Yes you can do laundry on your Disney Vacation. All of the resorts at Walt Disney World house a laundry facility. Most of the facilities are located close to the pool area. As such, many people combine their hours of laundry duty with a bit of swimming fun! When doing laundry in one of these facilities, the costs are as follows: Washer $2 per regular sized load, $2 per drying cycle (sometimes it takes more than one cycle to get the laundry dry depending on the dryer and the load type). If you do not bring your own laundry detergent, you can purchase a box of single use laundry detergent for $1. The machines work on quarters and each facility has a change machine.
There are a few reasons why you may want to bring a smaller suitcase and do laundry during your vacation: 1) less to keep up with, load, and carry on your day of travel, 2) less room taken up by your items in your room, 3) you only own 3 Disney shirts and that is all you want to wear the entire week long trip! 4) you want to save the money you would otherwise spend on checking in bags with your airline (if flying). Many of the airlines now charge a checked bag fee. The fees for many of the airlines are $25 for the first bag and $35 for the second bag for bags under 50 pounds. For a family of four, the cost of the checked baggage would be $100 ($25 per person X 4 people) if each person checked only one bag. Of course, this does not consider that the bags would also need to be checked on the flight home as well. With this in mind, that same family of 4 would spend $200 on checking in baggage!
Of course, if you decide to do laundry while on vacation, you will need to be sure to set aside the time needed to wash and dry the loads of laundry. If you are already planning on returning to the resort to swim or rest, doing a load of laundry should not be difficult to accomplish. However, if you are an open-to-close theme park goer, doing a load or two of laundry could be difficult to squeeze in at the beginning or end of a long day at Disney World.
What can you do to save money on the cost of checking in a bag AND not have to do laundry while on vacation? Perhaps plan on only bringing a carry-on bag for the flight. According to flight regulations, the carry-on bags can be approximately 22″ x 14″ x 9″. The FAA mandates that all carry-on items have to fit under a seat or in an enclosed storage compartment.
Here are a few tips to help you in your quest for only bringing a carry-on bag:
1) Bring along clothes that are thinner and take up less space.
2) Wear the clothes that take up the most amount of space. For example, if you are bringing along flip flops and tennis shoes wear the tennis shoes when flying since they take up far more room in the suitcase than the flip flops. Along those same lines if you are bringing a jacket, wear it on the plane.
3) Look at the clothes you are bringing and see if you cannot reduce what clothes are needed by matching shirts with shorts or pants that can be worn more than one day during your vacation.
4) Fly Southwest Airlines where checking on baggage is free! With these tips, you should be able to save yourself some time and some money!
Here are some tips on what to pack in your Disney Parks bag.
Learn more tips and tricks for your next Walt Disney World vacation. Destinations in Florida can also help you add tips and tricks to your next vacation.
(Thanks Meet The Magic!)
I absolutely refuse to wear tennis shoes while flying. Our whole family travels often & we get priority when going through TSA checkpoints because we can do it fast & efficiently. One of the most important parts of this is being able to QUICKLY get our shoes off & up in the bins on the belt. I’ve watched families melt down because of children with laced shoes. NOT the best way to kick off or end your vacation!
We do this all the time. I use an old baby wipe container (the small ones you’d carry in a diaper bag) to carry a couple of dryer sheets and some of the solid detergent tablets (I forget offhand which brand they are). We just toss that into the suitcase and are good to go. Okay, doing laundry on holiday isn’t the most fun thing, but we do it in the evening when the kids are sleeping so it’s not a big deal.
Thank you all so much for your comments! Please continue to find me and other Strategies for Paying for Disney here in the future and at http://meetthemagic.com.
We always pack light and I do laundry when we travel. As everyone else has noted, Purex 3 in 1 is the only way to go!!!! Years ago, we would take garbage bags and put our dirty laundry in them and then bring them home—-YUK!! That was not fun at all!!!
I had a bad experience with this. We stayed at the Contemporary last year and I did laundry while staying there. One thing to note, the washers and dryers there do NOT take quarters; they only take your “key to the world card” (your room key which you charge things on.) There was a computer glitch while I was there, which caused all the washers and dryers not to work with the card. I had to wait 45 mintues before even getting a washer, and by the time I got a dryer, everyone else wanted one too. Also, the washers and dryers there were very small, so it got costly to do several loads. I would think twice before doing this.
we absolutely plan to do a load of laundry – to coincide with our purposeful pool day (maybe doing an evening only MK event). it is so much easier to travel light and allows more room to buy souvenirs :)
We are flying Southwest when we go July 11th, and even though they don’t charge for baggage check, we are doing 3 rolling carry-ons.. one for each person… so that the weight is distributed and we will have enough room for souvenirs on the way home. I did get those 3-in-1 sheets just in case I have time to do laundry, but am not planning on it, I’ll have plenty of time for that when I get home, lol. Even tho it will be hot, so much easier to pack summer clothes than fall/winter items… those would have to be put in full sized, checked in luggage!
We absolutely do this because I always get us the one bedroom villa which has a washer and dryer in it. I also bring the Purex 3 in 1 washing sheets. They are dry so, you can stick them in your luggage without a problem.
On our last trip (June 11, 2011), I paid for one of our five bags to be checked. This one had full size products in it (sunscreen), velveeta shells and cheese, etc. The flight was overbooked so, they were asking for volunteers to gate check their luggage. We were lucky enough to do this on both trips and saved the full $200 (don’t count on it). We were lucky! It never hurts to ask though….
Good tips!!