Dining costs

[kam30ron]

We are planning a trip for 7/5/10-7/10/10. 2 adults and ds13 and dd8. How much should I budget for meals. We are staying onsite and we are basics eaters. The kids could have pizza or chicken nuggets everyday (if we let them) and we are fine doing counter service meals. But we do want to eat 3 meals a day and one snack. So approximately how much will we need for food?

 

[Faldred]

An "average" CS meal for kids is about $5, including tax. An average adult CS meal (just drink and entree) probably runs about $11-12, including tax. A snack is probably around $3, on average.

 

[dd50]

You can check out the menu's here.

http://allears.net/menu/menus.htm

 

[Nadjalu]

With QS meals being between $10-15 a meal for adults and you want 3 per day that is going to be around $90 for 2 adults without snacks.
And I disagree with PP, snacks can range from a couple bucks to 6 or 7 and then add a drink.

Personally I would budget at least $200 per day for the 4 of you, it may be a little over.....but just a little. Because when you are down there you get "engrossed" in the atmosphere. It is like Vegas....you go a bit crazy.
So for 5 days that would be $1000. Sounds about right. It is better to have it than be down there and not have enough.

 

[vettechick99]

We used to budget $150/day for just the two of us, but that included a decent amount of booze. I would think you'd need that at least.

WDW is twice as expensive as you think it's going to be - 25 trips later and I'm still shocked by what we spend there.

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

We're budgeting about $250-$350 a day for the two of us (adults). But we're drinkers, and eating a ton of signature restaurants.

 

[growinupdisney]

We usually budget $100 a day for 5 of us,(dh, me, ds13,dd15,dd2) We have never gone over that except when we have decided to do one ts or character meal. We all have atleast an icecream a day...share a popcorn...one or two more snacks...We save $ buy eating in the room for breakfast..i bring muffins, pop tarts, cereal,etc. All lunch and dinners are at cs in the parks. We also save $ by bringing water into the parks..we save $25 atleast a day doing this. If we ate cs breakfast it could easily be done for us $25 or less. So when I say that $1oo covers us I mean we usually only spend around $70. We tend to snack more at EPCOT so that is the one day we reach $100. LOOK at the menus on the site, figure out what you think each person might get and figure it up! You and your dd could definetly share some meals they tend to give you alot. I also bring some snacks from home too to tide them over when standing in line this helps w/ ordering too much just because your starving.

 

[Atchley]

We always will do a dining plan so I don't have to budget. All of our food is paid for in advance with the exception of one or two things we choose to add. I love that I don't have to worry about it at all. Some will say it is not a good deal, but we make sure to use everything we have and piece of mind is worth something.

 

[chrisn]

This time we have budgeted $150 per day for the 5 of us. We will be eating a big breakfast in the condo most every morning. We will do a few sitdowns but mostly counter service. Special meals we have planned are separate from this budget. Thinking more of a light lunch, big dinner or big lunch, light dinner with a snack thrown in here and there. We might be a little over or a little under most days but I think we can make it work. For 4 of us, We've also done $200 per day which was more than enough, and $100 per day which was counter service and a bit tight but doable.

 

[smnslc]

Have you thought about purchasing the QSDP for the family, that way you know ahead of time what you are going to spend and how much you can eat. I would definitely recommend this since you are staying on site. There are plenty of restaurants to choose from with quite a bit selection of foods.

 

[sters]

Have you thought about purchasing the QSDP for the family, that way you know ahead of time what you are going to spend and how much you can eat. I would definitely recommend this since you are staying on site. There are plenty of restaurants to choose from with quite a bit selection of foods.

Plus you'll get the refillable mugs included under this plan.

 

[joandegennaro]

As the 2 pp's have suggested consider the QSDP. I found that at our resort my 2 DD's 15 &10 could share a sandwich plate with the side of chips (usually saved for later in the day) and either share the dessert or get fruit to share later in the park. They very often shared the chicken strip meal also. It really depends on the ages of your kids. If they are both over 9 then all your CS would be adult meals. Even DH and I could have shared a CS but we had so many we never did. If we were to do it again I would really consider sharing to stretch our dinning dollars. I would also suggest that you look at the menu's on the allears site. This will give you an idea of what is available.

 

[Disney_momto2]

We usually go to the menus on allears.net and get an idea of what we would likely be ordering at different places. I think do the math and figure out if it is a benefit to us to do a dining plan and which one.

 

[Dakylin]

We did the QSDP in June and quite often one cs meal "paid for" the cost of the day. Definately worth it!!