How much do you typically spend in 1 day at Disney?

[lovin'Mickey]

Last year I budgeted $300 a day, this year my hubby thinks this is a crazy amount. He wants to only budget $200 per day.... i think this is impossiable! I have a 7,6, and 2 1/2 year old. We are staying on site and will be eating out for every meal except breakfast in the hotel room. Any great tips on saving to help me fall into this budget? Our hotel is already paid for so this is just for food and spending money.

 

[CMKN]

lovin'Mickey - what type of appetite does your family have? With my girls and I, we like to have a big breakfast, skip lunch and have a snack (churros, turkey legs, mickey bars, etc), and then most of the time do a buffet dinner. We can usually get away with $100 for food (excluding breakfast) and snacks for a family of three (me32, dd13, and dd9). You have younger children, who of course will need to eat more so one suggestion would be to "split" double hamburgers with the extra bun.

As far as souvies are concerned, my girls "earn" their spending monies throught out the year with chores and grades, and you would be amazed how frugal they become when it's their money and not mine so that is not a problem for us!

 

[newholidayx2]

after going through our meal budget Im planning on $90 on average for DS13 & myself - anything extra will go to next days envelope - this should be enough for shopping too

 

[CEDmom]

$300 seems like a lot of money for lunch and dinner along with a few souvenirs. I don't think it would be too hard to scale that back. First off I'd set a limit up front for your older kids to spend on souvenirs - maybe $50. Once it's gone that's it. We've done this with our 5 yo and she's becoming a very discriminating shopper because of it. Then I'd probably go for later sitdown lunches and throw in a morning snack and light dinner. That would definitely keep down costs and give everyone a mid-day break. Also if your older kids aren't big eaters I'd order 1 kids meal for them to split - you can always order more if they're still hungry. Even the kids meals at WDW are huge.

 

[happybratpack]

The days we don't have PS meals planned we spend about $60 a day...but we usually share at least one meal and snack during the day. This is counter service at the parks/resorts. We're always surprised how much less we eat than we planned, after the last trip we came back with 12 Q&C Vouchers we didn't use.

 

[califred]

If you think you'll spend that much on food you shoulld consider the dining plan 35/day for adults and 11 or so for kids and the meals can be used by anyone in the party

 

[SnowyPrincesses:)]

I would remember that meal sharing is allowed. In regards to your husband... if you can afford to budget $300.00 a day I say go ahead. There are lots of ways to save money on food and things while you are there. Then you will have overbudgeted and its easy to say... 'Well, you know honey we actually saved $***.** that we figured we'd have spent so now we can------ (you fill in the blank here but a suggestion is another Disney vacation sooner than you would have planned.) But that's just my logic LOL

 

[MrsPete]

We budget $120 per day for our family of four, and often we don't spend it all.

 

[powellrj]

we budget $150 a day and we are HUGE eaters and usually have teenagers with us!

 

[chrisn]

3 adults (DD-17) and one child (DS-7). I budget $200 per day. We always do one sitdown, one counter service then usually BF in the condo. It is more than enough for food, snacks and suviniers and my kids get a lot of suviniers! $200 can easily be done. I agree with your DH.

 

[Soupermom]

My family of 4 (DH, DD10, DS7 and DM) did just fine with a budget of $60/day last June. We ate breakfast in the hotel room and then shared meals/snacks. Some days we spent less. This was enough for lunch, dinners and snacks. My kids had $40 each to spend the whole week on souvies. I think they each bought two things the end of the week. Man, for $300/day I'd be staying at the WL! No way we'd eat that much food, spend that much ($300)on merchandise in one day!!!!

 

[lovin'Mickey]

Do they charge you extra to have your kids share meals?

 

[EsmeraldaX]

For two adults, we spend probably $100 combined for food, souveniers on average. Usually way less than that on most days; occasionally we go over. $100 would be if we had 3 full meals.

 

[eeyore0062]

Not counting the room, we usually budget about $150 per day. Whatever isn't spent is carried over to the next day. By the end, we usually have enough for that great dinner we want to splurge on, or that "must have" souvenier. This budget has always worked, and we usually have money left over. Our family consists of DH, DD (10) and me.

 

[Soupermom]

As far as kids sharing meals, I can't speak for every restaurant as we usually ate counter service...but, we had no problem sharing adult/kid meals. Usually two adult meals would feed the four of us, or one adult and two kids meals. Depends where you eat. AK had a great "meal deal" offer at several places where you basically get a free drink and snack later in the day. Not sure if they still have this or not. We did bring a few water/gatorade bottles in at the start of the day, but it was REALLY hot when we went. WE drank lots. If we went when it was cooler I'm guessing we'd spend less on water, more on food!

 

[Princess Glenda]

Our family of 4 budgets $150 a day for meals, snacks, and souvenirs. You should easily be able to stick to a $200 a day budget. Have a great time planning and GOING!!

 

[Mom to Will and Finn]

If you eat breakfast in your room and if you eat only counter service with few snacks, I'd say you could eat on about $75 a day, possibly even less. We went in October 03 and I was scared about the cost of food and was determined to eat only counter service, thinking it really didn't matter as long as it was edible. It actually (except for Pizza Planet) was way better than just being edible. We enjoyed all our counter service meals. If you'd like sit down restaurant service, it would be considerably more.

Souvenirs are what always get us, but even being liberal, I'd say we spend maybe $75 a day and most likely not that much at all.

I think $300 a day is a lot of money to budget for per day. If you have it and want fine dining experiences, then I say go ahead and budget that much, but if it will put a big, uncomfortable dent in your savings/living expenses/etc, then you can do it for way less.

 

[crazelion]

300.00 dollars would cover me and mom food budget for the week. But we eat breakfeast and dinner.
We take snacks with us.

I say cut down to 100.00 a day for a family of four.

 

[sskem96]

We are budgeting $100/day for food for the 4 of us. We are eating b-fast in the room, so just buying milk from the food ct. We have a PS for CRT one day, but $30 of that was pd. at the time of the reservation, so it won't cost too much. The only other PS we have is for the Fantasmic dinner package at Hollywood and Vine, which will be about $80 with tax and tip. We might end up doing a couple more character meals toward the end of our trip if we're ahead on the budget.

 

[emmalgin]

This argument (or post) goes around and around. Disney is not cheap and when on vacation we want to eat well. WDW is particularly expensive for anything that is not counter service or fast food.

What can you eat in a cramped room for breakfast that does not have you hungry later? Does no one drink? All teatotallers on this board?

Stay offsite where breakfast is included or you have a full kitchen and you can keep prices down. Take lunch to the park and splurge on dinner.