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By the time you read this, I will have returned from a fun but expensive week at Walt Disney World. This will likely be our first and last trek to the Magic Kingdom, as my family prefers more educational or natural-wonder summer destinations such as Washington, D.C., or the Rocky Mountains. But whether it was my kids' ages - 13, 11 and 9 - or those decades of marketing pounding down on my husband and me, we opted for Disney this year.
And although I literally blanched at the cost of the theme-park tickets, even buying them at a slightly cheaper authorized Web site, I discovered several ways to get around paying full price for the Mickey Mouse experience.
Here are my tips:Flights
Frequent-flier miles were introduced 25 years ago last month, but with a reduced fleet of airplanes, redeeming those miles is harder than ever. One strategy is to think out of the box and look for airports near your destination. We had enough frequent-flier miles for two free tickets, but we couldn't get into Orlando with them. So my husband and son took the free tickets to Tampa (90 minutes away) and rented a car (which he needed for business) to pick the rest of us up at the Orlando airport. The Tampa car rental was cheaper.
Housing
We were lucky to know a family with a time-share condominium three miles from the Magic Kingdom. We paid the family's $500 annual fee. Several Web sites link renters with vacation properties, including www.vacationspot.com (owned by Dallas-based Hotels.com). One showed a one-bedroom, small kitchen vacation rental at Celebrity Resort Orlando, four miles from Disney for $70 a night (not including taxes.) Web site www.greatrentals.com has listings but no guarantees on the quality of the properties. Check eBay, too.
Tickets
Disney does not offer ticket discounts. Guidebooks and www.mousesavers.com recommended two ticket brokers, www.UndercoverTourist.com and www.TicketMania.com. For $207, Undercover Tourist offered a seven day adult pass and $166 for a child pass, which included taxes and shipping. The price is the same on the Disney Web site, but Disney adds taxes and shipping. A single-day pass costs $62 for adults and $52 for children. (Our tickets were lost in the mail, so we had a hassle at the Disney counter using the tracking code to get them.)
Time
Guidebooks, such as The Unofficial Guide to Disney World, are invaluable in offering a strategy for organizing a visit with so many choices. The Unofficial Guide said the Magic Kingdom alone had 51 million billion combinations of touring plans for its 21 main attractions. The guide offers strategies on how to hit the most rides in the least time. It claims to save you 3 1/2 hours of wait time for rides. It's also important to learn about the park's layout and FastPass, a free timing device for getting back on popular rides without waiting hours in line, beforehand.
Food
Although there is a policy against bringing food into the parks, all of the guides recom-mend it anyway so you can save both time and money at the park. (Several of our friends and relatives agreed.) We brought lunch and snacks in every day and had breakfast and dinner at the condominium. We saved our money for ice cream and other treats at the park and our time for waiting in line for rides.
