Travel

Here is the final article and savings tips that we wanted to share with you from our recent vacation to Southern California and Theme Parks. As many of you know, the week between Christmas and New Year’s, we enjoyed an 11-day family vacation that we all worked hard to save up for and to celebrate all of our family’s work to become debt-free.

With that in mind, we obviously wanted to use as many deals and savings to make it an affordable vacation! We have shared how we saved on accommodations, how we saved on food, how we saved on theme park tickets, so now we wanted to share some tips on how we saved on souvenirs!

Here are some ideas on ways to save on souvenirs from Theme Parks!

• Buy before you leave: If you are looking for souvenirs to a specific theme park, you may be able to purchase themed items online!  The best example is the Disney Store online for Disney souvenirs.  We knew before we left that we wanted to get the official autograph books and the official Mickey ears with the names embroidered on back for each of the kids.  We also shopped the clearance section at the time on the DisneyStore for any more potential souvenirs.  For the hats and autograph books, they were not on sale (as suspected ) but we did have a coupon code for 20% off and FREE shipping. This meant that not only did we save money on the in-park prices, but an additional discount on top of that with FREE shipping!  In the end, we were in our Southern California beach condo on Christmas and we made these souvenirs part of the Christmas morning for the kids.  It was sweet and they loved it! While at the park, we had a number of people ask us where we had our hats personalized because the personalized names were thick and very good quality – we realized that all around us there were personalized Mickey ears with very thin strands of thread for the names.  So not only did we save money, but we ended up with better quality hats!  Make sure you search on Google for the theme park you are shopping for or even ebay!
• Buy off-site: Most theme parks, Disney included, will have a number of souvenir shops that are ran independently from the park, but carry many souvenirs related to the park! The prices and deals they offer will be much, much lower than the parks themselves.
• Watch for coupons and specials on souvenirs in the park: Keep your eyes peeled everywhere while you are at the park for coupons, discounts or specials on souvenirs.  As an example, on the bottom of our receipt from one of the dinners we had in the park (using that awesome 30% off coupon we found before leaving) there was an attached coupon for 20% off any purchase in specific gift shops in the park.
• Buy unofficial merchandise: If it is not important to you, buy generic or unofficial souvenirs.  Again most of these will be found in local shops outside of the parks.
• Get creative: Some of the best, cheapest and most memorable souvenirs might not have to cost hardly anything! The pressed pennies that you can find at theme parks, historical spots, national parks and more are a very fun and inexpensive way to go! Also, postcards are another fabulous way to go for cheap and inexpensive items.  We also like to find magnets and ornaments for locations we have visited as a family souvenir and a fun way to remember our vacation. Also, the Disney characters can sign (I think!) anything, not just official Disney autograph books. So if you buy a postcard (or a few), the Disney Characters can sign them!  Collect maps, ticket stubs, schedules for the days you visited and any other “free” materials, especially if you are a scrapbooker (like me)!  Another creative souvenir is if you eat in or around any of the theme parks restaurants, they will often give kids water cups in those plastic cups with the theme park characters, logos, etc. This happened at Sea World for us, the kids each got a FREE kids cup with pictures of Shamu all over them!
• If you want to splurge in the parks, be sure to set a budget for each family member! Sometimes it is just plain fun to let everyone grab something there at the parks; just have a budget set aside and discussed before leaving so everyone knows their limitations and expectations.

What we did:

• The only official Disney items we wanted were the personalized hats and autograph books. Again we purchased them off the Disney Store online with a 20% coupon code and FREE shipping!  Right now is a great time to shop on the Disney Store online as this week they are offering FREE shipping.  So check the sales and clearances and see if there is anything you would want to pick up as a souvenir (or just because!).  We also bought a Disney plush for each of them that was on clearance plus 20% off and FREE shipping.
• We also like to grab ornaments or magnets and we were able to get a Disneyland 2010 ornament on clearance for 60% off on the Disney Store online! Perfect!
• Then, as we mentioned in the food post, we actually took in our own tummy ticklers that have a character hard plastic topper that were Disney Characters.  Official Disney Souvenir cups sell in the parks for $5-$10, but bought our “souvenir tummy ticklers” (granted not official Disney Souvenir Cups, but our young kids didn’t know the difference) for .33 each.
• Finally, we collected the “free” things like the park maps, our ticket cards, our own photographs, the kids cups, stickers that “cast members” were handing out and other little fun things like this.

Hope these tips help to save you money on those souvenirs! Don’t forget that your own pictures and memories are a form of souvenirs too!

To catch up on more of our vacation savings:

• Here’s the article on How We Saved On Accommodations this trip
• Here’s the article on How We Saved On Food For This Trip
• Here’s the article on 10 Ways to Save on Theme Park Tickets

As a side note – the DisneyStore.com is giving FREE shipping with no minimum order this whole week (use coupon code: FREESHIP). Shop the sales and clearances to grab some deals!  They are having a 60% off clearance right now!

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So we are still on vacation and having wonderful (highly needed) family time.

We have been on vacation since the 23rd, and so with a vacation that long – the food bill could be outrageous, especially for a family of 6.

Since we are The Thrifty Couple, we would like to share what we have done to trim the vacation food bill this round.  There are many, many ideas, but here’s specifically what we did for this trip.

First and most important to us for our personal vacation food budget is being able to grab that condo for a deal.  Why was this important? Well not only does it save sanity, more relaxing for us and more – it actually saves potentially hundreds in food over a several day vacation.  And it can also provide ways to eat healthier as well!

With that out of the way, here’s what we did:

For the first several days, we were just in our condo on the beach and enjoyed the local sites and sounds.  This allowed for us to eat in at the condo.  We had breakfast, lunch and dinner here when we could.  We went to Walmart and Albertson’s when we got here in Southern California and took our coupon binder with us and shopped the food for the week.  Although we spent about double our weekly grocery budget (as we are buying the things we need now, not just grabbing the great deals and stocking up and eating from our stock-pile like we normally do), it saved us hundreds for the week, plus even more with the coupons we were able to use!

Our meals we were able to eat inside the condo included:

• Lots of fresh fruit and veggies
• Fresh salad and our favorite dressings
• Stuff for our Christmas morning breakfast casserole
• Christmas dinner of steaks, garlic bread, steamed veggies and salad
• Stuff for Lasagna dinner
• Stuff for Pizza dinner
• Breads and sandwich fixings

For the days that we went to Disneyland and Sea World:

• Breakfast: While we were shopping at Walmart and Albertsons, we picked up items for what we call “breakfast in a bag” that we usually make on Sunday mornings.  As we leave for church at 8:30 am (which is a challenge for a family of 6), breakfast in a bag is the lifesaver those mornings. So we decided to do the same thing for those early morning theme park days.  Kids get dressed and we hand them a bag and stick them in the car – which means we are ready to go and have well fed kiddos! Our breakfasts in a bag this week included: clementines, bananas, yogurt, Nutri-grain bars and breakfast cookies.
• Snacks: We purchased snack crackers and other snack foods for while we are in the parks to help us not spend money on the many snacks that toddlers and little kids need (ok – mom and dad too ) Most of these were crackers, clementines, rice krispy treats, and homemade organic fruit leather that we made and brought from home.
• Lunches: Similar to the lunches on the days we stayed-in, sandwiches and more packed lunches. Since we had the condo with a full-size fridge and freezer, it was easy to make and pack lunches from the condo to take with us and refreeze our reusable ice packs we brought from home.
• Dinners: For the dinners at the theme parks, we did a couple of things.  We first looked up restaurants in the Disney area or Disney property and discovered that House of Blues in Downtown Disney was on Restaurant.com! We waited for a clearance sale and purchased $25 gift certificates for $2! We did read the fine print and we could only use one every thirty days, but this took care of one meal for us and we didn’t even have to leave the Disney grounds.  Second, we were following the Disney Blog for about a month before we left and mid-month, they posted these 30% off coupons to use in the park at a handful of restaurants.  We printed a couple of these to eat at the park the other two Disney nights.  We chose to do this instead of trying to leave the grounds and eating outside of the park due to the high amount of people in the park! We wanted to maximize our time in the park since we would have longer wait lines.
• Drinks: Probably the biggest money saver of all for inside of the parks was taking our own water! at $3 a bottle, this can add up VERY quickly! Honestly, our kids will down an entire bottle in one setting when they are working – they drink a ton of water, and we literally packed in a 24-pack of water into the park in the bottom of our stroller every day.  The 24-packs of water cost us $2.59 each day vs. the $3.00 a bottle each water break.  We calculate that this is over a $70 savings each day. So if you are to do anything to save money at theme parks, taking your own water (although heavy and irritating!) will save you LOADS of money! We also had some special character Tummy Ticklers apple juices that we got on clearance for .33 a bottle, normally $1.50.   This was a fun treat to pull-out for the kids as they were Disney themed and looked like mini versions of the souvenir cups you buy for $8-$10!

For the Road Trip:

• By the time our trip is over, we will have spent 4 days on the road.  Even just those 4-days of buying food for the family can put a huge gash in your budget! So we packed snacks in our cooler for the driving munchies.  We grabbed these snacks from our stockpile at home, we did not make a special buying trip. This meant that they were SUPER cheap and some were probably FREE. We also made a few pans of homemade organic fruit leather that we snacked on throughout the vacation. We also had our coupon binder where we used the restaurant section to find the fast food coupons to use along the road.  If you remember our post from a couple of weeks ago, we even had FREE Wendy’s French Fry coupons! We would buy a sandwich and maybe fries, but fill-in the rest of the meal with our drinks we packed and fresh veggies and fruits.   For the breakfasts, we did stay at hotels that offered FREE breakfast (see our previous post on our hotel at $58 a night - this included the breakfast that we forgot to mention there!).

These are a few tricks we did this time. There are many, many ideas and ways to save on food while on vacation.  Even when eating out, just little tricks like ordering water and having the kids split an adult entree will save loads of money without coupons or pre-planning involved!

The picture above is us at our Christmas morning breakfast table in our vacation condo with breakfast casserole.  No showers and beauty here, just the real-life family enjoying a yummy Christmas breakfast!

As we are nearing the end of our vacation and enjoying Sea World today – we also wanted to remind you to enter the giveaway for the $100 Amazon gift card! Each person can enter each day. Head to the official giveaway post for the details and to enter!

Next we will share how we saved on Theme Park tickets!

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So if you have been reading our site or watching on our Facebook page, you know that we are on vacation right now! We went on vacation for the Christmas holiday and are still enjoying our family time. We have had a few bumps in the road (literally) but all-in-all, it has been a great time so far!

We haven’t told you yet just where we are, so…. We decided to take a trip to Southern California!

As many of you know, we declared that we are “debt-free” earlier this year.  With that, came work, commitment, sacrifice, encouragement and accountability to shed ourselves of our financial stupidity!  So, after all that we had put into this to get out, we wanted and planned to take a vacation the entire family could enjoy in celebration.

When we sat down with our kids and said “what should our celebration vacation be?”  What words do you think were uttered out of the mouths of a 4, 5, and 6 year old??? Would the word DISNEYLAND make sense?

But we didn’t want to do just Disneyland but a vacation where Disneyland was involved.  Now let us start off by saying that this trip as had a few bumps in the road (literally) and we will explain more as we continue to share with you.

Here’s how we planned and saved in hopes that this information will help your family to take a vacation (whether Southern California or anywhere else).

First bit of advice from our well earned Doctorate Finance Degree from the School of Life: Don’t take a vacation that you cannot afford because it can get you into a lot of trouble!

Second, always plan on your trip costing more than you expect and plan for the unexpected financially.

With those two important notes out of the way, here’s what we did:

• Sat down as a family after declaring debt-freedom to decide where we would like to celebrate this accomplishment.  And heard those words that are a nightmare to some parents ears: Disneyland.
• We also wanted to add a couple of the adult favorites like Sea World and the beach.
• We researched the initial cost of the trip and to find our price points to beat over the next several months.
• We then determined how much we needed to save each paycheck.  We just saved a portion of the paycheck as we have other financial goals that we want to meet as well.
• Then we start planning and trying to find deals over the following months and cut costs to save even more.

So, we wanted to share with you the first area of savings for our personal vacation this year and ideas to help you save on accommodations in the future!

For this trip from Utah to Southern California, we needed two types of accommodations for this trip: Hotel Suite and 2-Bedroom Condo.

We needed the hotel suite (as there is 6 of us) for one-night stay for half the trip down and up. With 4 little kids, it is too long and stressful for us to make it in one day – it is intended to be a vacation!

We ended up with a mini-suite at a chain hotel for $58.

Here’s how:

• Looked up the rates for a family of 6 on Travelocity for our location.  This became our price point.  We were quoted $116 for the hotel we preferred and lower than many in the area.
• We then went to this Hotel Chain’s website directly and did that same search on their website.  We were quoted $89 with our AAA discount.
• We then called the front desk of the actual location and talked to the person that makes reservations.  After asking for the lowest possible rates available and also the AAA discount.  The gentleman on the other end said he could get us this mini-suite for $58 for that night! SWEET!

See our post on Hotel Accommodation discounts for more ideas on hotel savings.

We also wanted to get a condo resort type for the actual stay in Southern Cal.  This was a bit more work and we booked a “back-up” in case we couldn’t get the deal we were hoping.  We ended up with something much better than expected!

After much diligence, we ended up with a condo with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a pull-out couch bed, full and complete kitchen and fully furnished and stocked with the essentials! Just the room we wanted! This will give us space, real sleep so we can be in separate bedrooms, saving money on food/eating out and many more benefits.

We knew before that it was a block from the beach, but what we didn’t know was what that meant! When we got here, it was beautiful! We have a porch overlooking the ocean (see our picture at the top) and we have thoroughly enjoyed the site, smell and sound of the big blue ocean (it really is a rare site for us Idaho/Utahans!).  We spent the first two days here hanging on the beach! We can’t even express how much of a blessing it was to land this deal! There was no way we would have paid for something like this and so we are very thankful to have a relaxing place to stay!

The price we paid for this amazing accommodations: $110 a night! This is about 1/3 the cost they normally charge! To find tips on landing a deal on a condo resort type accommodation, see our previous post!

And to top off our vacation, it was 75 degrees when we got here! We had one day of rain so far, but incredibly beautiful and warm compared to the previous week when we were all watching Southern California get hit hard with that rain!

We will next share how we are saving money on food and eating out while down here.

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