Disneyland Tips and Tricks for the non Magic Key Holder (Part 4- Ways to save money at Disneyland)

This is part of a 4 part series. You can find the full series of posts here:

Part 1: Navigating the Parks

Part 2: Genie+

Part 3: Things I used a lot in the Parks

Part 4: Ways to save money at Disneyland

As we all know, Disneyland is expensive. Even those who have their Magic Key (annual pass) have to pay for parking (unless you have a higher tiered pass), and purchase some food and snacks.

These are some ways that helped to save money on this trip. (Some are time limited, so please be aware of this and look for current deals that are available. You can post in the comments if you want to share some current deals that you find!)

1. 3 Day So Cal pass- for $225 ($275 if you want weekends included) you can get a 3 day pass if you are a Southern California Resident. These are 1 park passes, and you can upgrade to a park hopper for an additional fee, but I don't feel that is necessary when going 3 days. There is a lot of running around already (we walked 10-12 miles each day just within one park)! Considering that single days on prime days can be almost $200, $225 for 3 days is probably one of the best deals you'll get if you don't intend to get an annual pass. You can go any 3 days until June 2.

2. 3 day kids pass- for $150 ($50 per day!). If you happen to be going before March 10, 2024, and have kids, this is a fantastic deal. All 3 days need to be used within 13 days of the first day that it's scanned, so please be aware of that, which has different terms and conditions than the pass above. Please read all the fine print.

3. Purchasing Disney gift cards at a discount- There are multiple ways to do this, and some offers may be time limited, so please do your research prior to purchasing. Costco was the easiest way to do this, and you can get a $250 Disney gift card for $225. You can also use your Target credit card to get 5% off all purchases, including gift cards. Disney gift cards are incredibly easy to use throughout the park and through mobile order. Please be aware that the Disney website will only accept 1 gift card per transaction, but you can combine gift cards up to $1000 on disneygiftcard.com (an actual Disney website, not a 3rd party or scam), to make your online purchases easier.

4. If you're into using your credit cards for points travel hacking, you can also use your Chase Ink Business Cash for 5x points back at Office Supply stores (Office Depot/Staples) and purchase Disney gift cards there. Or, what I prefer to do, is to wait until there are fee free Visa/Mastercard gift card days, and purchase those instead, so I'm not tied to using the gift cards only at Disneyland. I used my fee free Mastercard gift cards at all the restaurants and snack carts to pay once I exhausted my Disney gift cards purchased at Costco. One $200 gift card yields 1000 points, without doing any extra work. If this doesn't make sense to you, that's ok :) The credit card points world is a whole different story, but let me know if you would like to hear more!

5. We also saved money by bringing Lunchables to the parks for the kids when we didn't have specific dining plans. My kids love Lunchables and you can throw the whole thing away when you're done so you don't have to carry around extra containers. We also brought plenty of snacks and water bottles. I also brought some Gatorade in powdered form, so we could refill our water bottles, and then add the powder (lighter to carry), so we had something different to drink than just water all day.

6. Have your rest breaks at restaurants that offer free drink refills :) Pizza Planet (Disneyland) and Pyms Test Kitchen (California Adventures) offer this, and their kids meals also come with a small drink, making it a pretty decent deal.

7. Set the expectation for souvenirs. Before we went, I told my kids that we were going with friends, and that was a treat in itself. If they wanted to purchase anything for themselves they needed to use their Christmas money. There wasn't anything that really caught their eye, and they didn't ask to buy anything. Of course, different circumstances call for different responses, and if this is a fun family vacation where you want to buy all the things, then do it! But, just coming out of the Christmas season, and with this being a somewhat last minute trip and not a destination vacation, our goal was to enjoy our time with friends who would be moving away in the next month. Regardless of what your family chooses to do, it helps to let the kids know ahead of time to set the appropriate expectation.

8. Bring fun glow sticks/light up items. These are super inexpensive, the kids love them at night, and you won't need a glowy balloon to carry around. And, it will help you spot your family more easily in the dark!

9. Have fun and enjoy the day! We allowed for a couple treats a day (churros, popcorn, cotton candy and blue milk are favorites), since we didn't spend much on regular meals or fine dining, and I feel like those treats and snacks are much more enjoyable than a larger sit down meal (at this stage, the kids just want to ride roller coasters all day and don't want the extended break :))

10. If you want a full budget breakdown of our 3 days, check out this post here!

Prioritizing Dole Whip over having a more expensive sit down meal, and opting for Lunchables instead :)