Cost Breakdown - 1 Week at AoA Family of 5
Just returned from our first family trip to Disney World, stayed at AoA - really great vacation. We budgeted about $10K for trip and ended up spending $15K. My kids are 8, 6, 4.
Key drivers of the over budget were not anticipating as much food/tips spending after including the dining plan. Also spent about $1K on LL alone and factoring in the out of park items like ground transport and pretrip Amazon purchases.
Some prices like split between hotel and tickets are approximate.
Hotel: $4000 - Cars Suite, My youngest loves Cars movie so this was a no brainer. We were able to get roll away bed, so each kid had a bed (sofa, murphy, rollaway).
Tickets: $4450 - We got LLMP for every park day (5 park days total, MK 2x, Epcot, AK, HS 1x). We also purchased single ride LL for Tron, GOTG for just 3 individuals - the two adults and 1 oldest). I think more important than LLs is to get into the park before early entry. You can hit up 3-4 big rides before 10am if you are there before 830am early enough, thus eliminate any need for LL. This was our first (and likely only one for a while given cost) so I didn't want to leave anything on the table. I will also say that Rider switch is very convenient, and my son was able to ride Tron and GotG 2x (once with me, and once with his mom) so that the LL price is reduced when evaluating on a per ride basis (e.g. $60 for 3 LL total divided by 4 total rides).
Dining Plan - $1400 - We got the kids eat free promotion. We purchased $2700 worth of food throughout the trip, but I can say it was difficult to maximize bang for your buck. So not worth it if you have to pay for everyone. We did a ton of character buffets, but I don't think all are "worth it" if you had to pay out of pocket. We got alcohol every chance we could and used up every credit. Meals that stood out: 1900 Park Fare and CRT. Both worth it for first time visitors and my daughter who was super into princesses. CRT was two table credits which everyone says is not maximizing value, but the 2 credits includes waiter tips so it was very much worth it for us ($80 of value). We also did Crystal Palace, Tusker House, Ohana, Hollywood and Vine and I would not go back to any if I had to pay cash for my whole family.
Flights - $1500 we booked November 2025 before oil prices increased so lucky there. Ground transport w/ car seat options were $650 total (approximately $150-165 each airport leg).
Pretrip purchases - $660 - we bought ponchos (never used), portable fans, backup cell phone batteries, mickey ears, tshirts, hats, etc from Amazon which definitely helps on preventing souvenir purchases. We also bought Memory Maker and 4 magicbands in advance. Memory maker was 1000% worth it for us. We would have bought at least 1 family photo or ride photo per day. We did photo shoot at Disney Springs too. MagicBands are probably not worth it if traveling on a tight budget.
Souvenirs - $1200 - I anticipated spending more for my spoiled kids, but we successfully were able to limit them to 1 toy/prize per day. Many options in the $20 range, and they all got a couple of $35-$45 items. They want everything from the first store they go to. But once they realize there are so many options, they waited until the end of the day to pick out their daily prize (most of the time). We had a couple of random bribes to get cranky kids to behave or listen throughout as well. Unfortunately, the kids got into pin trading (which I think is waste of money) and luckily, I was able to get out of HS without buying custom droids for each one. They also loved the star wars helmets but all that stuff was way more expensive. We forget to pack a kid's stuffed animal and lost a water bottle (both of which were replaced with souvenirs which killed me inside).
Extra Food and Tips - $1200 - We spent about $300 on tips for the various character buffets (reddit told me 18-20% normal even thought it's all buffet service). We spent $340 at Space 220. Food was decent but I wouldn't go back. Trex Cafe at Disney Springs was very good and relatively reasonable. We bought about $200 worth of Instacart snacks on Day 1 (definitely overpurchased but saved us from having to buy food in the park). The rest of stuff was random things not included in dining plan (popcorn, Gideons cookies, Airport meals).