picture of Cinderella’s Castle by Jason Grooms
Last December my husband and I were able to grant a wish my children have had for many years, we bought the family annual passes to Walt Disney World. This was an extravagant present, and the only Christmas present our children received. Nine months in I can honestly say that we have absolutely, without a doubt, gotten our money’s worth out of the passes. The passes have been worth every.single.penny, which is why it’s so hard to say goodbye to them in 3 months.
*sigh* The husband and I have decided not to renew our annual passes when they expire. The cost of passes has risen, and add to that the fact that Disney has decided to no longer offer children’s pricing so all tickets are at adult pricing, which would raise our cost by about $300. Sure, we do it pretty frugally when we visit the parks but we still manage to drop a pretty good sized dime there.
So, it’s been decided that we will not be renewing our passes. We’ve already prepared our children for a Disney-less 2013, but this is such a good financial decision for us that we won’t be sad for long. With the money we put down on the tickets we will be able to pay off kid #2’s braces and get just a few payments away from paying off my husband’s car. We will no longer have a $117/month payment to keep our tickets active (we put down double the down payment and opted for the interest-free monthly payment program to pay for the rest of the tickets) and we will no longer have the extra expense of going to the parks, where a bottle of soda will cost you $2.75.
As sad as I’m going to be when our tickets expire I’m going to be very happy in March when it finally registers how much money we aren’t paying out on bills.
No Disney passes mean:
No monthly payment to Disney: -$117/m
No car payment: -$250/m
No braces payment: -$206/m
That adds up to $573 we will have free & clear EVERY MONTH, all because we didn’t renew our Disney passes. Wow. That is significant! There simply is no other place in our budget that we could tweak to result in a savings that significant.
When I look at the numbers (again) it certainly makes the decision a little easier. Sorta.
