Eating Breakfast in room to save money?

[LeahA]

When your on your trip, do you eat every breakfast in your room, and if so, is it that much less than eating a cheap breakfast somewhere? I know when we stayed at the Wyndham Palace, just getting milk for the kids and an occasional doughnut was rather expensive. Are there places like IHOP and Denny's around for a cheap breakfast?

Leah

(We're staying offsite)

 

[Ellester]

I suppose alot depends on how much you and your family usually eats for breakfast. There are plenty of cheap places around for breakfast, but even at $3 a person you will probably be paying much more to go out then if you eat in. Considering that my kids normally have chocolate milk and a cereal bar or bowl of dry cereal for breakfast, I can feed them for a week on $3! ($3 for a gallon of milk, $2 for generic cereal) On our last trip, even at buffets my 5 year old would eat about 1/2 cup of dry cereal and one glass of milk. My 2 year old would eat her weight in bacon, but I certainly don't want that to be her morning meal everyday! We do enjoy going out a few times for breakfast, but I find it much more convenient for the kids to eat and watch TV in the room while DH and I get ready. Saves a lot of time too.

 

[maggiew]

On our last trip I tried to save some money by eating breakfast in the room. The kids ate a poptart and cereal bar and juice box in the morning in the hotel room. But it seemed like as soon as we got to the parks, they were hungry again!!! So in the end, I am not sure it saved US much.

Maggie

 

[KaityBsMom]

If you are staying offsite and your room has a refrigerator (or will provide you one for a small fee--or if you eat things that don't require milk/refrigeration), I think it can definitely be cheaper to eat in your room instead of going out (even at inexpensive places). That is especially true if, like the previous poster said, your family can/will eat 'light' breakfast food.

On our last trip, we ate breakfast in our room (except for a Crystal Palace breakfast ) but at over $10/night to have a refrigerator in our room, it didn't end up being much cheaper. (Then again, being onsite, could we really have gotten off very cheap eating out of the room? ). We will probably do it that way again, though, just because we aren't big breakfast eaters and it was more convenient for us to just grab something quick in the room, instead of having to trek somewhere, choose something, etc, etc.

 

[KristiKelly]

Our kids had a bowl of cereal or breakfast bar and juice in the room and I would put a few breakfast bars in our backpack for mid-morning munchies, this would get us through until lunch. So yes, I'd say we saved $10-15 a day by not eating out (even somewhere inexpensive) and you get to the parks alot faster.

 

[goin2disneyagain]

We will sometimes buy a box of cereal and milk at Walmat and other times we will eat at Perkin's. Perkin's is inexpensive and close to WDW.

 

[jgates]

Well, hon, I worked at Perkins for 18 years (actually I think I'm still on their payroll but I haven't worked in a few months). It sure is not a place I would classify as cheap - but I love their food.

However, there are several places that have cheap breakfast buffets so you can be in and out quicker. Someone will probably have to correct me, but I believe Ponderosa and ?Sizzler do. Usually have coupons in the tourist flyers too.

Seriously, if we are gone and are somewhere with no continental brkfst, we usually grab mcd's. My DD likes their pancakes & sausage - so does DH. DS has one of those bagel deals and I have an egg mcmuffin or a side of scrambled eggs and a slice of sausage if I am lo-carbing it. A lot of the time at our McD's the 4 of us can eat for $10 to $12 including juice - I'm sure it would be more in tourist heaven though.

 

[SamSam]

We always save money by eating fruit and bagels in our room for breakfast. I figure that if we ate out (2 adults), we would spend a minimum of $10 a day for breakfast (that's a very conservative estimate). If we're at WDW for 5 days, that's $50. Bagel's and fruit for 5 days is a max of $5. For us, eating breakfast in is definitely worth it.

 

[mommytotwo]

Since my husband sleeps in, we usually go to the grocery store the evening before and pick up pasteries for breakfast the following morning. It does save money and also time.

 

[liznboys]

On our last trip we ate breakfast in our room everyday. We brought granola bars, dry cereal, croissants and bananas. My dh went to the resort store and bought some milk each morning to drink and also for the cereal. It saved money and time!

 

[glbh]

We're staying at the Fort Wilderness Campground, so we'll be taking breakfast food with us. We have plans to eat lunch in the parks and maybe one or two dinners out.

 

[da disney fans]

DH and I ate a breakfast of fruit (apples and bananas) and chocolate milk (we normally drink plain milk, but this was our honeymoon ) each morning before we hit the parks. We spent less than $8 on our in-room food for the entire 5 days, including a couple of big bags of pretzels for late-night snacking.

We're not big breakfast eaters, so this worked for us. It would have been a waste to go out and eat breakfast in a restaurant every day, since we were getting to the parks around opening time, and we normally aren't hungry for a real meal until at least 11 or 12 o'clock.

 

[TSTEWARTFAN]

We do it all the time! We drive to to WDW, so we always have a huge cooler, that we keep stocked with Milk, Orange Juice Iced Tea and fruit. We take cereals and Muffins and Cereal bars.
Not only does this save us money (My son would eat Bacon & Eggs Every day), but is saves us an enormous amount of time too. We get an earlier start, thus we get to spend more time in the park!

 

[disneysteve]

Unless we are staying at a hotel that includes breakfast, we ALWAYS eat breakfast in our hotel room no matter where we are traveling. IMO breakfast is a poor value relative to what you get. We are all perfectly happy with a bowl of cereal, glass of juice, pop-tart, etc. We don't need/like a big meal in the morning. Also, we like to get up and go, not deal with restaurants. This is especially true at WDW. 2 of us will eat while 1 is getting washed. Then the rest of us will get ready while the other eats. Saves time and money.

What do we keep in the room?
Cereal, Pop-Tarts, OJ, Slim-Fast meal bars (even if you aren't on a diet, they are a good quick cheap meal substitute), fruit.

That's about it. Total cost for breakfast is probably under $2 for the 3 of us. Tough to beat that for cost or convenience.

Steve

 

[frannn]

We stay onsite, and did EE last trip. We would save tons of time if we didn't have to go to the food court for bkfast, but DH needs his nutrition . I think the supermarket bagels with pb and j would be fine in the room, or we could eat at the bus stop. That would leave us with more $ to do a nice counter service lunch (or sit down) each day at break time. Since we can't eat bkfast in the room, I guess I'll just have to wake up earlier.....