Five Frugal Things we did at Disneyland Paris….

Every week I share five frugal things that I’ve done during the previous week just to show you that the small things you do all add up to a great frugal lifestyle where you can learn to live a fabulously frugal life.  

Hey!

First up, anyone who’s been a reader for a little while will understand that one of the reasons we try to save money wherever we can is to give us enough money to do all the things that we want to do in life.

I’m absolutely not all about layering on jumpers and socks rather than turning on the heating when we’re cold or comparing prices in supermarkets before I go shopping but I am all about saving rather than wasting money and getting the best deal for whatever we do choose to do.

So this week’s post is all about how we saved money on our recent week away to Paris – a trip we booked earlier this year and have been counting the days to ever since.

1) We booked all of the elements of the trip separately and researched each one before we did to get the best deal (not always the cheapest) for each part of our holiday.

Flights – we booked through Ryanair who we’ve never had an issue with although I know that they would charge for breathing the air in the cabin if they thought they could get away with it. 😁 There were cheaper options available with both Ryanair and other companies for the dates we wanted to go but we wanted a good daytime flight there and back so we booked this one. Ryanair don’t include bags in their basic flight price but we added on extra cabin bags at the time of booking which I am sure was on offer for about £30 a bag but then the day before we travelled, we ended up adding a big hold bag too which was extortionate at £99.

Accommodation – We decided to stay at a Eurocamp just outside of Paris as we really wanted self catering facilities in our chalet, a nice pool area with lots to do for kids and more importantly, space for everyone to have their own rooms and to relax. The park we picked had everything we wanted and we booked during a sale weekend so we were able to get a good deal. We upgraded our chalet to an XL size and paid extra for one with air con so our stay was as comfortable as possible. I’ll share more about that shortly as it was an experience!

Disney Tickets – We booked through Attraction Tickets using TopCashBack to get some cashback on what we bought. They were the cheapest we could find for our tickets and the week after we booked, they had a sale on (that they actually emailed me about 😁). I was able to cancel the original purchase free on charge and rebook at the cheaper price which saved over £100. 

2) We bought one round of drinks in the campsite bar and quickly discovered that for a medium sized soft drink, it was 4 Euros a drink. Water wasn’t much cheaper at 3 Euros for a small bottle! 

We were super lucky that we had such amazing weather while we were away but the heat did mean that we needed to make sure that everyone drank lots so you can imagine how much we would have spent keeping everyone hydrated while we around the pool.

And it would have been absolutely OK if there wasn’t an alternative because it’s needed but I’d much rather have the money for us to spend on other stuff so we took a trip to the supermarket in town and bought a couple of six packs of Coke Zero cans for 4 Euros each and a boot load of small bottles of water which cost 2 Euros for six bottles. 

We kept them chilled in our fridge and filled a bag with them each time we went to the pool. We saved a fortune over the week on our pool days which meant we had more to spend on our Disney days. 

3) Breakfast every day was a trip to the local bakery in the village near where we were staying. 

We went to the same bakery every day and bought breakfast and baguettes to make sandwiches with for lunch and never managed to spend more than 10 Euros. 

Lunch was always simple too. 

This picture was lunch on our last day which was a bit bigger and a bit more random than usual as I was using up all the bits we’d bought through the week. 

We used the baguettes from the bakery and filled them with ham and cheese that we bought from the supermarket in the village. I usually added some fruit and crisps too to keep the hunger away for the rest of the afternoon. 

Saving money on breakfast and lunch wasn’t a hardship as they were lovely meals and it meant that we had more money to spend on tea. Win, win. 

4) There’s so many place to refill water bottles in Disneyland Paris so we took water bottles and this little mini bottle of juice rather than buying the drinks. It saved us a fortune…

To be honest though, I really only took it because we had thought the queues would be long for drinks (which they were) and we’d heard that there were refillable stations everywhere but on the days we went, the sun was shining and we had highs of 30 degrees so the amount we would have spent on drinks would have been ridiculous. It was 4 Euros for a bottle of pop each and 3 euros for a water and I honestly think our drinks spend would have been around £75 if we’d not taken our water bottles. And the money we saved on drinks… all went on Disney snacks as we decided we wanted to try all the cute foodie bits. 

5) We had a budget for the week and I think we did really well at sticking to it. We had all of our money in once account and then transferred over a set amount each morning on our way to the bakery. 

We started off by dividing our week’s budget by seven and making that the amount we transferred but after one Disney day and one pool day we decided to decrease the pool day budget by £50 and increase the Disney day budget by that amount as it was clear that we wouldn’t spend nearly as much around the pool as we would in Disney. 

Total common sense really haha. 

By having a budget, and sharing it with everyone, it was easy to manage and meant that, although we came home with no money, our money lasted us until the last day as it was meant to and we didn’t have to say no to very much at all. 

I definitely don’t feel like we did this holiday on a budget but in reality as we had so much fun and did so much but in reality, every component of the trip was a good deal and we managed our money really well when we were there so we stayed within the budget we set ourselves. 

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