Tips for a affortable Disneyland trip

For the last 4 years my family has been addicted to going to Disneyland for our yearly trip, and I'm always doing research on how to make it more affordable for our family and I have been asked a lot how do we afford it? So I thought I would give some advice and fill you in on how much we spend.

There are four of us in my family that go and we have a set budget of $3000 for our trip but we always end up only spending $2800. We live in Oregon so we make the long 16 hour drive to save money $300 round trip in gas. I book are hotel and ticket package thru costcotravel.com, I always end up finding a great price on packages and there is always great bonuses you get. This year our package was $1800 and that included, 5 night stay at the Hilton, 4 day park hoppers, free character breakfast for the family, $20 Disney gift card, Disney luggage tags, Disney lanyards and pins and a free ride of your choice picture! The rest of our $900 goes towards food and souvenirs. We always take a case of water and snacks with us. At Disneyland if you ask for ice water it is free! Part of the whole Disneyland experience is eating the food so we do always eat lunch and dinner in the park or at Downtown Disney. I allow my kids to get a churro and a cheap souvenir once a day. We save up our $3000 over the course of a year, putting a little away each month. Some other things we have done to help with the cost is selling on ebay and craigslist, I'm amazed at what people actually buy on ebay! We save all our change, I also do swagbucks, mypoints and inboxdollars. This past trip I got enough points for $150 gift card to the Rain Forest cafe, $25 for Cheesecake Factory and $60 cash. I also did disneymovierewards.com and got $20 in Disney gift cards. I have so many tips and advice so if you have any question please ask! I would love to help!