Budgeting for meals without a dining plan

[Queeneileen]

We also eat breakfast in the room. We have burger or sandwich, fries and a drink in the park for $10. a person. For dinner, we go back to the resort. We usually stay at POR or CB. The food court has great full meals of meat or fish with potato and veg for $12. We can go back to the parks later. There are great options like pizza (Italy) and quiche (France) where you don't feel like you need to eat a lot. We don't have big appetites and don't like to waste food. We also treat ourselves to a TS at Raglan Rd., England, France and Sci Fi.(Our favorites.)

 

[Chrelaine]

I set up a spreadsheet with the plans for DH, me and DD4. I planned the cost of the character meals + tips from the price lists. After that, any day we were eating lunch out, I planned $50 total for the 3 of us. If we were eating out for dinner, I planned $100 total for the three of us. Can you do it for less, of course! This just helped give me a good guideline to save for. I added it up afterwards and I think my budget was about $200 above actual.

 

[tami82]

We opted out of a dining plan because I've had bariatric surgery and it would be a waste of money for me (and, as it turns out, if ONE person has a dining plan, EVERYONE in your room has to have one, but that's a gripe for another time). Plus my pre-teen daughters don't eat that much. So this is really the only area of our upcoming trip, other than souvenirs, that I don't know the cost of in advance.

Any tips on estimating our food costs so I can budget accordingly?

Yes look,at online menus. Also if you go out to eat at some chain restaurants back home you can estimate from those. iWe too aren't counting on FD for next year. Also plan on driving outside of Disney for some of our dinners. We will do counter service lunch or small snack as we usually eat our big meal at dinner. On other trips outside of Disney we usually do breakfast at condo such as a box of donuts from Krispy cream(not the most healthy but it's vacation). I can't eat a gigantic breakfast so this is fine for us. Most times won't eat lunch or something very small as a snack and then eat an earlier dinner around 4 or 5. No matter what it will be much cheaper than the dining plan for sure. I have over a year to save for meal money (my contribution to our trip) and happy to do it. In the past our dinners would cost around $70 for 2'kids 2 adults, so I would say it wasn't more than $80-100 per day which is a bargain compared to paying $1800 for a dining plan for 4.

 

[Debbie]

Someone on this board posted the Disney Dining Plan Calculator last week. I don't know how accurate it is, I've never used it. I'm going to give it a try for our upcoming trip and then see how close it comes.
Just another resource in your Disney tool belt.

Thanks for sharing the link! This is a handy, ball park, idea of costs, not including snacks. I'll budget an extra amount for that, and we are good to go! We will save a lot off of the dining plan.

 

[tami82]

Yes the dining calculator is very helpful also. I figured the cost with Cs and a few ts meals in Disney and found it doable not picking the most expensive places. The only expensive one will be ohana and Biergarten which we plan on doing. Since we will be staying at poly Kona seemed reasonable compared to some dinner places if we decide not to venture out for dinner. All in all I think it will work out fine.

 

[LovesTimone]

We opted out of a dining plan because I've had bariatric surgery and it would be a waste of money for me (and, as it turns out, if ONE person has a dining plan, EVERYONE in your room has to have one, but that's a gripe for another time). Plus my pre-teen daughters don't eat that much. So this is really the only area of our upcoming trip, other than souvenirs, that I don't know the cost of in advance.

Any tips on estimating our food costs so I can budget accordingly?

My SIL had this done, and what she did was order an appetizer for the main entrée and asked it be served with everyone else meals. She did not have any issues at anywhere they dinned.

You can share main entrees at most TS spots, just explain to the server, most are very accommodating. Most of the time they will split in the kitchen a few times they have brought extra plates for you to divide yourself.

My SIL did have a bit of a issue with dehydration.

 

[alyssa810]

We've never used the dining plan but we have used Tables in Wonderland. We typically budget $80-100 per day for the 3 of us; we have days when we come way under budget, and others when we have a big TS dinner (or lunch) where we might be over. Usually we come out under our overall budget but like PPs have said, we'd rather over-budget than overspend. We also use a LOT of gift cards, whether through my Disney visa or other credit card rewards, or from sites like quickrewards.net and mypoints.com. One of the reward options from Discover is a $50 Landry's gift card for $45 in cashback rewards. We get those to use at T-Rex mostly; mypoints.com also has a Landry's gift card that you can redeem. Our food spending is almost entirely spent with gift cards; we've budgeted our trips well -for us- this way.

 

[DisMom829]

We went in June for the first time without the DDP. I had originally booked with it, and cancelled it the Monday before we arrived. I ended up saving $599 not using the dining plan. We ate several TS meals, T-Rex (dinner), Crystal Palace (bkfst), Cinderella's Royal Table (dinner), Rain Forest Café (Lunch), Tusker House (bkfst), Chef Mickey's (bkfst), 50's Prime Time (dinner) and other meals were QS. I highly recommend using one of the dining plan calculators, it was very helpful and was the main reason I cancelled the DDP. Now I'm glad I did. We have a return trip planned in Nov, and we won't be using the DDP for it either. I wasn't strict on my kids, when they wanted a snack/drink, they were allowed one.

Have a great trip!

 

[nat8199]

I agree - thanks for sharing this info, Dakotix! After reading so many posts about going OOP, I though we might give it a try but I was very hesitant. When I figured up our ADR plans, it was going to be cheaper to do the DDP. We ended up getting the DDP and I'm so glad. We love eating at a TS each day, and I am going to be much more relaxed knowing that we have the DDP instead of paying OOP. Even with it budgeted ahead of time, it would drive me crazy because I'd want to save money.

OP - realizing your situation is different --- when I was thinking about doing OOP dining, several suggested that I get gift cards (prepaid VISA, Disney, whatever) in the amount of the DDP. That way, it was still pre-paid but more flexible than dining credits. You could order appetizers or whatever instead of an entree, and know that it was paid in advance like with the DDP. That seemed like a really good idea to me.

We are doing the DDP for our September family trip, but DH and I are hoping for an adults only trip next May. If we get to do it, then I will be buying gift cards to make our own "dining plan". We are going to try and use points to stay and Swan and Dolphin, so dining plan wouldn't be available.

 

[LovesTimone]

We are doing the DDP for our September family trip, but DH and I are hoping for an adults only trip next May. If we get to do it, then I will be buying gift cards to make our own "dining plan". We are going to try and use points to stay and Swan and Dolphin, so dining plan wouldn't be available.

We were thinking about staying 3 weekends at either the Swan or Dolphin as we found a really great rate. But luckily before we booked, we noticed the resort charge was an additional 26 or 27 a day plus the cost of parking was around 15 or 20 dollars a day to park for self park, I did not notice the valet pricing. So for us it was more cost efficient to stay on site. But if your staying on points it might work out to your advantage.

 

[nat8199]

We were thinking about staying 3 weekends at either the Swan or Dolphin as we found a really great rate. But luckily before we booked, we noticed the resort charge was an additional 26 or 27 a day plus the cost of parking was around 15 or 20 dollars a day to park for self park, I did not notice the valet pricing. So for us it was more cost efficient to stay on site. But if your staying on points it might work out to your advantage.

We are going to try to stay on points, but I do not know if we will have enough. I really want to stay in the Epcot resort area, as we are going to try to go during F&G festival. If we cannot use points, what you are saying makes a lot of sense, and we will probably try for a discount at YC or BW.

 

[LovesTimone]

We are going to try to stay on points, but I do not know if we will have enough. I really want to stay in the Epcot resort area, as we are going to try to go during F&G festival. If we cannot use points, what you are saying makes a lot of sense, and we will probably try for a discount at YC or BW.

Just as a suggestion, DH and I use to stay at YC or BC during F & W, but then I decided that we were spending to much on the room for a couple of night when it was just the 2 of us. So now we stay in a moderate resort - king, and it is more than enough for us. With the saving, we have dinner at Flying Fish or Cali Grill or both, even a moonlight carriage ride over at POR. We have stayed at all the moderates and enjoyed all of them. We just grab a bus at the end of the night, which really doesn't bother us. Just a suggestion.. Have a great trip.

 

[Marionnette]

We tried the snack route last march. The theory looked great on paper but we ended up eating lunch and dinner in the parks anyway. You don't realize the miles of walking you will do in the parks everyday. It really works up an appetite you aren't accustomed to at home. We ended up spending what the dining plan would have cost but it was money spent on all the junky fast food places. While the dining plan gets you a ton of food that you probably don't need, having the plan gives you the option of one sit down restaurant per day which would have made our last trip more fun...and less greasy.

I understand your situation is different but i thought I'd share our experience.

I just wanted to say thanks for sharing this...We always do the DDP and for this upcoming trip I was starting to doubt myself based on all the posts here saying you can do it so much cheaper (even though looking at menus for us I'm not sure we could). So this got me to thinking maybe we would snack more than have solid meals and your post just reaffirmed what I was thinking. Glad I went ahead and booked the DDP.

My personal experience has been the exact opposite of these PPs, which just goes to show that there is no definitive answer to the question of whether it's better to go with the dining plans or pay OOP.

There were changes recently announced for the dining plans, which included the ability to trade a dessert for either a side salad, a cup of soup, or a fruit plate at TS locations. You can also exchange a meal credit (either QS or DDP) for 3 snack credits at select locations. And you can opt for an additional side item instead of taking the dessert at a QS location. And all dining credits (both adult and child) will now be combined so that there are no child TS (or QS) credits, just a total number of meal credits for each room. The changes took place at the end of May. This could tip the scales for some people, especially those with "under age 10" children who could conceivably pay OOP for their children's meals and use those credits for adult meals instead. I have not followed the changes too closely because we don't have little kids and tend to eat differently than the dining plans would allow, even with this new flexibility. However, for some people, it may be worth reconsidering the dining plans with these changes in place.

ETA: Additional info. with updated changes for 2016 can be found here:
http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2015/07/08/2016-disney-dining-plan-changes-and-updates/