Disney just announced that they would be kicking off a marketing campaign titled “Give a Day, Get a Disney Day” promotion. Starting January 1st, 2010, if you volunteer a day of community service at select charities, you can get a free one-day, one-park ticket. They will give out a million tickets until December 15th, or until they run out. The “Give a Day, Get a Disney Day” promotion is going to replace the current promotion where you can get free admission to the park on your birthday.

How do you participate? Visit’s the Give a Day, Get a Disney Day page to sign up and look for an eligible volunteer opportunity in your area. You won’t be able to sign up or search for opportunities until January 1st but you can sign up to get an email reminder when the program gets started.

I checked out the terms & conditions of the offer and it’s fairly relaxed. There are some restrictions on when you can use the ticket (You can’t enter Walt Disney World Resort between March 29th – April 8th, and July 4th; you can’t enter Disneyland on February 13-14, March 21, June 21-22, July 4, NOvember 21, or December 11-12). Outside of the day restrictions, I don’t see aren’t any other notable or unexpected requirements (full terms & conditions).

Give a Day, Get a Disney Day [HandsOn Network]

(Photo: savannahgrandfather)

My wife and I always have a great time whenever we go to Disney, partly because we’re both kids at heart and partly because Disney makes the whole experience very enjoyable. On our recent trip, we stayed at the Port Orleans Riverside resort, a moderate Disney resort, for the second time and loved it. Disney is very good at “keeping you in Disney” if you let them, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and when we went, we were on Disney property (not counting roads) 24/7 for our entire stay in Florida. From getting off the plane and hopping on the Disney Magical Express Transportation until the same bus took us back five days later, they had us. But when they had us, they treated us very well and we didn’t have a single complaint!

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Last week my wife and I went to Disney World in Orlando Florida to celebrate our one year anniversary and, for the first time, opted for the Disney Dining Plan. You can only include the Disney Dining Plan if you are booking a vacation package with Disney, in our case I booked a five-day Magic Your Way Package, with lodging at the Port Orleans Riverside resort, and included the standard Dining package.

Overall, we were pleased with the Dining Plan and felt that it was a great deal. There was only one downside, it was too much food!

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This week, Will and Greg at Wise Bread announced that they’ve upgraded their Top 100 Personal Finance blogs rankings to include a variety of metrics and offer incredible sorting capabilities. I’m a firm believer that hard work should be rewarded and in the currency of the web, that reward should be in links.

I’m a little biased though… because by many metrics, Bargaineering is recognized as one of the top personal finance blogs. It’s one of the top sites because of you. Thank you. Thank you for visiting every day. Thank you for printing out articles and emailing them to your friends. Thank you for subscribing to the feed so you get posts piped directly to your email for free. When this site started four years ago, there were only five personal finance blogs – today there are hundreds of thousands. It’s grown by leaps and bounds, far more than I ever imagines, and I am honored that this site is one that you all come back to every day.

At the end of the day, we’re in this together. I’m glad to have been able to provide the platform for this burgeoning community on the web but I’m even happier that so many of you have joined me and bought into it. I’ve been very happy seeing the Bargaineering Forums grow as quickly as they have. I wanted it to be a place where communication would be a lot easier than in blog comments and you haven’t disappointed. Over a hundred members in the short time it’s been up, thank you so much! If you haven’t joined yet, please do, you get the expertise of a hundred people rather than the limited expertise of one.

Before this lovefest gets too carried away, I wanted to wish you all a happy weekend. I think I’m just sappy because my wife and I are celebrating our one year anniversary in Disney (those following on Twitter, you should join Twitter!, were getting some Tweets about it but normally I stick with breaking news or more useful financial information).

Have a great weekend!

My wife and I were married in February of 2008 and with our anniversary coming up, thought it would be fun if we spent a few days in sunny Florida at the magical kingdom that is Walt Disney World. In the last few weeks, I’ve spent some time researching the best deals, trying to understand the dining plan, and checking which dates would work best for the both of us and the airline ticket prices. It all culminated yesterday when I booked a five day vacation that would include Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and the rest of the gang.

Well, as Murphy’s law has always tried to warn me, the day after we booked, my wife received an email offer from Disney. Disney had been watching her account and saw she was considering a vacation. We never booked through her account, we booked through mine. Anyway, Disney had no idea so they sent her an offer. Book four days and get three days free plus a $200 Disney gift card.

Wowsers, that’s a heck of a deal.

We booked a five day with nothing more than the publicly available discounts. My wife said I should call to see if they could match the email offer. After chatting with a very nice CSR, we were able to change our package to the “private” offer. The fifteen minute phone call dropped the price of our vacation by $200 plus gave us a $200 gift card. $400 for a 15 minute phone call? No problem!

Nothing about our itinerary changed, it was just cheaper. Disney didn’t have to do match the offer but they did. A lot of vacation type places are offering fantastic discounts but they usually aren’t willing to make a change to a package you’ve already signed up for and paid a deposit on. This was certainly above and beyond what I would’ve expected, but it just shows that it always pays to call!

Thanks Disney!

(Photo: expressmonorail)