Tips on planning a cheap vacation.

Go to sites like hotels.com to look for good deals on hotels. If you have a friend or family member who works for a hotel ask if they get a discount and would be willing to help you with the room. I used to work at a hotel that offered discounts on rooms for myself, a friend or a family member. I never used this discount though. See if some restaurants in the area have a discount for tourists. I'm not sure if they would or not, but I believe I've heard of this before. Are you using a package deal or are you just going and then going to get tickets etc when your there? I'm not sure which would be cheper but I don't think it would hurt to check. Also if you can, bring lunch preparations so the only time you'll have to go out to eat is for supper. Some hotels may even offer complimentary meals.

As far as picking the hotel goes, you should try to plan your trip on a day that's considered "off-peak" and try not to do it over a weekend. Hotels are MUCH cheaper during the week and not during their busy seasons (For example, if you stay on a Tuesday & a Wednesday it will have a SIGNIFICANT price difference than if you were to go on a Friday & Saturday and whatnot). Also, you should consider booking a hotel in the next town down. Whenever me & my family go on vacations (where we need to stay in a hotel), we will usually stay in one that's 10 or so miles from the city that we're interested in "touring" in, because they're usually a lot cheaper and are only a 10 or 15 minute drive from all of the spots you want to visit. You could also use a site like Expedia or Hotels.com to check the prices yourself. Those are just some ideas. I use Valued Opinions as one of my best survey sites - although they don't really offer all that many choices when it comes to cashing out (mainly Amazon gift certificates, which won't be much help for you anyway). You should consider joining Treasure Trooper, Opinion Outpost, or Lightspeed Consumer Panel - those are a few that I've had a lot of luck with so far. (Since Decemeber I've made about $120 on TT, $50 on Opinion Outpost, & $40 on LCP - not a huge amount, but some extra spending money anyway!) None of these sites (except for Lightspeed) will let you cash out your earnings into gift cards, but you could certainly just stash away that extra money you earn into a "vacation" fund and use it when that time rolls around. Good luck!

i have never gone to disneyland but i have heard a good tip from a magazine that i read a long time ago. never buy souveneirs in the park. they are marked up something like 100% from their actual cost. instead look outside of the park for them.

I would suggest staying in a condo that has a full kitchen. This way you can go and get groceries and cook in the room. That is what we do for every family vacation. We always have breakfast and lunch in the room. For dinner, sometimes we eat in , others we eat out. We buy cocktail mixers and make them in the room to save from spending money at the bar too.

hello happythoughts! There are many ways to save money on vacations. I would suggest making your own meals, booking the trip on off peak seasons, and looking up some promo codes. I have written some articles about this online. since I cannot give you the links on here Ill pm you with them if you like. Have a great day and I hope your trip goes well. Ps. I use mypoints to get free giftcards.... although I just requested my first one yesterday so i havent recieved it yet.

I've found for trips one thing is if you plan to fly - have someone drive you to the airport and drop you off that way you arent paying parking fees for the duration of your trip. Packing breakfast foods like nutrigrain bars and breakfast cereals can cut back one one meal - especially if you get a hotel room with a fridge you can even get some milk. Buying fruits and such can cover other snacks if you go to a grocery store as well as buying snack packs if you arent into the fruits thing. Park food thends to be pretty expensive. You can redeem things like esso, petropoints etc for gas on your trip if you have enough if you dont have enough for gas you can always redeem it for snacks food or even gift certificates.

I agree with what others have said. Finding a condo or a room with a kitchen in it is a must. That is what we do for every single vacation and we always have an awesome time. In addition to saving money, I find it's a lot less stressful to be able to go back to the room and crash for our our meal. No wait times at restaurants. No wondering if we will like our food, etc. Definitely the way to go!