8 days, on DDP, how much cash?

[mantysk8coach]

I am trying to figure out how much spending cash to take for 8 days. We are on the Dining Plan, so won't have to pay for meals. And it is so helpful now that more things count for snack credits, we won't have to pay extra for dole whips and things like that.

So I have $660 saved up so far, plus $116 on my Disney Visa reward card. Will that be enough? I am having trouble thinking of things that may come up that I'd need cash for other than extra snacks. I do tend to over-buy souveniers.

There are three of us, me, DH, and DD2. I don't want to have to worry about running out of cash near the end of the trip. I like the idea someone had in another thread about taking the money you'd normally spend on gas and groceries and such in a week at home (for the week you are gone) and apply that to the trip. I might do that too.

Any thoughts?

 

[Katems]

Goodness, I think you have plenty!! I don't do souvenirs though, so maybe I'm not a good one to answer. We did the dining plan last time and didn't pay one single cent out of pocket for ANY food. Our girls had brought their own spending money, so all we needed cash for was tipping the airport people and Magical Express guy and the maids. We spent about $50-60 cash total, for one solid week.

 

[sameyeyam]

We used our counter service for lunch and table service for dinner. So that really left breakfast open. If you only want 2 meals per day that would probably be fine. But if you want a breakfast I would bring extra cash. Or like us, bring small individual boxes of ceral & disposable bowls/utensils in our suitcase. Then we use 1 snack credit each day for a container of milk that was enough for 4 bowls of cereals.

Actually we made it 7 days with using no extra cash for food on the DDP. But in addition to the cereal for breakfast we also brought along individual snacks (fruit snacks, pringles, nuts, gum, etc.) so we didn't have to purchase any additional snacks. We didn't bring a whole lot of snacks, but just enough to have something on hand if the kids got hungry in between meals and had already used up their snack credit for the day. (I told the kids they could only use 1 snack credit per day, otherwise they would have used all 7 of them up the first day!).

 

[honeybee30]

You can spend a fortune on souvenirs alone! We always spend a lot on bottled water at the parks and alcoholic drinks, i.e. cocktails with dinner.

 

[mantysk8coach]

Thanks, sounds like this is something that varies greatily family to family. I forgot to mention that our DD2 is not on the dining plan, so we'll be paying out of pocket for some of her meals, though it sounds like we'll have plenty of food to share with her.