Going to Orlando on a College Budget

rchou

So a bunch of us college kids had the bright idea of going to Orlando for Spring Break. We go to NYU.

After some initial calculations, it looks like with airfare, hotel, and car it'll be about $450, along with the $250 or so for park passes.

So, that's a lot of dough. Can it be done for cheaper?

Improvolone

Craigslist for park passes, employees love selling their freebies. Are you looking at Disney and/or Universal? Are you just doing theme park awesomeness, or do you want to hit bars etc? What hotels have you looked into?

In short, give me as much information as you can.

Scalfin

While it can be expensive, try chartering a boat to go sport fishing. My dad, who comes from a fairly poor background and was on a really tight budget at the time, says that one of his biggest regrets is never doing that with his friends during college/grad school (probably grad school, as he was speaking about Cape Cod and his college was SUNY Buffalo).

Improvolone

While that is an awesome idea and something for him to think about, Orlando is about 45mins from the water without traffic. There is never no traffic in Orlando.

rchou

We're looking at mostly Disney, maybe Universal but it seems like we would only be able to afford one or the other.

And yeah, we'd be interested in bars/other things to do on our off days, but the main focus is definitely the theme parks and just hanging out together in whatever hotel / suite / apartment thing we rent.

Really, the numbers we came up with were after maybe half an hour of googling, with

http://www.floridaysresort.com

that being the website we based the hotel estimates off of.

At this point I just want to see what it would realistically cost to make the trip, with some help from you guys on how to cut corners and make it more affordable.

Improvolone

If you are going to just to Disney, stay in a Disney hotel. The Southern styled one and the Campground styled one are the cheapest I think. You get a lot of advantages staying on Disney property that are fucking awesome. Extra magic hours? omg yes.
If you stay on Disney property, you can save cash and forgo getting a car. Downtown Orlando is a shithole, but so is Downtown Disney. Check it out for some drinks if you want, but really, there is nothing worth going to. I damn near insist that you only do theme parks.
There is a right way and a wrong way to do Disney.

Kewop Decam

Improvolone wrote: »

While that is an awesome idea and something for him to think about, Orlando is about 45mins from the water without traffic. There is never no traffic in Orlando.

Lived there for 2.5 years and this isn't true. Actually, for the most part the traffic isn't bad.

I'm from Miami so maybe I have a different tolerance for traffic.