Knowing how much money to take to Florida can be a minefield, and I don’t think that there is one set answer for this. I set aside £1,500 (about $2,300) when I went in 2012 but I did buy myself an iPhone and had about £300 left over. I go absolutely mad with shopping when I’m over there – I literally wait for my trip to Florida to stock up on my favourite make up (MAC at the outlets), Converse (which I always end up selling despite trying to convince myself that I am a Converse kinda girl), Wilton baking supplies, random crap from Dollar Tree, so many sweets and much (much, much, much more). I bring two suitcases home. When I went with Tony last year, we both brought two suitcases home as we’d been buying a lot of wedding things.

Parking at the theme parks runs at $14-$15 per day (around £10). If you visit two theme parks from the same company on the same day (two Disney parks, two Universal parks, etc) then your parking is transferable. Some of the theme parks let you park for free from around 5pm, although this really is hit and miss and won’t apply to Magic Kingdom. If you’re staying at that resort then you get free parking for your stay.

Eating out can be done for as little or as much as you want. A great money saving tip is to fill up at a breakfast buffet in the mornings, and these generally keep you going until dinner (dinner being the evening meal in this case), with perhaps an ice cream or something to tide you over. You can also take snacks with you into the parks, and if you’re very prepared, you can even pack a full on picnic to leave in a cooler box in your car. You can also sign up to restaurant’s mailing lists (here’s a handy list for you to sign up to) before your departure and they will come with money off coupons. And there’s free coupons in the weekly paper (Orlando Sentinel).

Another great money saving tip is to buy water, Caprisun and bottles of Coke from the supermarkets and keep them in a cooler box in the car. Getting back to the car in the sweltering heat and having a frozen or cool drink waiting for you is amazing. You can of course take a drink with you into the park, but I found that mine became warm quite quickly.

Contradicting what I said earlier, having a large meal at lunch time will also save you money as restaurants generally offer a cheaper menu at lunch time. We’ve also found that places will offer “Happy Hour” buy one get one free on alcoholic drinks, lasting between 1pm-7pm. That’s some happy hour!

You can also grab an Orlando Eat Play card for £12, which gives you many discounts in participating restaurants. This year will be the first time using one, and it even covers McDonald’s!

As for how to take the money, I can strongly recommend the FairFX currency card. It costs £9.95 when you sign up, but if you sign up via this link IT IS FREE when you top up with £50. The currency card is a prepaid card, and the rate you get is whatever it is the day you top up. So if you’re going in awhile, you can check the rates daily and top up then. Today is has been $1.69 per £1 – when we went last year it was just $1.52 per £1. FairFX also offers a better rate than in store cash exchange, and you have the added protection as it is a MasterCard. The minimum top up amount is £50, and the maximum in one go is £2,500. You can check your balance online and using their mobile app, and too up straight away if you need to. As many places have wifi, if you don’t have enough money on your card you can just top it up easily before making your next purchase.

There is a $2 charge for withdrawing cash – I usually get anything from $200-$500 in cash (from a currency exchange) before I go away, and put the rest on the FairFX card.

If there is money left over on the card when you get back, you can do one of three things:

1. Leave it on there for your next visit
2. Spend it in stores over here – there is a 1.4% out of currency fee. If you withdraw it from an ATM there’s also the $2 withdrawal fee.
3. Pay £10 to FairFX to get the money put back into your bank.

I do a combination of 1 and 2, depending on when my next visit is.

The FairFX currency card is also available as a Euro currency card.

We did run into a problem with the FairFX card not working in Red Lobster, and when we asked online, no one else had that problem in Red Lobster – but this is where your back up cash comes in useful.

I would suggest a food budget of at least $100 a day for a couple, but if needs be, you could get away with a lot less.

Now that you’ve booked your flights, you’re going to want to look for somewhere to stay. On my previous trips to Orlando, I’ve always opted to stay in a villa – mostly because I went for over 20 days each time. This year we’re branching out and staying in a hotel, as we want to be closer to the theme parks, and it’s only a week, so a hotel works out cheaper.

You can choose to stay “on site”, which is a theme park’s hotel, or stay off site. Being on site costs a lot more, but you can enjoy perks such as longer park hours and free parking within the parks. Staying off site will save a lot of money and you can still get just as nice accommodation.

Villa pros:

• Great for larger parties.
• Private swimming pool.
• Kitchen facilities mean you can save on eating out.
• There are villas to fit every budget – you can find a villa from £350 upwards.

Villa cons/things to consider

• If you’re traveling between September and April you’ll want to add pool heating, which often comes with a surcharge.
• You will need a hire car.
• You may be slightly further away from the parks. This hasn’t been an issue for us before, as we’ve driven, and it takes 30 minutes from leaving the villa to pulling into a Disney car park, but we’re looking forward to being closer this year.
• Lack of housekeeping – you’re in charge of clearing up after yourself.

Hotel pros:

• More facilities.
• You can get away without hiring a car, especially if your hotel offers shuttle buses to the theme parks.
• Daily housekeeping.

Hotel cons/things to consider:

• Most, if not all, hotels in Orlando add a daily resort fee per room. This can be anything from $2-$30. This will be listed when you book the hotel, in the fine print, or you can Google the name of the hotel and “resort fee” to find out what it is.
• You will need to tip housekeeping daily (typically $1-$2)

 Saving money on villas

• Book with the villa owner direct. My favourite place to look for villas is DIBB. You can either post your villa requirements, search for villas or even search through special offers for villa owners with particular dates to fill.

Saving money on hotels

If you’re looking to book a hotel then I can strongly recommend booking through Hotels.com. Firstly, there’s currently 8% cash back on hotel bookings – so for every £100 you spend on a hotel booking you’ll receive £8 back through Quidco. In additional, Hotels.com run a loyalty scheme where for every 10 nights you rack up (not just 10 nights in a row) then you get a night for free! This is in addition to the great prices – I’ve always found Hotels.com to be the cheapest.

You can also book a “secret hotel” for a cheaper rate. A secret hotel is where a company like Expedia offer you a “secret” hotel for a cheaper rate. You can find out the location of the so called secret hotel by finding out whatever information you can from the website (such as amenities and trip advisor reviews) and with a little detective work (otherwise known as copying and pasting into Google), you can find out the name of the hotel before you book.

Another great way to get a bargain on a hotel is to “name your price”. Priceline offers you just that – you can bid each day to see if your lowest offer is accepted. It is important to remember that your bid is binding, and if it is accepted then you’ve booked that hotel. Priceline doesn’t tell you the names of the hotels, but you can make a fairly good estimate on which hotel(s) they are, by narrowing down the location and the amenities on offer.

There’s always plenty of accommodation in Orlando, so don’t stress yourself out too much worrying about hotels selling out. A lot of the hotels and villas are mirror images of each other, so if your perfect accommodation is not available to you then you’re sure to find something else.

It’s no secret that I love Orlando, Florida. It’s where Tony proposed, it’s where I’ve been on holiday for the past 3 years and it’s where we definitely want our honeymoon (with a few upgrades!). I knew that realistically, we couldn’t afford to go to Florida again this year, and we’d have to wait for our honeymoon next year. This upset me more than I am willing to admit, so I’m really excited that we’ve managed to grab an absolute bargain for a week away in Florida later this year. I thought this would be the perfect time to bring you a series of blog posts talking about how to save money on a trip to Florida.

People often think that going to Orlando is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. You can do Orlando on almost any budget, and during this series I’ll be providing you information on how to get the best value and decide whether you can afford a holiday there.

Before you do anything, make sure that you’ve signed up to a cash back website – where you’re paid for purchasing something through a link they provide. I’d recommend signing up to Quidco, Topcashback and Fat Cheese.

You’ve got two options when looking at your flight – you can look for a package holiday which includes your flight, hotel and often airport transfers, or you can “DIY” and book them all separately. This is now my fourth time going to Orlando, and each time it has worked out cheaper to DIY and book everything myself.

If you want to look at booking your flights and hotel together, I can strongly recommend Low Cost Holidays, ebookers and Tesco Compare Holidays.

Getting your flight can be the trickiest bit – everything else can fall in to place later, but you need a flight, and you need to book before they’re sold out. If there are very set dates that you must travel (school holidays, annual leave, etc) then you’ll want to get your flights booked ASAP, before prices increase or seats sell out. If you’re free to book your holiday any time then you’ll have more options when booking your flights, and more chance of getting a great deal.

You can fly direct to Orlando International Airport, or Sanford airport (still in Orlando), or you can fly indirect. I’ve flown both direct and indirect, and honestly, they both have their pros.

Direct:

• Gets you to Orlando faster

• Less time spent travelling

Indirect:

• Clear immigration elsewhere in America – saving you lots of time at Orlando

• Saves you from £100 upwards as opposed to flying direct

Start pricing your flights using various sites – I like to look at Last minute and Skyscanner – I find that Lastminute is generally more up to date than Skyscanner, as they had the Virgin Atlantic sales prices listed, whereas Skyscanner were listing Virgin Atalantic flights for double the price. There’s also Kayak and Google flights. Keep an eye on how the flight prices fluctuate, and you’ll get a feeling of when is a good time to book. When looking at the prices, make sure that baggage is included. It is included with Delta, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, but Monarch charge £43 for a bag. I have never paid more than £500 for a flight, including the credit card fee.

If your dates are flexible then be sure to check the prices for different dates. We saved over £150 each by flying back home a day later than we originally planned. Airlines often have sales too – especially at Christmas and Easter. That’s how we managed to bag direct flights with Virgin for £438.99.

When you are ready to book, be sure to go through the cash back websites (Quidco, Topcashback and Fat Cheese) before purchasing your flights, so that you can get a little bit of money back on the purchase.

Once you’ve purchased your flights, be sure to sign up to the airline’s loyalty scheme. These schemes award you air miles every time that you fly. Even if you’re not planning on flying for awhile, and even though you may not fly with the same airline, you may as well rack up the air miles whilst you can.