I was reading a message on one of the forums written by someone who was asking for advice for paying for her trip. She said that she was $40 short and needed to pay the balance - she wondered if WDW would give her an extension until she got her paycheck.

I have some advice for her.

How about this: If money is so tight, maybe you should be postponing the trip. I doubt if this is the advice she’s looking for so I won’t offer it, but it made me think of all the people who are wondering if they should cancel with the way the economy is right now. Let’s revisit the ways to save money at WDW and look at the best ways to slash costs.

Use Gasbuddy! First of all, even though gas prices are high, it might be more cost effective to drive. A good website for figuring this out is http://www.gasbuddy.com/ - do a little math and see what’s up with the gas situation on your route.

We got Continental tickets for $230 for Thanksgiving  which is pretty good from Cleveland to Orlando, but be sure to do the comparisons on http://www.expedia.com  and figure it out.  (Don’t forget to check out Southwest on your own because for whatever reason Expedia doesn’t.  By the way, I have had excellent experiences with Expedia! Their customer service has been outstanding.

When you get there if you’ve done so by air, use Disney’s Magical Express - free airport service - and use Disney transportation while you are there. There is no reason whatsoever to rent a car if you are trying to cut costs.

The best advice for saving money on the resort is Mousesavers - http://www.mousesavers.com, a very thorough and amazing website that will give you all the discounts - even offsite hotel deals. If you are really trying to do this on a shoestring, maybe you should really look into staying offsite. For instance, Mousesavers has a whole list of preferred offsite hotels and some with amazing savings and great amenities (http://www.mousesavers.com/preferred.html ). For our first trip with our daughter we stayed at a Days Inn - it didn’t kill us.

Remember, if you are staying onsite, stay away from the packages and look at the “room only” rates (or at least do the math before you assume the package is cheaper.) There are some great fall rates  (http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/special/offerDetail?id=FY09FallROValueOfferPage). And don’t forget - it may be very beneficial for one of you to get the AP. Check what the AP rates are and then if you get a good AP rate - then and only then you book the pass. You don’t need the pass until check in, so make sure it will save you money before you buy it.

I’ve written ad nauseam about cutting costs so take a look at my other entries. Please leave your own tips! There are plenty of ways of saving money, but the ways things are right now, maybe the best way to save money is to stay home this year. WDW’ll be there waiting for you next year and hopefully we’ll all see better economic times in 2009!