cooking meals

[GoofyGirl68]

Just returned from a 1-wk. stay and enjoyed cooking in the room. We brought supplies for two dinners and several breakfasts and lunches. It was nice to eat on our own schedule and in the comfort of our room. Plus it felt a lot healthier. Next trip we plan to do the same.

 

[adminjedi]

We do breakfasts and snacks. Maybe because we are a family of 7, I just don't want to spend my time shopping, chopping, cooking and cleaning. I like vacation too!

 

[dbprimeaux]

Our first trip as DVC owners, we "cooked" in our 2 bedroom villa. We drive and usually stop in Gainesville to buy groceries, frozen pizzas, cereal, granola bars, sandwich fixings, etc... We only ate a few TS meals. SAVED us a ton of money! While one of us was cooking/preparing a meal the other adult was washing laundry or getting dressed.

Last 2 trips we did DDP - we had way to much food on ths DDP, and it cost us a small fortune - family of 5. Our whole trip was planned around dining reservations.

Our upcoming trip in May, 2011, we will be doing some cooking/eating in our villa. I am going to make 2-3 TS reservations for celebrating high school graduation and DS birthday. I find that being on the DDP every trip has made the restaurants less special - being that we have eaten at most restaurants several times. I have asked each family member their favorite Disney restaurant, and I will pick from this list. I am hoping this will make everyone happy.

 

[extremesoccermom]

No way I'm paying to check a bag with food. We just stop at the grocery store on our way in from the airport. We usually rent a car, so sometimes we wait until after we are in our villa to do the grocery shopping. It's less of a hassle that way when the room isn't ready until later.

I wouldn't either (I am way too cheap) but we fly SWA so there are no bag fees. We never use our 2 bag per person limit. We have 4 of us going next time and I don't even think we have 8 pieces of luggage total. We use ME I would not be willing to pay for a rental car or limo to stop at the store (again I am too cheap).
If we want to bring more than a small tote of food we will drive.

 

[prov3v56]

We are at WDW right now and have been doing a combination of cooking and eating out. It has worked great so far.

Last year we did the ddp for 20 nights and it was way too much food!! We vowed never to do that again. It also helped with the decision that our ds just turned 10 and we would have to pay adult pricing if we were on the dining plan.

We spent our first week at Vero beach so I stocked up and precooked a lot of meat for the WDW portion of out trip. I bought hamburger meat and a bag of chicken, cooked it all and then separated it into small portions for our lunches/dinners. So far we have eaten spaghetti, burritos, BBQ chicken sandwiches and shredded chicken quesadillas. It has been easy and does not take a lot of time from our vacation.

We are very relaxed when we tour the park and usually hit the parks first thing in the morning, come back to the room to swim and rest during the afternoon and then head back out after dinner. This way we are usually able to eat at least lunch or dinner in the room. Then we usually get dessert when we are out in the parks in the evening. We also eat a quick and easy breakfast ( cereal, bagels etc.) before heading out to the parks.

I agree that eating out for 22 days is way to much after our experience last year. It has been wonderful to eat when we want and not rushing to another reservation or spending all of our time eating. We were very lucky last year that we got to try so many different restaurants, but at least for this year, we have been content to enjoy our favorite meals out and then just play it by ear for re rest.