Disney Food Cost

[rookie78]

How much do you typically spend at Disney on all your food. I have a family of four with a 5 & 3. I am just trying to get an idea about what we would spend, since we would not be able to go during free dining.

 

[Maggie'sMom]

Every family is different. Will you want to do mostly quick service meals or table service? Will you be doing character meals?

What I would do is go to www.allears.net and click on dining. There is a link to menus for WDW restaurants. Not all are up to date, but most are pretty recent. You can decide what you'd be interested in eating and come up with a ballpark cost.

 

[tink15823]

That would depend where your eating and how many meals a day in the park. You could look up the menus where you want to eat they will list the prices then you'll have a gen idea what you'll spend.

 

[traviesojmt]

I agree with the PP regarding www.allears.net. I usually do a budget with breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. I look at the menus for the restaurants that we will be eating and get a rough idea of cost. Just don't forget tax and tip for sit-down restaurants. Depending on how much your 3 and 5 year old eat, they could probably share a few meals too.

 

[Mrs D]

How much do you typically spend at Disney on all your food. I have a family of four with a 5 & 3. I am just trying to get an idea about what we would spend, since we would not be able to go during free dining.

What I like to do is look at each park, pick where I'd like to eat there, view each menu and select what each member would likely choose to eat. Don't forget to add in drinks, appetizers or desserts, tax and gratuity (for table serve restaurants). That can help give you an average daily budget. If can be really helpful when comparing paying for food out of pocket versus purchasing a dining plan.

Whether on the dining plan or not we tend to bring things to eat for breakfast in the room (granola bars, dry cereal, bagels), have a counter serve lunch and a sit down dinner. Some days the sit down is lunch or perhaps 2 counter serve. I tend to have everything planned out so we know what park we'll be at, when we'll be eating.

On this trip we were on the DDP and we had an extra TS meal planned (late breakfast) which was going to be OOP. On our first day we didn't get lunch as quickly as I had planned so after a 1:30pm lunch we were not up for our 4:30 dinner reservation. Not a problem, I canceled that reservation and now that extra meal was covered! We did end up paying for 1 CS lunch OOP since we ate 2 CS meals on that first day. If was cheaper in the long run!

HTH and feel free to come back and ask more questions or ask us to go over your specifics.

 

[rookie78]

thanks for all the great advice, I will definetely go to allears and look at menus.

 

[DisneyFamily123]

As another poster mentioned... www.allears.net has a lot of information. You can easily add up the cost but don't forget tax, and tip for table service. Lots of restaurant reviews there too.

If you're staying on a WDW property, I'd encourage you to consider one of the dining plans once you know how/where you want to eat.

You could spend less by eating more counterservice or by eating breakfast in your room or on the go with snacks. In 2008, we usually had breakfast in our room before heading to the parks -- we brought our own cereal and got milk from the resort, or got pancakes/mickey waffles from the resort - all of which is not expensive. Then we used the regular dining plan (Dining Plus) for dinner and some counterservice lunches.

For us in 2009, 2 adults and 1 child, our total food cost was an average of $200 per day. For 2 adults and 2 children, I'd estimate about $230 per day. But that is probably the most anyone would spend and is based on how we ate during our last trip -- all table service.

Here's how I came up with the average cost for our 2009 trip. Total Food/Dining Cost = $1820 for 9 days. We used the deluxe dining plan in Oct. 2009. The dining plan cost was $1320 for 2 adults and 1 child age 4 for 8 nights. It included 24 meal credits (appetizer, entree, dessert, drinks) per person and 16 snack credits per person, and 3 refillable resort mugs. Drinks did not include alcohol except at the dinner shows (hoop-de-doo, spirit of aloha, mickey's backyard BBQ). The dining plan includes tax but not tips. We ate all table service... the total of tips was $350. We also paid $150 for Spirit of Aloha instead of using the dining plan. We never paid additional for snacks or drinks because we used our snack credits.

Now that's a lot of eating -- but we dined at some places that charge 2 credits for 1 meal (signature restaurants and dinner shows). Most only charge 1 though.

With a 3 and 5 year old, I'll guess that you might want some table service meals with characters. In 2008, my son was 3 and enjoyed meeting characters in the park and at Crystal Palace.... In 2009, we made sure to have lots of character meals - all were fun.

In 2009, the deluxe dining plan was better for us (saved more money) because we did a lot more table services for character meals. And I liked that the deluxe plan includes appetizers... the plus dining does not.

 

[kohlby]

Agree that it varies. We eat breakfast in our room with food we bring. That saves money and is easier with young kids. We don't do characters meals since ours kids aren't into them. And we stick to counter service due to the ease. It's a rarity we take our kids to a sit-down restaurant at home and it can be stressful for all! I'm sure we spend much less than the average. I'm not sure how much a day exactly we spent but somewhere around $60 would be a good estimate for us. (Two adults, two young kids).