How to afford a Disney Annual Pass

My husband and I have been passholders since our oldest was a few months old. So to translate that statement, we’ve had a Disney Annual Pass when we were as broke as a joke. Hahaha but seriously, we were young parents, not in our professional career and living on our own, but we did it. So many people ask us, “how do y’all afford so many disney trips?” “you spend how much on annual passes?!”. And what SO many people don’t realize, it’s actually really affordable, that’s why we’ve kept our passes for the last 6+ years. It’s so affordable, my mom has passes too and she rarely goes.

Within this post, I’m going to break down how we make it work. How we do it “for cheap”. And how you can totally have Disney Passes too, even if you have 4 kids like we do.

Growing up, I’ve always had Disney World passes, I guess that’s what comes with sharing your home city with the Mouse. Going to theme parks is equivalent to going to the park….for a REALLY long time lol. I knew that when I had kids, I wanted the same for my kids. It’s truly the most magical place in the world, and I wanted my kids to experience that magic.

A lot of things are obtainable, it just depends on how bad you want it. You may have to cut back in certain areas like (eating out at lunch, starbucks, getting nails done, cable, etc). So with that being said, Disney World is something we account for in our monthly budget. Just like how we account for Water bill, electricity, car insurance, we add disney into our monthly budget.

How we afford Disney:

1. There are different levels of passes: Platinum Plus, Platinum, Gold, Silver (that’s us here), Theme park select pass, weekday select pass, and Epcot after 4 Pass. The particular pass we have is $479 for the year. Which is almost half the price of the platinum plus. However, with the pass we have, it comes with blockout dates. We cannot go to disney a week in April, 2 weeks at the end of the year, and basically all of summer (June and July). For us, that totally works because it’s REALLY hot in the summer, so i’m okay with not going to Disney for those 2 months, plus we live here so it’s not a big deal that we can’t go, because we can go any other time. But by having a lower pass, we save hundreds, actually over a thousand dollars! To check out different passes CLICK HERE
2. Kids 2 and under are free. So when we first got passes, we only had to pay for 2 people (my husband and myself). We didn’t get RJ a pass until he turned 3. And Elias got his pass when we turned 3, last June. So Disney is super affordable if you only have one babe. Right now we only pay for 4, even though we are a family of 6.
3. Because we are Florida residents, we pay monthly for our passes (and for a discounted rate): That’s right, you can finance a disney pass, but it’s interest free. Every month we pay $31 per person, so a little over $120 a month. If you do the math, one park hopper ticket for ONE person (if you’re a florida resident) is $139.00, and we’re a family of 4 (ticketed guests), meaning if we ALL go to Disney World at least 3 times in a year, we’ll get our money’s worth. If we purchased 4 Disney tickets at $139, we’d pay $556 for a single day. In a year, we pay $1440 for all of us to go whenever we want. Because we love Disney World, and go like 3-5 times a month, we get our money’s worth times 10.
4. We bring snacks and lunch for the kids when we go: People always assume when we go to Disney World we spend a lot of money on food and snacks. We easily could spend over $60 on snacks for all of us, and we have. But to be frugal, we bring our own food. Disney is amazing about bringing in your own food, unlike other theme parks. Our go-to snacks for the kids are sandwiches, gold fish, granola bars, rice krispie treats and juice boxes. Basically anything that can be eaten on the go.
5. Passholder perks: Being a Disney Passholder comes with so many perks, including free parking. That alone saves us over $50 a month (parking being $22 or so and we visit AT LEAST twice a month). Also, should you decide to spend money on merchandise, food at certain restaurants, you can save 20%, just for being a passholder. This discount comes in handy when I want to buy new Minnie Ears.

So with that being said, being a passholder is definitely affordable and do-able, it just depends on how bad you really want it. How much do you spend on Starbucks every month? Could you brew your own coffee at home and pocket an extra $100 a month? You probably could! Little changes like that can make Disney a reality.

The joy on our kids’ faces every time we go never gets old, and these are memories that will last a lifetime, and are priceless. So if you decide to go to the magical side, let me know…maybe we’ll run into each other at the parks!

This post was not sponsored. I’m just a Disney Loving mama, who will promote anything I truly love and use.