Will WDW soon become out of reach?

[teamblackwell]

I have a bad feeling that Disney trips will become out of reach for our family. And its all do to sky-high oil prices. With gas prices eating up our monthly budget and airlines finding any and every way to screw vacationers with fees on top of fees and slashing the number of flights to Orlando, driving prices up. We were planning a 2009 trip, but thats off now because theres just no money in our budget to do it.
I'm interested to find out what some of your thoughts are. Does anyone see a change for the better happening and gas prices falling? Or do you think this is just the beggining of even higher energy prices.

[medic9016]

For some people yes, any type of vacation will be a problem, for other no. There are some thing to factor in. Disney should not be a priority over paying bill. I have read of people selling things from there house or setting through those time-share things to get tickets because they can't afford a trip. A realistic plan and budgeting will make all the difference. Disney is not going anywhere, if a family can't go this year plan for another time.

[Mackflava99]

My feeling is prices will go up but not too high-
if the price goes up less people come to visit- they make their $$ on the amount you spend while you are here- so housing/ticket costs shouldnt change too much

Other items? who knows.

I dont think they save alot of money if noone rides space mountain a few days a year- they want people on the ride- buying gifts and soda giant turkey legs and popcorn-

[DDuck66]

I think that Disney is also multi-national to say the least. I know that a lot of people that are on the Eurodollar are taking advantage of the exchange rate for trips that they might not have done in the past.
I know that we are often skipping other things so that we can have our Disney money. I would rather save money by eating lunch or dinner at home so that we can go to WDW. Of course it used to cost us about $50 dollars for gas and a CS meal and know it is about $75. That means that I have to eat lunch 2.5 times at home just to make up the difference.

[MushuGrl]

Who knows how things will look next year?

I don't think it's totally out of reach. Just make take longer to save, and not go as often as I would like.

[m1ckeymouse]

We've been planning to return for quite some time and have finally booked for Dec 2009.

For us it is expensive (we're budgeting about £3500 for the trip) but thats why we 1) book WAY in advance so we save for it and 2) only visit every few years or so.

It is slightly easier for us as the exchange rate is in our favour for when we visit so (hopefully!) spending on food and, i'm sure, toys MIGHT not be as restrictive.

But still with the ever increasing cost of living, it is becoming more and more difficult, and our visits are becoming less and less.

[peemagg]

On another forum I go to it is rumored that just like the price of gas and airline tickets going up, Disney is going to raise the ticket prices in August.

If everything keeps up like this we might have to sell our DVC membership. It is just getting to expensive to keep going every year. In fact in order to eat up some of our points so that we don't have to go again until 2011, we are staying in a 2 bedroom with only 2 of us in it. Can't afford all of these price increases.

If Disney wants to keep people coming they need to do something to make it more affordable. Wouldn't it be nice if the lowered the prices slightly for park tickets or at least froze the prices for a year or two? If they keep raising them I don't see people shelling out the money for that luxury for long.

[amd780]

I've actually wondered this myself. In fact, I felt a little guilty about our trip in January, since we had just gone in January 2007, and a Disney trip does not come cheap. For our next visit DH and I decided we would only stay 5 nights instead of our usual 6 to save money, but we don't even know when we'll have enough saved up to go back.

[Tink#64]

Everything is so expensive these days, the economy stinks & so many people are loosing their jobs to downsizing or jobs leaving the country. I know both of these have happened to us in one years time! We usually earmark our tax refund for vacation & still have to do some saving. This year, tax money had to be reserved in case we needed for bills!

We didn't visit WDW last year, rather took a year off to do something different. We took DS's to Myrtle Beach for a week & loved it! We had planned to return to WDW this fall, but after DH's company downsizing & him out of a job for the 2nd time in a year, that wasn't going to happen. We knew he'd get another job, wouldn't have vacation time & that our recent history could repeat itself with him being last man on the totem pole. We were both afraid that that it could be a couple of years before we could take a family vacation again! So we made a wild decision to go during Spring Break! DS's out of school & DH out of work! I budgeted to the hilt & we cut every corner that we were comfortable with & we made the trip spending little more than the '08 tax rebate! We had a great time! We drove instead of flying for the 1st time, we didn't get the hopper add on & we only had 1 TS meal! We each had a very small budget for souveniers (especially compared to years past!) We even had to stay off property the first couple of days, due to my last minute booking, we couldn't get anything on property for the entire week!

Yes we missed some of the things that we've been used to doing, but otherwise we couldn't have made the trip. And you know what - we had a great time as usual! Of course it's WDW - how could we not!