Did you use your groceries?

[buzzboysmom]

I am planning the grocery list for December, and wonder how much of it I will actually use. We have a TS meal everyday and then plan on a QS maybe once a day, with breakfast in the room. I am torn between getting maybe eggs and sandwich fixings too if we get hungry, but I really wonder if we will not need anything but the breakfast fixings and water... Has anyone over-bought or under-bought? How did using the groceries go for you? (This is our first DVC visit, very exciting, so I am not sure what our habits will be and what we will need). Thanks!

 

[PEANUT1]

I think breakfast foods and drinks would be plenty..maybe add a few snacks. Other than that, you will get 2 meals a day and a snack..I wouldn't want to be left with a bunch of food to waste.

 

[bobbiwoz]

I cannot believe the food that we wasted on our first visits with the DGC.! We are getting better and buy fewer perishable foods, but it seems to be hardest with children. When I'm with adults, we do plan our meals and that works out better. My suggestion is to go with your shorter list!

 

[Peggy Sue]

If you're planning a sit down and a counter service every day I would suggest breakfast foods only. Last December we had the Deluxe meal plan and had a sit down lunch and sit down dinner .. WOW .. that was WAY too much food!! We took so many left overs back to the villa and never ate them!

We normally do not do the meal plan but we do eat out at least one meal a day, usually dinner. We've found breakfast food and a few snacks (pop corn) are more than enough food. The general store at the resort will have snack type items if you find you run out. Our first few DVC trips we bought too much food .. we thought we'd eat sandwiches, cheese and crackers etc .. we never did.....

We do drink a lot of water .... Now that we have an owners locker we keep a brita pitcher and just bring a fresh filter every trip .. wow does that save money and having to lug cases of water!!

All left over unopened food we take to bell services .. they seem to really appreciate the food .. they assured us the food is indeed eaten by everyone.

Have a great trip!!

 

[Wenny]

I cannot believe the food that we wasted on our first visits with the DGC.! We are getting better and buy fewer perishable foods, but it seems to be hardest with children. When I'm with adults, we do plan our meals and that works out better. My suggestion is to go with your shorter list!

This was our experience a couple weeks ago on our first DVC trip. We even made an eating-in vs. eating-out plan so we knew exactly how many meals we needed to make in-room. We stuck to it, but still ended up with sooooo much extra food. I made a list of everything we had to toss out so I know what *not* to order next time.

If you're eating out twice a day, definitely go with your shorter list and stick to bfast and a couple snack foods.

 

[lucyem]

My young son and I spent 3 nights at Kidani a few weeks ago. I brought no food with us other then some water and peanut butter crackers. We had 1 ts and 1 (limited) cs per day and we still had leftovers we had to throw when we left. I think there will be some trial and error until you figure out what your family will need. I would say err on the side of less if you have no way to take home perishables.

Its kind of funny that DVC even changes how you eat at Disney. It was not something I had really thought of before. But now realizing that we can have our own food, take back leftovers and reheat them for the next day etc. It is great, but it also adds a different dimension to our planning. I am certainly looking at how I will plan buffets in the future - no leftovers there.

 

[edk35]

We mainly get water, soda (for dh) a few snacks and breakfast stuff...but QUICK breakfast stuff. We might get bagels/cream cheese, cereal/milk, granola bars and such. We used to buy more but ended up having stuff left over. I agree with Bobbi..GO WITH THE SHORT LIST.

 

[jblrn2b]

Last time I gave to the bell services a bunch of food. What a waste. While we had bagels one day in the room, the kids really only ate grabbed granola bars, drank capri suns and water. Maybe a few sodas they drank and I had one glass of wine - we wasted a lot.

With the DP we pretty much had enough to eat. We may not use the DP for our next trip and might try to eat in a little more.

Just some of my mistakes for ya.

 

[BEASLYBOO]

Unfortunately it's something that comes from past experiences and how your family eats.

We do heavy snacks, cheese, crackers, olives, hummus etc. and we buy lots of water, soda, coffee, and a little wine, vodka, and beer too. We like our happy hours since we are no longer commando park visitors.

We also get breakfast for everyday we're there!

Over the years I've got it down to a science!

 

[edk35]

Unfortunately it's something that comes from past experiences and how your family eats.

We do heavy snacks, cheese, crackers, olives, hummus etc. and we buy lots of water, soda, coffee, and a little wine, vodka, and beer too. We like our happy hours since we are no longer commando park visitors.

We also get breakfast for everyday we're there!

Over the years I've got it down to a science!

I agree.. I get better and better with each trip. Plus each trip is different. This past summer trip we drove..so we brought more stuff and had our van to shop out in town. Now when we fly ..we don't get as much stuff. We like the heavy snacks too... we buy some of the same.

 

[eva]

We are getting better at this too. We used to way over buy things. But now we stick to very basic breakfast items like bagels, fruit, juice, coffee, and milk. And like BEASLYBOO we like to have a couple of drinks in the room before heading out to dinner. So we stock up on wine and beer. The only other things we make sure we have are water and some mocrowave popcorn. That's about it.

 

[mybabesuz]

We always waste so much stuff.
At first I tried to get the stuff the kids like at home.
Cereal boxes were unopened, yogurt didn't get eaten, and Milk did get used.
I find when we are on the DDP, we have plenty of food.
Also, we hate to eat in our room when we have a studio.
So now we get Water, Juice, Coffee, and only a few other things.

 

[crisi]

Like others - the first trip was a HORRIBLE amount of waste, but we've gotten much better.

We do go through a dozen eggs for breakfast and a gallon of milk. We go through a two liter bottle of Coke.

We pack what we can (breakfast cereal, snacks, coffee) and haul the leftovers back. Until we figured it out, we'd buy the stuff we couldn't pack at the Screen Door after that first disasterous "why do we HAVE a frozen pizza?!" trip. Now that we know, we order from Garden Grocer - basically the bottled water pushes us over the edge.

 

[mickey&minniealways]

It depends on your group also. We will do 2 Table service meals.The rest will be in the villa. Breakfast in the villas. We make grinder and stuff and pack our lunch or plan on comming back to the resort for lunch and a swim. I cook in the crock pot so that when we come back at the end of the day dinner is already made. We do alot of snacking. My kids are teens and early 20's. You are going to have a different eating pattern with different ages, the resort your staying at and the park you frequent most. We do also tend to take advantage of the lockers when you first enter a park. When my teens come back at the end of the evening they are usually ravenous. Also when we come back for dinner I enjoy a glass of wine. Think about your weekley groceries and what exactley you use up and what you don't.

 

[Sunshine22]

We bought too much food for our Spring Break trip. However, it wasn't too big of a problem since we drove and didn't have too many perishable items left. I would keep the perishable items to a minimum. Some snack foods can easily be taken in the car or even on the plane if you don't have too much left over. I love the idea by one of the posters of donating the left over food to the bell staff!

 

[kikiq]

If you are planning on TS/CS meals, then just breakfast goods should be fine, water and some snacks. We usually cook in our villas and so far only on our first trip did we have extra water.

 

[Tamar]

We order stuff from We-go-shop that is relatively expensive to buy on property (gallons of water, cheese), or not available on property (egg beaters, pre-washed spinach, olive oil, "I can't believe it's not butter").

Cartons of eggs are only $1.99 on property, and bread and bagels aren't outrageous either.

I wouldn't bother placing a pre order for Disney-delivered food, you can just buy what you need when you need it when you're there.

 

[eva]

It depends on your group also. We will do 2 Table service meals.The rest will be in the villa. Breakfast in the villas. We make grinder and stuff and pack our lunch or plan on comming back to the resort for lunch and a swim. I cook in the crock pot so that when we come back at the end of the day dinner is already made. We do alot of snacking. My kids are teens and early 20's. You are going to have a different eating pattern with different ages, the resort your staying at and the park you frequent most. We do also tend to take advantage of the lockers when you first enter a park. When my teens come back at the end of the evening they are usually ravenous. Also when we come back for dinner I enjoy a glass of wine. Think about your weekley groceries and what exactley you use up and what you don't.

Good point! It is just DH and me. We don't snack to much like kids do. When our daughters were younger and went with us, we did buy more snack type items and quite a bit of that was eaten. But we also drove to WDW at that time. Now we normally fly. That makes a big difference too.

 

[DonnaL]

We just got home last Sunday so I remember very well what food we had left from this trip. I packed some dry stuff in a bag...english muffins, bagels, dry cereal, coffee, sugar packets, and some crackers. It was just DH and I this trip and we stayed in a studio for 4 nights so only did breakfast in the room........I ordered half a dz eggs, packaged ham slices, sliced cheese, oj, 2 half gallons milk (I took some cereal in baggies with us), 8 oz tub of butter, 12 pk beer and 2 750 ml of wine,bananas, 6 yogurts, about 2 lbs grapes, Cracker Barrel cheese and water....way too much water.....I ordered an 8 pk of 24 oz sports bottles and then 3 large (3liter?)bottles of water, thinking we would refill the 24 oz sports bottles. I guess I calculated as if we had 1 or 2 of our adult kids with us!!! We ended up leaving 1/2 gallon of milk, about half of the butter, 2 yogurts, 2 bananas, 6 bottles of beer, one bottle of wine, and two large bottles of water....all unopened. We probably should have had a few drinks in our room before we went to dinner and out for the evening.....but, only did so one evening.....the other evenings ended up going out for several drinks after dinner anyway!!! I also made note of how much we left for future reference.