A family vacation to Disneyland can be a major expense once you include the airfare, car rental, park entrance fees and food expenses. The last thing you need is an expensive hotel room. So how can you find a good deal on hotels? Let me tell you my secrets. They involve getting on-resort packages, deals from resellers and utilizing a new service called Airbnb.
Believe it or not, staying at one of the on-resort hotels run by Disney can be quite affordable. Hotel + Disneyland packages — composed of park-entrance tickets, hotel rooms and sometimes other attractive amenities — can save money when compared to a la carte rates. There can be other, hidden savings, too, primarily related to car rental fees and gasoline expenses. If you have a rental car and your parking is included in the hotel price (by the way, you should ALWAYS ask about and verify whether there’s an additional charge for parking at California hotels), you will be able to walk or use the monorail to visit the park. On the other hand, if you choose an accommodation that is further away and have to park when you visit Disneyland, you will need to be prepared to pay a hefty parking fee there. And that, my friends, can add up quickly if you have a multi-day Disneyland and/or Disney California Adventure visit in mind!
But here’s a great idea: if you fly into nearby John Wayne Airport (located near Anaheim, in the City of Irvine), you might be able to skip a car rental altogether, using a hotel shuttle to take you to one of the on-resort Disneyland hotels. That saves between $50/day and $100/day for the car (depending on the size of car and other factors). You might think a hotel on the Disneyland premises would be the most expensive option, but when you consider total cost that may not be the case at all. Be sure to fully explore and examine all your options.
Another tactic you can use to book affordable hotels near Disneyland is to shop the travel aggregators like Priceline, Hotels.com, and Orbitz. These companies buy wholesale inventory and then resell those rooms at steep discounts. I’ve saved over 50% off the normal retail rate using these sites. The only warning I have is not to use them to book at peak travel times, like Christmas week or common school holiday weeks.
Last, you should check out a new service provided by Airbnb, which is an online marketplace where ordinary people rent out their homes, apartments or spare rooms. Especially if you are traveling with a family, getting a cottage or “mother-in-law apartment” near Disneyland can be surprisingly inexpensive. In addition, you get much more than a hotel room –- you can enjoy kitchen facilities, more space and sometimes more “at home” amenities like and additional bathroom and/or separate bedrooms. When you’re traveling with children, these features can put the “vacation” back in “family vacation” for many people, not to mention how the option to do some meals in — even if it’s just breakfast — can save an appreciable amount off your food expenses.
So, go ahead and plan your Disneyland vacation — and plan to spend an appropriate amount of money — but we hope you will please consider these approaches to make the most of your budget!