Buying food staples for bkfst in room/fridge

[Mehudicka]

Hi, all. We are staying at the All Star Music Resort the last week in August over Labor Day. We plan to get early starts each day, and on most days, we plan to eat breakfast from our room. We are NOT renting a car, and relying on Disney transportation to get everywhere. Two questions:

- Is there a place we can buy staples at a reasonable price, such as cereal, packaged muffins, fruit -- like a supermarket -- that you can get to on Disney property, or ...
- should we take a taxi somewhere to buy stuff for the week, (if yes, recommendations on where to go?)
- or pack stuff in an extra suitcase and take with us?

Is it worth it to rent a fridge in the room at an extra $5 per day?

Thanks for your sage wisdom,
Mehudicka

 

[CdnDisneyFan]

If you will have a towncar service pick you up, I recommend Food 4 Less, Tom from Your Ride took us there in November, and it's reasonable. I'm sorry, I can't tell you where it is tho.

Jules

 

[MichiganMommy]

You can also place an order for non-perishable food from somewhere like NetGrocer and have it delivered a day before you arrive. Add your check-in date next to you name when you order so the hotel staff knows when you are coming. We haven't used netgrocer at WDW, but have done this at other hotels and it saved us the time of shopping on our trip. Have fun!

 

[ducklite]

How are you getting from the airport to WDW? If you take a car service they will make a grocery stop for you. You could also order ina dvance from Netgrocer.

Are the minifridges still $5? I thought they had gone up to $10 a day...you might want to check.

There is no "reasonably priced" grocery on WDW property. Taking a cab to any store off WDW property (except Goodings, more about taht in a minute) will run you a minimum of $20, therefor negating any savings. Goodings is terrible and highly overpriced, I would avoid it.

You don't mention how many will be in the room, but if you can get away with two boxes of cereal, plus some plastic bowls and spoons, I'd just pack them from home. Then you'll have that room left in your luggage for souveniers.

Of course if you are taking a car service, then a stop at Kash N Karry or Publix would be the way to go.

Anne

 

[pat fan]

I think someone said fridges had gone up to $12 a day,but I'm not sure.

That said, we always pack non-perishables in a suitcase to bring. This year,they do NOT want you to pack food in checked baggage, but you can still put it in carry-on and have it hand searched. I am just bringing less stuff (I always pack too much anyway). I'm taking a pack of plastic bowls, 2 boxes of cereal, 2 boxes of breakfast bars, packets of instant oatmeal, 1 jar of p.b. and 1 jar of squeeze jelly. I am putting a loaf of bread in a tupperware container in a suitcase with my pillow and they will just have to deal with that.

I do plan on stopping at Publix to get a case of water. Still trying to find diredctions there from the airport. Anyone? Also, does anyone know if the sell Vitamion Water at Publix?

 

[helenk]

When my children were younger I just brought my breakfast food in one of our carry on bags. This would then give me a bag for souvenirs on the trip back. I have never used the grocery stop provided by the town car service as I just wanted to go straight to WDW.
I would bring the single serving boxes of cereal,some pop tarts, muffins, the small boxes of juice and plastic bowls and spoons. Then I bought milk at the food court, and kept it cold in the ice bucket in the room.
This always worked well for us.

 

[HamHam]

Buy an insulated collapsable cooler from Wal-Mart - kind of like a lunch bag but much bigger. We've brought one down for the past two trips and keep it in the bathtub in case it leaks but it never has. Fill it with ice each morning and night - keeps everything nice and cold like a fridge but no cost - $12 a day is way too much money to rent a fridge. Last summer we packed all of our breakfast food and snacks in a suitcase and bought milk at the store at AKL. Each morning my husband made us chocolate chip pancakes with our electric frypan that we brought along (with spatula, mixing bowl etc.) we also bring tupperware bowls, plates, and cups and wash them in the sink each day. Every morning we sat on our balcony eating our pancakes while watching the zebras and giraffes graze around - it was heaven on earth.

We had absolutely no problems packing these items when we did the same thing earlier this month while flying to Indy via Baltimore from NH. ***word of caution***make sure all of your camera equipment and film are packed in your carry -on bag. We had left our extra film in a checked bag and all bags are x-rayed now so the film was exposed and ruined.

 

[Miffy]

My dh and I were at WDW this past January. The cost of a fridge was $10.60/day (incl. tax).

We are car-less at WDW. We took Tiffany Towncar to and from the airport. They (and I think all the car services have this, not just Tiffany) have a 30-minute grocery stop, which I believe you have to request when booking the car. They stopped at the Kash "N" Karry (sp?) which was a huge store (okay, all supermarkets look huge to me, I live in NYC) with a good selection of food and not-bad prices. I was surprised that they stocked the soy milk we like, although other health-food-store-type items were absent. A good idea is to go with a grocery list (I wrote ours on the plane) so that the 30 minutes doesn't turn into an hour.

On the sage advice of people at this and other WDW boards, at the K-N-K we bought a styrofoam cooler, which if I recall correctly, cost $1.59. The coolers are stored in an overhead area, so you may have to ask for assistance to reach them...or even to locate them, and they come in various sizes, so you can get a small-ish or a large-ish one. Even the large ones were quite cheap. We also purchased cereal, bowls, plastic utensils, bread, pb, and fruit at the K-N-K.

We kept the cooler in the room, filled up zip-lock bags with ice (free at all the WDW resorts), changed the bags in the morning and evening, and kept all our stuff suitably refrigerated for the entire stay. Since we were there 10 days, this was a considerable savings over renting a fridge. It is a bit of work, though.

We tried to purchase everything we'd need for the entire trip at the grocery stop, however, we failed in this regard and ended up purchasing more stuff at steep prices inside WDW, although it was probably still cheaper than hiring a taxi would have been.

Re: using netgrocer. I've heard that the resorts no longer want to hold packages for arriving guests and that there may be a storage fee charged if you do have a package sent ahead. I don't have the details on this, but they're no doubt around somewhere on this board.

Not having to pay restaurant prices for breakfast is a truly huge savings at WDW, as is carrying around your own snacks. I would also recommend buying a case of bottled water on your grocery stop unless you don't mind the taste of tap water in Orlando, since bottled water at the parks is pretty darn pricey. We'd taken a small Brita bottle with us, but its filtration system was inadequate to the task. BTW, an aside on water: in the sit-down restaurants at WDW, the water they serve at the tables is filtered, so there's no need to order bottled water. I believe that even at the counter-service restaurants, if you request a glass of water (non-bottled), that that water too is filtered, although I may be wrong about this. Also, you may not mind the taste of the water in Orlando--it's an individual thing.

Enough! Have fun! Enjoy your trip!

best -- miffy --

 

[epcotfan]

A Disney fridge rental is $10.60 a day.