Budget for food/day?

[peterpanandwendy]

Hi Everyone! I posted a similar post somewhere else, but it was my first post and I don't know where it went Now I'm lost! I think I'm in the right place now…

OK, so, we have booked our trip to Disneyland for August. There will be myself, my husband, my 3 year old son, and my 1 year old daughter.

I'm just wondering how much I should budget for food in the park/day? I'm thinking we will eat breakfast in our hotel, but we will still want to have a coffee in the park at opening, then we will have our lunch and dinner in the park, as well as a few treats. I wish I could eat at the Blue Bayou every night for dinner, but I must keep things fairly reasonable lol!

I will be bringing food for my daughter, so she is not factored into the equation, and my son does not eat very much, so I'm wondering if $150/day will be enough for the three of us to eat?

Please let me know if you have any insight!

Thanks

 

[SugarQuill]

Wondering this same question, only we just have 2 adults and plan on CS only.

 

[CrabbyPatty]

Check out http://allears.net/dlr/din/menu/menus.htm for Disneyland menus. I love checking out the various restaurants and planning meals! We also went in August and found that we didn't eat as much as I had anticipated, due to the heat and wanting lighter meals and lots of water or drinks.

 

[Pastalady]

We are budgeting about 100 a day for 3 of us, two adults one 5 year old.
We will be prepared to go over but this is what we were thinking :
Breakfast : granola bars, fruit and yogurt in hotel or while waiting for rope drop.
We will bring these with is so no cost.
Early large lunch at counter service like flo's or hungry bear. DD and I usually share an entree, so two adult entrees do us fine. About 25.00
We bring brita water bottles and ice tea flavouring with us, so we try to avoid buying drinks. But I know DD will want an apple freeze or something so 10.00 for drinks just in case.
Dinner : corn dogs, and some fruit or something similar. Sometimes pizza port, etc. so another 40 about.
That still leaves 25 for snacks or for a nicer dinner.

 

[pixieprincess13]

I am budgeting $125/day for food for family of 4 two of them being 8 and 5, but we have a WOC lunch booked so that isn't included. That is on the high end for us. We will have snacks that we will bring for us. We just aren't heavy eaters

 

[CassieF]

I think you could do fine with $150 per day, even working in a nice meal one night. Look at the allears menus posted above and play around with costs and see what works for you. Basically, you are looking at 2 meals and a snack, average $50 per, or $25 per person, and you will find you will come under that for all counter services, which can balance out a more expensive table service dinner (or vice versa)

 

[McKenz303]

We spent about 100 a day for three of us (two adults, one child). I packed lots of snacks, and we ate breakfast in the hotel.

 

[Midnightred]

We are a family of four, I have 2 boys ages 10 and 12. I budget $150-$200 per day for the 4 of us. My boys love to snack and eat lots of popcorn. We usually have 1 table service meal per day because it gives us time to rest. Also, DH loves to have 2 or 3 glasses of wine or beer with a CA dinner or lunch (or both), so I have to factor that in. I usually purchase 5 gift cards, one for each day in the park, (for 5 day park-hoppers). If there is money left over, great, we have extra money for trinkets or what not the next day. The amt on the cards may vary depending where we are going to eat. The cards have from $125 to $200 on each. For instance, I'll put much less if we have booked the Fantasmic dessert package for instance, because we need less food. Why gift cards you ask? Well, they are a fun way for me to budget, and I love the designs, they make me really happy! The cutest one's are at the Disneystore.com. You can call and upload more money on them if you wish.

Midnightred

 

[GenGen22]

I think you could do fine with $150 per day, even working in a nice meal one night. Look at the allears menus posted above and play around with costs and see what works for you. Basically, you are looking at 2 meals and a snack, average $50 per, or $25 per person, and you will find you will come under that for all counter services, which can balance out a more expensive table service dinner (or vice versa)

I agree with Cassie. I budget $25 per person. We always book a hotel with a free breakfast so we only have to budget $50 per person/per day. We always do something fun like one year went to the Pirates Dinner theater or spends extra money at a sit down restaurant or sundaes at Ghiradelli or let the kids have what they wanted at the candy store. Some days we would have extra money from our daily budget & some days we would go over. We usually come home with money.

 

[awinangie]

In February my 10 year old daughter and I spent 8 days at the parks. We had breakfast and lunch at the hotel. We shared dinner, getting one or two entrees, depending on the size. We had a two or three shared snacks a day. We also brought snacks with us. The most useful was jerky, to help keep our blood sugar balanced with all the sweets! We also bought only a few drinks, preferring to drink free water from the counter service places or our filtered bottles.

For this I budgeted $35 a day for the both of us. It was plenty!!

If you want a big budget, no problem. But you can absolutely have a much lower budget with just a little planning.

Have fun!!

 

[rootbeer]

You've got great responses so far, and I would also say that you should be fine on 150/day. Since you're going in August, I would plan for water to stay hydrated. Take the bottle of your choice filled with water into the park each day, then you can refill as needed at the water fountains. That will save you some $. I've been there on hot days and actually saw the price of a bottle of water go up as the temp went up. I was kind of disappointed with Disney for that, but I guess they knew they could make a few extra bucks.

 

[AmberStar]

In February my 10 year old daughter and I spent 8 days at the parks. We had breakfast and lunch at the hotel. We shared dinner, getting one or two entrees, depending on the size. We had a two or three shared snacks a day. We also brought snacks with us. The most useful was jerky, to help keep our blood sugar balanced with all the sweets! We also bought only a few drinks, preferring to drink free water from the counter service places or our filtered bottles.

For this I budgeted $35 a day for the both of us. It was plenty!!

If you want a big budget, no problem. But you can absolutely have a much lower budget with just a little planning.

Have fun!!

Thanks for saying this! My eyes were starting to bulge. We are family of 5 and I was planning about 75 to 100 per day for the five of us. I plan to do breakfast at the hotel (except character breakfast day) and uncrustables for lunch plus bring in plenty of snacks for the kids. I'm thinking one quick service meal per day about 3 or 4pm that we can call dinner and a snack at some point. Then maybe some drive thru action post park closing or a sandwich in the hotel. I might be unrealistic but I hope we can swing it. I too plan to load up gift cards. We want our entire trip 100% funded before December so we know the budget and won't go over. Plus have all kinds of vacation fun w/o any debt coming home with us.

 

[dpswift]

We just got back from 3 days in the park. It was four of us 3 adults and a hungry 12 year old boy.

Our quick service meals cost around $60 to $65 so you should be able to eat well for about half that.

For an inexpensive sit down meal try out Naples in DTD. You can get pizza and sodas for around $50 for your family. My 12 year old loved watching the guy make balloon creations.

If you want to stay in the $100 range you should be able to if you stick to QS.

We also ate the free breakfast at our hotel.

 

[tarheelalum]

Hi Everyone! I posted a similar post somewhere else, but it was my first post and I don't know where it went Now I'm lost! I think I'm in the right place now…

OK, so, we have booked our trip to Disneyland for August. There will be myself, my husband, my 3 year old son, and my 1 year old daughter.

I'm just wondering how much I should budget for food in the park/day? I'm thinking we will eat breakfast in our hotel, but we will still want to have a coffee in the park at opening, then we will have our lunch and dinner in the park, as well as a few treats. I wish I could eat at the Blue Bayou every night for dinner, but I must keep things fairly reasonable lol!

I will be bringing food for my daughter, so she is not factored into the equation, and my son does not eat very much, so I'm wondering if $150/day will be enough for the three of us to eat?

Please let me know if you have any insight!

Thanks

150 a day should be fine as long as you stay away from Blue Bayou. A lot of the same food is served at Cafe Orleans. Get the pommel frites, gumbo and some mickey beignets at Cafe Orleans.

 

[peterpanandwendy]

Thanks everyone for your quick responses! I think I feel secure in my $150/day estimate, and that way if I go way under (which I hope to be able to!) than we will have some extra money for souvenirs, or a special night out with a few beers

Does anyone know where is a good place (walking distance) from the hojo to purchase 'groceries' (the basics like milk, cereal, snacks, etc?) so we have things to take with us?

Or, do any of you who have to fly to DLR just bring stuff in your luggage on the airplane?

 

[Malcon10t]

Hojos has a store in Building 1. They have many items needed. Also, there is a 7-11 and an ABC Mart at Harbor and Katella. That is about a 15-20 min walk.

 

[superlarz]

CS places are about 13 dollars with a soda for a regular meal, the Quick service places are about 3-6 dollars more than that but exponentially better. I would budget for one of each every day or two quick service. Counter service places arent that great or filling, eat at a quick service and youll be good for a while. So, not counting snacks, about 35 - 40 per person/daily (less for children.) And if you were wise, another 8-10 for snacks.

 

[aijj]

Thanks everyone for your quick responses! I think I feel secure in my $150/day estimate, and that way if I go way under (which I hope to be able to!) than we will have some extra money for souvenirs, or a special night out with a few beers

Does anyone know where is a good place (walking distance) from the hojo to purchase 'groceries' (the basics like milk, cereal, snacks, etc?) so we have things to take with us?

Or, do any of you who have to fly to DLR just bring stuff in your luggage on the airplane?

We stayed at HoJo's 4 nights last week. As another poster said, in Building 1 there is a gift shop which has essentials (milk, granola/protein bars, juices, nuts, snacks etc). There is no free breakfast at HoJo's..but i think for most just having granola bars, juice etc in hotel is good enough. Our room had a mini fridge & microwave.

For the 4 of us (DH, me, 3yo and 4yo) on average we typically spent $100 a day. Right now my 4yo eats like a teenager (sometimes he eats more than me!) so that is a big part of it. He is also a big breakfast eater, as am I (e.g. a granola bar just won't cut it). We also were at the parks from rope drop to closing without breaks, and at least DH & I were walking the whole time so we tended to eat more. We ate breakfast at McDonald's a couple times on the way there filled up on oatmeal, yogurt, eggs, etc. It was like $15 for breakfast for 4 of us, so not too bad. i think most meals at the parks for would be like $30-$40 for lunch/dinner for the 4 of us...and then an extra $20/day for treats (drinks, popcorn, desserts, etc). Except for the character meal we had at Ariel's, we usually just bought one kids meal for the kids and they split that, and they ate some off our plates.

Also, we flew in but we packed a bunch of stuff in our checked-in bags. We packed a Costco box (20 ct) of those squeezable applesauce pouches, and as well as various protein bars & breakfast bars. We kept the applesauce pouches & bars cold in the fridge and would bring few them in a soft thermal pouch in the stroller, so then they could have some snacks at the parks. That worked out pretty well. I would totally recommend those pouches for kids.

 

[AmberStar]

I would totally recommend those pouches for kids.

Great idea! I need a pre-disney costco run. Uncrustables and those apple sauces pouches for sure. I also plan on trail mix, baby carrots, cuties, etc for while we stroll the park. None of the kids are huge eaters when we are out... likely due to taking in a lot of snacks but also my kids seem to not eat well when there is so much going on around them.

 

[redwing]

I have never done this before, but I will be taking an extra duffle bag full of food when we fly in this Summer. This way when it's empty, I can just fold it up and put in suitcase for flight home! The last couple of times we spent way too much on food/beverages, so going to try to save just a bit!