My family of 5 spent $8,600 on a trip to Disney World and Universal. Here's exactly where the money went and how we saved.

The author (right) took her family of five to Orlando for a family trip.Courtesy of Lisa GalekMy family of 5 spent $8,600 on a trip to Universal Studios and Disney World.The bulk of our money went to flights, two hotel rooms, and park tickets.

We saved money by using credit card points.When I started planning a family vacation to Orlando, I knew we wanted to have the full theme park experience — staying at a Universal hotel, visiting the new Epic Universe, adding a Disney day, and enjoying the food and attractions along the way.The result was a six-day vacation that cost $8,620 — and required some careful planning to make the most of our money.

Our family includes my husband and me, along with our three kids, ages 18, 15, and 12. At these ages, our children are old enough to appreciate the trip, enjoy all the rides, and make their own memories.The final price tag for our six-day vacation may sound like a lot— and it was.

But we also saved money in a few important ways.Here's exactly where our money went.Flying instead of driving saved us two vacation daysThe first major decision was how to get from Cleveland to Orlando.

We spent $1,451 on Frontier Airlines flights for our family of five. We could have driven, but the trip would have taken about 15.5 hours each way.

That would have meant losing two full days of vacation time just to sit in the car.For us, flying was worth the extra cost because we wanted to make the most of our time in the parks.We spent $84 to park at Cleveland Hopkins Airport for six days.

We also decided not to rent a car in Orlando and instead used Uber to get around when necessary.We spent nearly $5,000 on Universal hotels and park ticketsOur biggest expense was $4,948 for our Universal hotel stay and four-day park-to-park tickets.We stayed at Universal's Terra Luna Resort, one of the newest on-site hotels.

Terra Luna is considered a Prime Value hotel, and it shares a space-themed design with its sister property, Stella Nova.The hotel's biggest adv