How We Did A Week At Disney World On A Budget As A Family of 6

If you have a big family and you’re searching for information on how to take a Disney World vacation on a budget, you’re in the right place!

I’m a mom of 4, and as much as we love to travel, we had never done a legitimate Disney Vacation before!

We lived in Florida for 5 years, so we had plenty of opportunities to take a day trip to the Disney Parks. We even stayed overnight in a hotel on property a few times.

But because we lived so close, it never made sense to do a full week-long vacation to Disney World.

That is, until we moved back to Wisconsin! We had been itching to get back to Disney as a family, so we finally decided to make it a reality in 2025. We invited my entire extended family to join us, and almost everyone was able to make it! There were 17 of us in all including my parents, 4 of my 5 sisters, spouses, and kids (my kids’ cousins).

Because this Disney trip was in addition to our traditional international summer trip (this year it was Austria and Germany), we knew we had to be smart about keeping everything on a budget.

I’m going to share all of my tips for visiting Disney World on a budget, while still keeping the Disney magic alive.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click on a link and make a purchase I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Car Rental

As a family of 6, even the cheapest flights add up when you multiply it by 6. Plus you have to factor in transportation to and from the airport. With all of that in mind, we decided to road trip from Wisconsin to Orlando.

Both of our vehicles are paid off, but they’re also old. As much as we wanted to save as much money as possible on this trip, we also knew that long term, the best option would be to not put that mileage on our paid off cars to hopefully make them last a little longer.

That’s how we ended up deciding to rent a car for the road trip.

The car was $991.40 for 9 days, but we used the Capital One Purchase Eraser to wipe out $500 of that using 50K Capital One Reward Points. If you have a Capital One Credit Card, it’s easy to apply a credit to any purchases that code as Travel on your credit card statement, and you can decide how many points you want to use toward your travel purchase!

So, the total cost out of pocket for our rental car was: $491.40

Gas + Road Trip Hotels

We broke our drive up into 2 days both on the way there, and on the way back.

Instead of paying out of pocket for those hotels, I found Hyatt Place hotels along our route (booked literally the day before or day of), and used Chase Ultimate Reward points transferred to my Hyatt Account to book the hotels for $0 out of pocket.

On gas, we spent: $348

Hotel and Tickets

We bundled our hotel and park tickets, so I can’t give you individual prices for each of these categories. We stayed at Art of Animation Resort, and included 5 Single Park Day Passes (no park-hoppers).

We opted to stay on property at Disney World to make use of the free transportation and to stay inside the Disney bubble. We wanted this to feel like a true Disney vacation, so while it may have been slightly cheaper to stay off property, we chose the convenience of staying at a WDW resort.

Thankfully, there were SO many money-saving promotions happening in 2025, and I’ve already seen a few incredible promotions for 2026!

We made use of the Summer Room Offer for Disney+ Subscribers - a promotion that ran for summer of 2025. It ended up saving us almost $2000 on our hotel suite!

As a family of 6, there are not quite as many options for hotel rooms on property, so finding a deal like this that included a family suite that slept 6 felt like a steal!

We booked 6 nights in the Cars Family Suite. Family suites include a bedroom with a queen-size bed, a convertible table bed, and a sleeper sofa in the living room. We also loved that there were 2 bathrooms - one in the main bedroom and one in the living area. It made getting ready in the morning so much easier. There’s also a kitchenette where we stored all of our groceries for the week.

There are also Finding Nemo Family Suites and Lion King Family Suites, both of which sleep up to 6 people.

The 6 nights at Art of Animation in a Family Suite plus 5 Park Day Tickets for 6 people was: $5730.95

Food

The original promotion we booked came with FREE Disney Dining Plan, but when we switched to the Summer Room Offer for Disney+ Subscribers, we lost the Disney Dining Plan. We could have added it on for an additional cost, but I knew we could save WAY more by NOT choosing to add the dining plan.

As former Florida residents who. used to day trip to the parks all the time, we knew the power of packing fruit, snacks, PB&J sandwiches, and our own water, so we did just that!

Walt Disney World on a budget with a big family-8.jpg

Walt Disney World on a budget with a big family-9.jpg

Since we drove the parks, we stopped at Walmart just outside the Disney Parks and picked up groceries on our way in. We had also packed food and kitchen supplies at the beginning of our road trip including:

plastic cutlery
paper plates
paper bowls
paper towel
1 sharp knife (for cutting fruit and vegetables)
a small cutting board
sandwich bags
protein shakes
protein shaker bottles
a small cooler bag
ice packs
hydration powder mixes

We bought bread, sandwich ingredients, fruit, vegetables, applesauce pouches, crackers, cookies, candy, granola bars, cereal, milk, coffee creamer, and breakfast pastries from Walmart on our way in. I had also baked some banana bread, sourdough, and chocolate chip cookies at home, which we brought with us on the road trip.

We ate breakfast in our hotel room, and had coffee in our room (though I usually splurged on a latte on the way out).

For lunch we ate sandwiches, apple slices, granola bars, etc. that we packed in our small cooler bag and stored in the stroller. You are allowed to bring your own food into the park!

We bought a refillable popcorn bucket at the beginning of the trip, and filled it up countless times throughout the week. A popcorn refill is only $2!

We “splurged” on treats from quick service restaurants like Mickey-shaped pretzels, ice cream, etc.

For dinner we did a lot of pizza from the resort ($20 for a cheese pizza that fed most of our family!), or we would split food from quick service restaurants if we stayed in the park the entire day without a break.

We did bring our own water bottles, but ended up spending quite a bit on cold water in the parks ($4 every time you buy a water bottle. Yikes). Once we drank our entire bottle of cold water that we packed, we would fill it up at water fountains around the park, but that water was Luke warm, and the weather was SO hot and humid.

We ended up just giving in and buying the cold water. Note: you can also get cups of water from quick service restaurants, but it comes in a small cup with no lid, and there are often long lines. It was just easier to buy the cold bottled water.

Total for Food: $491.02

Souvenirs

We were on a budget this trip, but I also knew it would be a trip the kids would want to remember. A week at Disney with their cousins? What’s better than that?

We gifted each of our kids a $25 Disney gift card for them to spend on souvenirs. They knew exactly how much they had to spend, and they also knew they couldn’t beg us for more money. Once their gift card was gone, it was gone. That made them a little more thoughtful about the souvenirs they picked.

My parents also generously gifted each of the grandkids a $25 gift card, so in total, each of our kids had $50 in gift cards to spend.

Souvenirs: $100

Lightning Lanes

Lightning Lanes were another big expense for us, but ultimately we knew that to get the most out of our trip, it was a worthwhile splurge. Our kids are finally old enough to ride all the big rides and roller coasters, and that was the main focus of our trip rather than character meet and greets. Our kids were ages 5, 8, 10, and 12 on this trip.

We went at the end of July when the weather was extremely hot and humid, and we knew standing in long lines would make everyone crabby, and would limit the amount of rides we could do in a day.

We booked Multipass Lightning Lanes for Magic Kingdom Day 1, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom Day 2. We did not buy a Multipass Lightning Lane for Animal Kingdom, though we did buy an Individual Lightning Lane for Avatar Flight of Passage.

During the trip we also ended up booking Individual Lightning Lanes for Tron and Cosmic Rewind, just for Mom, Dad, and the 2 oldest kids.

Total for Lightning Lanes: $773.34

Our total cost for a trip to Disney World with 4 kids was: $7934.71

For reference, a 1-Week Trip to Washington State was $6,023.40, and 2 weeks in Europe for our family was $9163.24 (with our flights booked on points).

So in comparison, I would say this fell somewhere in between our smaller spring break trips and our bigger international summer trips expense-wise.

There are a few ways we could have made this trip even more budget-friendly:

Driving our own car
Staying off property
Using more of our Capital One Points to erase purchases
Saying no to things like waters and treats in the park
Not buying Lightning Lanes
Not buying any souvenirs

I think if you’re trying to do Disney on a budget, pick the categories that are important to you, that make it feel like a true vacation, and splurge a little bit there. Then cut costs in categories that are not as important to you!

Was it Worth It?

We have traveled all over the world with the kids - Guatemala, Italy, Costa Rica, Germany, Austria, the UK, all around the USA, and more. We love every travel experience we have with the kids.

But there’s something about a week inside the Disney Bubble - no worries, just childlike joy and fun.

My husband and I were really intentional about BEING FUN on this trip. As parents, it can be easy to let the stresses of an expensive trip, the draining heat, or the overstimulation of crowds bring your energy and attitude down.

We made a decision to have fun and connect with the kids no matter what. They are at this golden age where they still love hanging out with the family, and they’re finally big enough to ride the big rides. Getting to try Cosmic Rewind for the first time with my big kids, or hold my youngest’s hand on Test Track was such a gift.

We laughed more times than I can count, and I don’t think a smile left my face the entire week. I have no regrets about spending the extra money on this Disney vacation, and I’m already saving for the next one!