One of the questions I get asked most often about our Florida holidays is “How much do you actually need to save?”
And honestly, this is one of those questions where the answer can vary massively depending on how you choose to do Florida.
You can do it relatively cheaply. You can spend an absolute fortune. You can stay on Disney property, stay off-site, hire a villa, hire a car, use shuttles, eat in restaurants every day, cook your own food, buy every piece of merchandise you see… or do a bit of everything.
So I thought I’d try to put together some realistic, high-level figures based on our own experience.
I’ve been to Florida five times in the last ten years, and we’ve done quite a few different types of holiday. That gives me a pretty good idea of where the money goes and, more importantly, where you can save it.
The figures below are therefore not a quote for your holiday. They’re a starting point to help you work out how much you might need to save.
So, how much do you actually need?
For a family of four, I’d start with four essential costs:
- Flights
- Park tickets
- Accommodation
- Food and spending money
Everything else is then an optional extra or a cost that depends on how you choose to do your holiday.
For a family of four, I’d be looking at around £8,000–£10,000 as a realistic starting point for a two-week Florida holiday.
You can absolutely spend less, but equally it is very easy to spend considerably more!
Here’s how I’d work it out.
1. Flights – budget at least £500 per person
The first thing I’d budget for is £500 per person for return flights.
That’s £2,000 for a family of four.
Flights can obviously be considerably more than this, particularly if you want specific dates, school holidays, direct flights or particular airlines.
However, if you’re flexible with your dates and are prepared to consider indirect flights, you can definitely find flights around this level.
I’d therefore use £500 per person as a target, rather than assuming that is what your flights will definitely cost.
And remember, if you are travelling as a family of four, every £100 you save on a flight is £400 back in the holiday pot!
2. Park tickets – another £500 per person
Park tickets are another big one.
Again, prices vary enormously depending on exactly what parks you want to visit and how many days you want to go for, but I’d budget at least £500 per person for park tickets.
For a family of four, that’s another £2,000.
So before you’ve even booked a hotel or got on the plane, you’re potentially looking at:
Flights: £2,000
Park tickets: £2,000
Total: £4,000
That’s a pretty sobering figure when you first start planning!
But it does show why Florida holidays need a bit of forward planning. I would also add a top tip here….if you can stretch to more than 2 weeks, even 18 nts or 3 weeks will mean you get so much more value out of your tickets if you want to do more than just disney. Disney can absolutely keep you entertained for 2 weeks, you will not get everything done in Disney in this time so if you buy additional park tickets for a 2 week stay, there will be compromises.
3. Accommodation – this is where things can vary hugely
Accommodation is probably the biggest variable.
The cheapest way to do Florida is undoubtedly going to be staying off-site, particularly if you are travelling with a larger family or group.
Villas can work out really well for larger groups because you have more space and the ability to cook your own meals. However, I don’t have enough experience of villa holidays to give you a realistic figure, so I’m not going to pretend I do.
What I would say is that when comparing a villa with an on-site hotel, you need to look at the whole cost.
If you stay in a villa, you’ll probably need a car.
I’d budget at least £500 for car hire, although this can obviously be much more depending on the length of your stay, the type of car and when you travel.
Then there’s fuel, parking at the parks and potentially tolls.
Disney and Universal parking is around $30 a day, so that can quickly add up.
For us, one of the big advantages of staying on-site is that we don’t necessarily need a car for the whole holiday.
Staying on International Drive
International Drive can offer some really good deals.
I’ve stayed in three-star hotels there for less than £100 a night when booking through an airline.
There are also plenty of more affordable restaurants, shops and things to do, and the I-Ride Trolley is a cheap way of getting around International Drive.
For a family of four, you can get a weekly pass for around £20, which is obviously considerably cheaper than having a hire car.
Many hotels also offer free shuttle buses to the parks.
The downside is that the shuttles aren’t always particularly convenient. You can end up having to work around their timetable, and you may find yourself staying in the parks for longer than you necessarily wanted to.
And if you’re in the parks all day, you’re much more likely to be buying park-priced food and drinks.
So, as always, the cheapest option isn’t necessarily the one that works best for you.
4. Food – don’t underestimate this one!
This is probably the area where people get caught out and prices have risen quite drastically since 2020.
If you’re staying in a villa and cooking most of your meals yourself, you can obviously save money.
You can also take packed lunches into the parks and avoid buying everything from the Disney and Universal restaurants.
But remember that food shopping in America isn’t as cheap as it is in the UK. In fact, some things can be considerably more expensive.
For a family of four, I’d initially budget around £500 a week for a food shop if you are planning to self-cater.
If you’re eating out regularly, you’ll need considerably more.
A quick-service meal for a family of four in the parks can easily be £50 or more, while a table-service meal will easily take you over £100.
Outside the parks, you can get much more for your money.
Places such as Miller’s Ale House, Applebee’s, Perkins and LongHorn Steakhouse offer much more reasonably priced meals, particularly if you don’t go mad with appetisers, desserts and alcoholic drinks.
Even then, you’re probably looking at a minimum of £50 for four people, and more realistically £80+ for a family meal.
And this is where our own experience becomes useful.
What do we actually spend?
For the last few trips, we’ve averaged around $1,000 a week for four adults on food and spending money.
That includes the food, snacks and drinks for the room, the odd nice meal, a few beers and bottles of wine for the evenings and some essential merchandise!
It isn’t a “we buy whatever we want” budget, but it also isn’t a “we are living on packed lunches” budget.
There have been some trips where we’ve spent less, and obviously you could spend considerably more.
But after five trips to Florida over the last ten years, this is the figure I’ve found useful for planning.
And because our children are now adults, we’re also not comparing this with feeding two small children. This is four adults.
What have our Florida holidays actually cost?
This is where I think things get really interesting.
Here are some very high-level figures for our family of four over the last ten years.
2015 – Off-site Florida
We stayed off-site in the Lake Buena Vista area and visited both Disney and Universal.
We used the free shuttles to get to the parks, took packed lunches into the parks and cooked in our room.
Total: around £5,000
This was definitely one of our cheaper Florida holidays and shows what can be achieved if you are prepared to stay off-site and keep a close eye on your spending.
2017 – Disney Bubble
Two weeks staying entirely within the Disney bubble.
We stayed at Port Orleans French quarter (which has our heart forever) we had the free dining offer and spent the whole holiday at Disney.
Total: around £8,000
At the time, this felt like an amazing deal.
And it was!
But there is an important lesson here which we’ll come back to…
2018 – Disney, Universal and a Cruise
This was a much bigger holiday. as it was my 40th Birthday and my youngets sone was also 10.
We had:
- One week at Disney with free dining – Port Orleans French Quarter
- A three-night Disney cruise – Disney Dream to Castaway Quay
- Three nights at Universal’s Portofino Bay (express pass included)
- Universal park tickets
- One park per day tickets rather than park-to-park
Total: around £12,000
So you can see how quickly the price can increase once you start adding cruises, premium hotels and more experiences.
2022 – A very different Florida
This was probably one of our most varied trips and our first post covid.
We had:
- Six nights on International Drive – CoCo Key Resort and water park.
- Kennedy Space Center
- International Drive attractions
- National parks
- Two days of car hire, including a Mustang!
- Five nights at Coronado Springs
- Five nights at the BoardWalk
- Five nights at Animal Kingdom Lodge
- Our first stay as Disney Vacation Club owners
We didn’t have a dining plan.
Total: around £9,000 including spending money.
This was a great example of how you can combine different types of accommodation and experiences to make a really varied Florida holiday. It would cost considerably more as a non DVC member but we have made a huge outlay in order to get this perk until 2054. We pay approximately £1000 a year maintenance and i have included this in the above figure but not the initial outlay. Non DVC members can have one off stays through sites like Dave’s rental, where people like me rent out our spare points. It is a good way to save if you want the luxury edition!
2025 – Universal and Disney
In 2025 we did:
- Seven nights at Universal’s Dockside
- Universal park tickets
- Ten days of car hire, from Universal through to the airport
- Two nights at Animal Kingdom Lodge Club Level
- Eight nights in a Treehouse Villa at Saratoga Springs
- Disney park tickets
- No dining plan
Total: around £11,000 including spending money.
Again, there were some more expensive elements in there, particularly the Club Level stay and Treehouse Villa. This trip was celebrating my husbands 50th and we did have a lot of splurges such as Candlelight processional package, Fantasmic dining package to name a few.
2026 – Our current trip
And then we get to our 2026 holiday. (The coundown in on and we are less than 30 days away)
We’re staying for two weeks at Pop Century, with our flights, hotel and park tickets costing around: (our first time at a value resoty)
£6,300
I’m estimating another £2,000 for spending money and food. I have only booked 3 nice table meals for our birthdays and our last night as well as the new lounge at MK and Beaches and Cream for the legendary Kitchen sink.
That gives us a total of around:
£8,300
And here’s the really interesting bit.
We could have taken advantage of the free dining offer.
The cost of that holiday would have been around £9,300.
So although we absolutely love the dining plan, the maths simply doesn’t work for us this time.
We’re better off paying for our own food and keeping the £1,000 difference.
And that is something I think is really important when planning a Florida holiday.
Don’t assume that a “free” dining plan is automatically the cheapest option.
Sometimes the hotel price attached to the offer is considerably higher, and you need to look at the total cost of the holiday, rather than just the value of the dining plan. Although I do have to reiterate that I love the dining plan and if money wasn’t a factor I would add it just for the convenience and joy of paying for everything up front. Its like Disney all inclusive.
So, how much should you save?
If I was starting from scratch and planning a two-week Florida holiday for a family of four, I’d use this as my starting point:
Flights – £2,000
Park tickets – £2,000
Accommodation – whatever your chosen style allows
Food and spending money – around £2,000
That means I’d want at least £6,000 before accommodation.
Once you’ve added your hotel, you’re very quickly into the £8,000–£10,000 range.
And if you want premium Disney hotels, Universal hotels, a villa, a hire car, lots of park days, character dining, cruises, Club Level or plenty of shopping, you can easily push beyond £10,000.
But the good news is that you don’t have to spend £10,000+ to have an amazing Florida holiday.
Our own trips prove that.
We’ve done Florida for around £5,000 (although this was over ten years ago) and we’ve done it for around £12,000.
We’ve stayed off-site, stayed in Disney hotels, stayed at Universal, hired cars, used shuttles, cooked, eaten in restaurants, taken packed lunches into the parks and had free dining.
And every single trip has been brilliant.
The biggest tip I can give you
If you’re dreaming of a Florida holiday, don’t start by asking “How much will it cost?”
Start by deciding what sort of Florida holiday you actually want.
Do you want the Disney bubble?
Do you want a villa and a hire car?
Do you want to do Disney AND Universal?
Do you want to spend your days in the parks?
Do you want to explore Florida beyond the theme parks?
Do you want to eat out every night?
Or are you happy to cook some meals and take lunches into the parks?
Because all of those choices can change the final price by thousands of pounds.
For me, the best way to look at it is to set yourself a realistic target, start saving early and then keep an eye out for the deals.
And if you can get the basic holiday costs — flights, tickets and accommodation — sorted, I’d aim for around £1,000 a week for a family of four for food and spending money.
You may spend less.
You may spend considerably more!
But it’s a useful number to have in your head when you’re working out how much you need to save.
And if you’re starting with absolutely nothing in the bank, don’t be put off by the numbers.
Our first Florida trip was around £5,000.
Ten years later, we’ve had a £12,000 trip.
There isn’t one right way to do Florida.
That’s probably one of the things I love most about it.
If you want help to plan your next holiday – nothing would bring me more joy, so please reach out.
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