire vacation by using miles and points.
