How Much Money Should I Budget for Disneyland?

How much money should I I budget for Disneyland is something every parent asks before they take their trip. Let’s get your Disneyland budget in shape to have a great trip — complete with food & souvenirs!

Oh, sweet vacation.  A time to not worry about a thing, and just enjoy family time, right?  The only problem is, that often turns into me paying way more than I should for stuff… and not being mindful of my spending OR  being TOO mindful and it cutting into our fun.  The Disneyland budget is serious stuff.

I think I did pretty doing Disneyland on a budget — balancing it all.

How much money should I bring to Disneyland?

In true Pulling Curls finances style, the budget will be shared with explicit #’s and everything!  Maybe this will answer your question to “How Much Should I Budget for Disneyland?” — or “how much spending money for Disneyland?”.  Let’s find out!

One of the best ways you can spend less, is to book with Get Away Today (we have used them since 1998).

You can spend hours and hours on the phone comparing and contrasting different hotels in the Disney area.  Or, you can call them, find out TONS of info and book in one step.  I bet you’ll even save money.  I can wholeheartedly say that Get Away Today is the WAY for overwhelmed moms to book Disney.  The end.

You can even save $10 with the coupon code CURLS10

If you’re looking to keep track of your budget — don’t miss my Disneyland Trip Calculator:

Disneyland Budget

All vacation budgets can be split into 3 distinct categories

Disneyland Transportation Budget

For us, this was a car ride (Disneyland is only about 6 hours away, that’s almost as long as we’d spend at the airport anyway).  I used the AAA gas calculator to figure out how much this was going to be.  If you’re flying, I’m sure you know about sites like Kayak or Southwest air.  We’ve flown on Allegiant a few times with good results, but I know plenty of people who hate them, so take that for what it’s worth.  Anyway, transportation is a fixed set cost that you will most likely know fairly well before you go.

Disneyland Hotel Budget

We always use Get Away Today for our Disney reservations! They guarantee the best price, and if you find it cheaper, they will beat it.  I have a whole post on how I picked out Disneyland family vacation package.  That post shares all the hotels we’ve stayed at and liked or didn’t like.

Last time we went to Disney I was able to get the tickets through my work for a deal I couldn’t pass up, so we booked those on our own. But, after calling around to 20 different hotels to get the best price, I realized I should have saved the time and just made one phone call to Get Away Today!

Disneyland Ticket Budget

They offer hotel only purchases and ticket only purchases along with their amazing Disneyland Family packages. And, they have amazing customer service (need to know if the room has a full fridge or half, or if it has a wall between you and your kids — they know EVERYTHING about their hotels, love that about them!). I have always enjoyed using them.

Don’t forget to check out the Disneyland MaxPass!

In Hollywood I made a really conscious effort to find a great hotel (as we were going to the Jimmy Kimmel show, leaving our kids at the hotel).  We stayed at the Magic Castle and the kids just LOVED it.  No problem with a splurge every now and then, just need to budget it.  Right?

Disneyland Souvenir Budget

Frankly, this can be as high or as low as you prefer.  I tend to buy a few things in advance, so kids are less tempted to buy, and then they can use their allowance to purchase if they’d like in the stores.

Disneyland Food Budget

Disneyland allows you to bring in as many snacks if you’d like.  We often eat snacks through the day and eat one meal (which we split).

Or, you can get plenty of snacks and eals at the park — it’s kind of all up to you.  I have a whole post about all the places to eat at Disneyland & CA Adventure.

How much spending money for Disneyland

{you could split this cateogry into several, food, souveniers, etc — but I do choose to keep them together and then set a daily budget}

I do this exactly like I did when we were staying with family, but the amounts are larger.

Let’s take a few days:

Monday we were in Hollywood, and I knew food there would be pricey, but we would eat breakfast at our friend’s house and the hotel had some munchies we could utilize as well.  So I budgeted 125… that gave us a meal and a few souvenirs.

Tuesday I was taking Princess P to Ariel’s Grotto and the boys would eat a meal inside the park, so I budgeted 150 for the day as I knew that all was going to cost quite a bit!

Wednesday the park was closing early so we would eat oustide the park, so I only budgeted 75.

Thursday I planned to just live on our snacks all day with maybe some supplementation by the food carts in the park, I budgeted 50 dollars (and we did it, and just bought some popcorn to eat during the parade).

Friday we were eating at the Blue Bayou, and I planned a lot of souvenier buying so I budgeted 200 for the day.

And so on, for each day.

I put each day into an envelope in GoodBudget, which syncs between my own and my husband’s phones and it’s easy to keep track of spending that way.  I find that a daily “envelope” type system works better for me in my head, as I can keep track of what we’ve spent each day — but have NO idea what was spent yesterday.  I had to wipe that from my memory banks. 😀  And it’s not like the excess from each envelope can’t spill into each other.  We didn’t spend the whole 125 in Hollywood, and some that covered my 14 year old buying a LOT more souvenirs than I had planned on (he uses “his” money, but it’s still “my” money and comes out of my budget).

This is similar to how I do our weekly budget at home.

The cost of a Trip to Disneyland

Our Budget looked something like this for Disneyland (these are the actual numbers):

• Gas 250
• Disney hotel  400 (this is obviously on the lower end)
• Hollywood hotel 275
• Disney Tickets 1300
• Spending Money 775

The grand total from all this was 3,000 dollars and we came in at 2975!

Looking to figure out what your own cost will be — don’t miss my Disneyland Trip Calculator!

Looking to not scare the kiddos at Disneyland — don’t miss my parent’s guide:

I hope you guys find this post helpful.  Be sure to check out my other budgeting posts, as well as my other Disney posts.  You can see more specifics of our trip on my how to save at Disneyland post all shown here:

If you’re looking for Disneyland tips — be sure to check out this page!

How do you budget on vacation?  Comment below, or come tell me on my Facebook page!

If you’re considering a Disneyland trip — try out Get Away today!  You can save $10 by using the coupon code CURLS10.