dining plan? Or other ideas for food budget

[tulamom]

Hi:

We are traveling to Universal saying for 5 nights, 4 days at the park, including water park, last week of August. We are staying at Hard Rock hotel. My husband and I are traveling with our son, 18 and daughter age 10.

My kids like to eat...well we all do, but on vacation this tends to be where we blow any budget we try to set for ourselves. I have a few questions:

1. What have others estimated for a reasonable food bugdget for a 5 night trip (arriving evening of first day, 4 full days which will include park time, and then leaving morning of check out). Or just a rough per day budget?

2. Has anyone found that they benefited from purchasing a meal plan? I can go with the idea of spending some money up front if I feel like we won't go hungry for that time and I won't be obsessed with what we are spending the entire week.

3. Finally, suggestions on a few good places to feed the family a few meals which are more budget friendly but the food is still good. I will add that we are NOT picky eaters, but we do like to have a few "nice" meals out on our trip. Meals where we have the option of ordering seafood, a steak, etc. Other times pizza is fine. I can be a light eater if needed but the 18 year old boy burns calories like crazy an eats like he's 2 adults.

Thanks--

 

[DIS_MERI]

You can buy a qs meal plan at the register as you are purchasing your food. Realistically, unless you are purchasing a single meal over $12, you are probably going to lose money. It is nearly impossible to not lose money on the other meal plan (and had to be booked as part of a package).

 

[wagman67]

Okay, speaking from experience, travelling with two teenagers (both boys) that love to eat...stock up on food in the room. Staying at HRH, you are a 5 minute walk (literally, at a leisurely pace) from the gate of US...and 5 minutes further from the gate of IOA. You will have Express Passes, so you will not be rushed in the parks, which allows you to return to the room, take a break...hang by the pool...these are good times to fuel up.

We then will usually grab a late lunch in the parks or City Walk and if we do dinner (some days we do, other days we don't)...we just don't plan ahead for that, because we find that you become less flexible that way. For four of us, we have no trouble staying under $100/day if we wanted to...other days we chose to go over and have a nice meal.

We used to do the Meal Deals, but have never found any of the Dining Plans to work in our favor, so we skip them.

 

[hm8453a]

My partner and I budgeted $50 one meal per day, and $25 for two quick service meals per day, plus another $25 for snacks. That was ~$125 per day for meals, and then if we wanted to spend more, we took it from our souvenir budget.

I'm a really small woman (I'm 4' 9" and 82 lbs), so I don't eat very much, but my partner eats a lot. This worked well for us. We actually realized that we had overbudgeted, which meant we had more money for souvenirs. But I would suggest overbudgeting and then having extra money, not underbudgeting and not having enough.

 

[gotomu212]

I really do feel like the food is priced well at Universal (in comparison to a lot of theme parks). Mythos is a great sit down in the park that isn't a budget buster and there are several great sit downs at Citywalk and the hotels. There are 3 of us (but son is little and hasn't hit teenage level eating yet) and we average $140 a day- but that's with us throwing caution to the wind and snacking and a few alcoholic drinks too.

 

[mamattorney]

When we create our budget, we don't factor in snacks - we don't really eat them much anyway - three meals is enough. We plan $120 for dinner, $65 for lunch and $35 for breakfast each full day. For reference - our breakfast would be a place like Cinnabon or Starbucks, lunch is counter service in the park, dinner is sit down at Citywalk at say, Margaritaville. This is for 5 people: two parents, kids 14, 12, 7. This includes little to no alcohol, but very often dessert at dinner.

 

[Chuckers]

I've purchased the full meal plan for my trip in September. I usually use the sit down meal for a good dinner. Unfortunately, while I am there, the parks are closing at 7pm. So an in the park Dinner would kill my last 2 hours in the park. Most of CityWalk and all of the hotels are NOT on the meal plan. So, I am probably going to get the meal plan canceled and have it put on a UO Giftcard. I'll use that money to pay for food as I was told the UO gift card is accepted at places the meal plan is not.

 

[OMGBecky]

I've been wondering this too. We purchased the dining plan at Disney, but I'm expecting it will be free dining for the dates of our trip. I don't think we'll do a dining plan for Universal. I'd be worried I'd always be stuffing my face even if I wasn't hungry, just so I get my money's worth. Then again, we're just bringing a 4 year old little girl who doesn't eat much so maybe I'll change my mind in about 10 years.

 

[Chuckers]

I usually do it at WDW so I don't have to worry about an extra expense on the credit card at the end of the trip. However, since this meal plan is already paid off, I can use the gift card instead and I'll probably save money by not buying full meals that I won't finish anyway. So, I may actually have some souvenir money, too!