Looking for tips and tricks to save money on a Disneyland vacation package? It can be a challenge to find the best deal on a Disneyland vacation, but we have found a few ways to get an actual bargain. One of the biggest traps is purchasing your vacation as a package deal. As we’ll show in this article, most sites will quote you the same “discount” price when you book a vacation package. If you spend the time to book the travel components separately, you will save a few dollars in exchange for your extra work.
Take Costco.com for example. (Yes, the home of bulk packages of toilet paper and coffee also sells vacation packages.) When you visit Costco’s travel site, you are told that members get a discounted rate for Disneyland Resort Hotels: Disneyland Hotel (15%-20% off), Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel (15%-20% off) and Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel (20%-25% off). On the surface, this looks like a great place to save money on a Disneyland vacation package; but it pays to look around.
For the sake of our experiment, we tried to book a vacation for April 30 – May 4, staying at Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel. With 5-Day Hopper passes for two adults and one child, the total was $1,594.00. While it is true that you are getting a deal, the special price isn’t exclusive to Costco.
We visited AAA.com (which has been a partner of Disney’s for years) and used our membership to access the travel portion of the site to book a Disneyland vacation. We were quoted the same $1,594.00 price for our sample trip. Why are these two sites quoting the same “discount” rate for a vacation? The secret is that they are all using the Walt Disney Travel Company’s booking engine on the back end.
To prove the point, we visited the Walt Disney Travel Company’s site and plugged in our information. We received the same $1,594.00 quote for our travel and the same character breakfast and early entry amenities offered by Costco and AAA.
The lesson learned here is that most sites that offer you a discounted travel package are really just reselling the travel packages from the Walt Disney Travel Company. Your warehouse club memberships and other corporate sites likely won’t save you anything beyond the standard quote that anyone can get off the WDTC site.
If you’re willing to give up the convenience of booking it all as a package, you can save some money by booking each piece of your vacation on your own. As an example, Expedia.com usually has some of the best rates for the Disneyland Resort Hotels, especially for stays at Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel.
We plugged in our sample hotel dates and found a rate of only $877 for a room at Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel when booked through Expedia. There are even better deals if you book at a Good Neighbor Hotel. You’ll still need to purchase your theme park tickets separately. But this quick example shows that if you’re willing to book your vacation a la carte, you can save quite a bit in the process.
Images via Disney
