Can we take food/eat in our rooms and still enjoy Disney?

[njmom47]

Breakfast in the room was the best idea we had! Saved time and money. Had WeGoShop deliver stuff. Also brought lunch, snacks and drinks with us into the parks. DH has a different eating pattern than the rest of us, so sometimes he would by a cs lunch, but we did buy cs dinners as well as dinners in the food court. We also did pizza one night.
We aren't that fussy food-wise so it was fine for us.

 

[emmakatbaby]

We went to WDW recently and saved a TON of money eating in the room and in the parks too. We budgeted $500 for food for 8 days and we stayed within that budget and I am sooo excited about that. I will share how we did that. We have 2 adults and 3 kids ages 12, 9, and 6. Many of the ideas, I got on these boards. I compared the regular dining plan, quick service dining plan and just eating each meal in the parks. We really didn’t want to be tied down to ressies EVERY day so we could just “go with the flow.” so we didn’t do the regular dining plan. Next I looked at the quick service dining plan. It was right at $1000 for 5 of us so I came up with this plan utilizing things I brought from home AND eating at counter service restaurants. We also did not want to have to go back to the resort after a long day only to get into the car and find a restaurant off property. So I tried to give us as much variety as possible so we would not get tired of eating the same things. This plan worked out extremely, extremely well. No one ever complained about meals!

Breakfast
We brought cooked pancakes, frozen waffles, cooked bacon, grits, granola bars, cereal and fresh fruit. We brought syrup, plastic utensils and paper plates. We asked the kids the night before what they would like to eat for breakfast and either my husband or I would go to the food court to fill our mugs with coffee and make breakfast. This worked out fantastic!!!

Snacks
We brought chips, almonds, fruit snacks, goldfish crackers, peanut butter crackers, granola bars and pudding. When someone would say "I'm hungry" I would pull out the snack bag from my back pack and let then choose a snack. For drinks, we brought in flavor packets for water. All of the counter service restaurants and food vendors will give you ice water for free.

Lunch
We ate in the parks just about every day. We did have 2 sit down meals in the parks. I made the ressies for 2pm so it would be a late lunch and we would not be too hungry at night. We snacked around 11am on those days, ate lunch at 2pm and for dinner, I brought in crackers, ham and cheese and made "lunchables". This was done on the nights we stayed in the parks late for Fantasmic and MSEP. We ate our lunchables while waiting for these to start. This also worked out extremely well.

Dinner
We ate in the resort food court, in the room or at our "night activity".
From home, I brought- Easy mac
bag of salad ( 3 bags) ( I bought these on the way into Disney and a gallon of milk) later on I had to buy milk in the resort gift shop and it was only sold as a ½ gallon)
The snacks I listed above
A measuring cup to measure water for the grits
Ziplock bags to heat the pancakes in and carry back to the room or to carry the
toasted waffles in to get back to the room
Syrup
A bottle of my family’s favorite salad dressing
Crackers
Ham (small bags of ham at Walmart for 56 cents a bag so I used 2 bags for each “lunch able” dinner and we used 2 bags to make sandwiches one night)
A pack of Sliced cheese

We kept the waffles in the freezer of the mini fridge and the pancakes, bacon and milk in the fridge part.
We used bottled water to make the mac and cheese and the grits.
We got mayonaise from the resort food court on our sandwich night.


I did bring an ice chest into the parks with us on a few days. We left it in a locker at the front of the park along with our jackets for the evening cooler temperatures. When you return the key at the end of the day, we got a deposit back so the locker was only $5. I did have to go back to the locker two times to refill the ice in the icechest. I got it from the food vendors without any problems at all.

I also found a few very nice meals for not much money. I will share these.
Resort food court- Pizza ($15)
Create your own pasta (spagetti and fetuccini)
and breadsticks $30
Chicken breast nuggets (you can buy just the nuggets
without the sides for a lower price) 32 nuggets $25

Fort Wilderness Campground- Trails end restaurant to go-
A bucket of fried chicken (16 pieces I think)
sides of baked means and mashed potatoes, corn bread
and biscuits $25
(they provide plastic plates and utensils)

Here was my plan:

Arrival day: we arrived around 5pm so we got a pizza from the resort food court and salad from home and ate by the pool as the kids went swimming. Then we walked around the resort and enjoyed many of its activities.

Day 1- MK B- in the room
L- CS--Cosmic Rays
Here, my younger two kids got kids meals
My oldest and I got a double burger and an extra bun
and dressed them on the fixings bar
My husband got his own meal
For drinks, we got water and flavored it with the packets
D- Resort food court- Easy mac (fixed in their microwave) and
Salad from home and chicken breast
nuggets

Day 2- HS- B-in the room
L-Sci Fi at 2pm
D- "lunchables" while waiting for Fantasmic!

Day 3- Epcot- B- in the room
L- CS Sunshine Seasons
D-Pizza and salad by the pool again (my kids really liked this and I was able to wash clothes)

Day 4- AK- B- in the room
L- CS Yak & Yeti
D- We went to see ICE and SNOW at Gaylord Palms Resort on this night. We planned to leave AK at 4pm, change into the proper attire (long johns, windsuits, hats and gloves and socks and shoes) and to see the exhibits. When got back to our resort it was 9:30 so I made everyone sandwiches from the "disney" bread I bought at the resort gift shop and I used my Mickey cookie cutter I brought from home. The kids really thought they had something! By the way, I hightly recommend this exhibit to anyone. We had a fabulous time playing in the SNOW and seeing the ICE exhibit was so amazing and beautiful!

Day 5- MK (My DD6's birthday)
B- in the room
L-in the castle after BBB (again at 2:10pm)
D- "Lunchables" while waiting for MSEP and Wishes

Day 6- HS- B- in the room
L- CS- Backlot Express kids meals and double burger again
D- Resort Food Court- Create a pasta night
I ordered one spagetti and meatball and one chicken fettucini and breadsticks. We all ate and had plenty for the 5 of us.

Day 7- MK- B- in the room
L- CS- Pecos Bill
this time my 2 boys got kids meals and my daughter and I split a taco salad, my husband got his own meal
D- We took the boat over to Fort Wilderness. We had 8:30 ressies to ride through the campground to see the Christmas decorations. This is the night we had a "picnic" from Trails End Restaurant. We ordered our chicken and sides from them, and sat at a picnic table near the playground so the kids could eat and play. This was a fabulous activity on our last night in Disney.

We budgeted and planned each meal. I liked how the kids were able to "choose" breakfast each morning and at lunch so at night, they just wanted to know "Mom what is for dinner tonight?" The famous question I am asked even when at home each night . Why should Disney be any different? Right? So you can see we did enjoy eating in our room AND in the parks/resort and we DID have a FABULOUS time!
We did also allow the kids to get “Mickey Bars” a few times too. You can’t to go to Disney without eating those!!
I hope your vacation is as magical as ours was!!!

Karen

 

[friend2Figment]

Check out the websites with the menus for the in-park counter service places and plan out what you family might like best so you are around that part of the park at the time you would like to eat.
Some days we would eat at the parks and then we would try not to eat in the food court. We never when hungry so we always had enough to eat by planning it out and having stuff we brought from home.
We did not always buy full meals, my oldest likes breadsticks and since they give good size servings it was a meal for her.

Other thought is if you or your spouse would think of having a beer or wine in the eveing you may want to bring some along. A beer was around $5.00. So if either would be having any it would rack up fast.

We budgeted $500 and we came in just under that, 2 adults and 3 girls ranging from 4-11. We did not do any sit down meals this time.

 

[mousiemom]

we've done trips like this and we did this:
-we always make our coffee in our room
-breakfast bars, poptarts, muffins for breakfast
-we made corndogs, burritos, popcorn, in the microwave and made sandwiches and we brought the little bags of variety chips to carry in our backpacks
-we always bring bottled water in the parks
-eating in the foodcourts are not bad on prices.
*i keep a tote @ home where i buy different snacks, etc. for our upcoming trip.
*after holidays are great to stock up on peanut sets, popcorn, candy, for your future trips.

 

[lovethattink]

I know this board is full of budget minded people and I want to say THANK YOU, with your help I have saved a ton over the years!!

I remember before seeing a thread on ways to save money by eating in your room and certain places that had meals big enough to split etc... I cannot find it now though!

So give me your best money saving food ideas!!

I think I have decided to stay away from the DDP and over-eating and we are staying at a moderate this time so we will have a refrigerator in our room and we are driving so we will be able to bring lots of snacks etc!

I see in your sig that you are staying at CSR. I read that CSR has a limited number of microwaves available upon request, on a first come first serve basis. Maybe you will be lucky enough to score one of these in your room? Then you'd have a microwave and a refrig! There is a Super Walmart on Turkey Lake Road. When we stayed at SSR last summer, we stopped there and got 88cent tv dinners one night.

 

[IleneF]

A year and a half ago we had disney ressies in our DVC but DH was out of work so if we wanted to go we had to do so on a VERY limited budget. I kinda figured out what we would spend at home and made budget according to that. I believe it was $100 for two for 5 days. So we had $10/day each ( did not include the stuff we brought from home though). We did breakfast and lunch with stuff we brought from home and got large size to share or less expensive individual park meals for dinner. Our breakfast was oatmeal for me / toasted bagel for DH. Lunch we used the tuna pouches / mayo pouches brought from home on bagels with little prepacked pickle cups put into ziplock all ingred and made fresh at a park on a little bench somewhere in the shade, it was relaxing and nice to people watch for awhile while enjoying our leisurely lunch. Sometimes I subbed PB/J on a bagel. Peanut butter has to go in checked baggage, btw. We brought water at the Hess station inexpensively for a case. Dinners varied: Sandwich of Earl, Chinese fast food at Epcot, Cosmic Rays - portions can be shared. We did even "treat" ourselves to a snack one day..I had my necessary Mickey bar and ONE fancier dinner in EPCOT. I did make and bring GORP to stave off hunger between meals if necessary. Mousesavers website has an amazingly detailed account of all the restaurants where money saving is easy and portion size is decent.

Interesting findings: we enjoyed disney as much if not more because we weren't always tired with digesting our big meals and we appreciated the "fancier" dinner that we treated ourselves to. We almost always do the same thing each time we go now. To be fair we've experienced disney with dining plans from Gold to counter service types before so we didn't feel we were missing out on anything or being deprived. If we felt that way perhaps we would not have been able to enjoy our trip as much.

 

[Pembo]

We always eat breakfast in our room. We are cereal people. We usually eat lunch in the parks, take our afternoon break and have sandwiches in the room for dinner. We go to the grocery and buy cereal, milk, bread etc for sandwiches, snacks, Pepsi and water.

 

[DisMomme]

Before we bought DVC we alway had a fridge in our room and planned at least 2 meals in the room.

I packed a hotpot in my luggage. In that we were able to make oatmeal, instant coffee/tea, mac n cheese, hotdogs, soup etc. We even had a spaghetti dinner once. I boiled pasta in the hotpot and drained it, then I browned hamburger in the bottom of the pot. Put it all together with sauce and you have a great meal! If we really needed a microwave we would use the one at the CS in the resort.

In the fridge I'd have hotdogs, sliced ham, milk, cheese, even bagged salad to make some of our room meals a little more nutricious.

It is definately doable. get creative

We also froze water to bring to the parks. It was super cold and would melt as the morning warmed up. When we were done we just refilled the water bottle and used mix-in to help with the flavor (kool aid for the kids, crystal light for me). The kids brought fanny packs into the park and they had snacks in them. Things like granola bars and goldfish.

When we planned to eat in the parks, we split meals. Double burger with an extra roll...2 hamburgers! One turkey leg for 2. If we did a sit down meal (usually once per visit) we always planned that for a late lunch. Lunch prices are MUCH cheaper.

 

[arminnie]

I've been w/o a kitchen since 9/1.

I just went to the store last night. I was amazed at how much ready to eat stuff there is to eat out there. Now I have lost over 20 lbs. as sometimes I have to force myself to eat the same stuff over and over.

I buy sliced meats, bread, fruits and vegetables for the most part. Yes you can do it, but how important is food in your life. Will that aspect ruin your vacation or not? Only you can answer that.

My kitchen remodel is now finished, but I haven't unpacked anything yet.

 

[marthachick]

I think a lot has to do with your attitude. You can go to Disney thinking oh poor us! We can't afford to go to sit down meals every time. Or you can think "woohoo!!! I'm at Disney, I can see more stuff & do more rides if we don't have to wait on meals!!!" When we went in 2005 I asked DS & DH if they wanted to do table service or quick meals. Quick meals won so we could pack in all the fun we could! I think a lot of how you appreciate anything is the attitude you go into it with! Whatever you do, have a blast!

 

[dyna]

We always eat breakfast in the room as others has said it's faster along with cheaper 1 can eat while another is in shower don't wait till everyone ready to sit down to breakfast saves even more time.

Most visits we either ate dinner or supper in room with maybe shared meal in the parks.

We prefer eating in room as to hauling our meal to parks with us that is just to much trouble packing it an hauling it around but then we travel very light into the parks if it doesn't fit in pocket it does not go.

We enjoy sitting down to nice quiet meals not something we normally get in the parks with CS that for sure. So NO we never felt like we was missing anything by not eating in parks.

We go back to room for a rest anyway during the peak crowd time of day.

We also take our own drinks for room sodas an water mostly. As we head out to the parks we grab a drink hot summer water cooler weather soda an drink it on way to park saves us money on 1 drink anyway.

 

[nrhenley]

I agree! It has a lot to do with your attitude. If you are someone that is up for a luxurious vacation, eating in your room or bringing in food to your room will not feel right to you. I personally pack food specifically for the vacation. Some of the foods I bring with me are frozen yogurts (which are those in the tubes that are made for freezing. By the time we check in at the hotel, they are ready for the fridge.) I also bring soups and macaroni and cheese to be heated in the microwave at the hotel. I bring food to save money, but also so I can go to the parks more often!

Thanks,
Natalie H.
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