Eating Cheap at a value resort

[deerh]

Staying at POP in 4 days for 2 nights. Any suggestion on eating cheap at POP? We are driving and bringing a cooler with drinks, and also bringing snacks: pop tarts, chips, etc, but any other ways or suggestions on eating "on the cheap" at POP?
Is driving to McD's an option? or is it too far?
Can you get a microwave? Or a frig at POP?
Thanks all!
Deerh

 

[mad4themouse]

You can get a frig for about $10/night extra. Since you're bringing a cooler, I would recommend using it and just replenishing the ice from the machine every day. Keep fruit, milk and juice in it for breakfast. Maybe some cream cheese and jelly and a little tub of margarine for bagels or bread. You can also buy lunchmeat and cheese to make sandwiches for lunch or a light dinner.

You cannot get a microwave for the room but there are microwaves in the food court. You can heat up snacks and small meals there. Microwave popcorn is a good choice. There are also those individual pasta meals that you find on the grocery shelf.

You might want to consider bringing a coffeemaker or a hot pot to heat water for coffee, tea, instant oatmeal, cup o' noodles or soup.

Personally, I think that eating at McD's could be just as expensive as eating in the food court and is probably not nearly as healthy as what you could make more quickly in your room or at the food court.

 

[pjlla]

For a light meal other than bkfst, Bumble makes a "salad and crackers" package that is shelf-stable. They make seafood salad, ham salad, tuna salad, and one other I cannot remember. We have tried the three mentioned and I thought that they were all okay. DD didn't like the tuna, as it had relish in it (not the way we make it at home), but I thought it was fine. If you are concerned about fat, the seafood had only 1 gram, but the ham has 9 grams. I cannot recall on the tuna. They each come with an approx 3 oz can of the salad and 6 crackers and a small plastic spoon. I have bought these at Ocean State Job Lots and Big lots for 99 cents. We have also bought the Starkist shelf stable tuna "kits" that come with tuna in a pouch, mayo in a pouch and a few crackers. We used these for our plane meals. These were a few dollars each at the grocery store. HTH.......................P

 

[Prince Eric1]

As I recall the pizza deal at the value resorts wasn't a bad price, but the food in the food court was questionable and the service slow, especially in the evening. We had terrible experiences in the food courts with the service. The Mcdonalds is not far down the road if you have a car (a couple of minutes) and when we were there they ran Disney movies in the restaurant. The prices were higher than normal mcdonalds but it beat the food court.

 

[bobcat]

The pizza is 13.99 for cheese and is pretty good. We always take some items that we can put in the microwave: Popcorn, pasta anytime, microwavable meals like easy mac, ect. We also have sandwich fixings and snacks. I always take too much but it saves time when we are swimming to not have to go wait in line to get food, and of course it saves money as well.

 

[missydisney]

I use to like to have PS for every meal. I have been unemployed for a year. Trying to start my own travel agency. I am the queen of cheap this year. Got lots of ideas from the DIS. You can order a double cheese burger with an extra bun. Most of the meals are also large enough to share. Adults can order kids meals. WE will take a cooler with drinks and carry our own water to the parks. Snacks are good as we don't like to eat big meals when it is so hot. Have a great time.

 

[JennyDrake]

I'll echo much of what has already been said. Bring your own snacks; they are quite pricey in the food court, and even more so in the parks. The last trip we made, we had 3 teenagers in tow. I went to Walmart and bought every kind of prepackaged junk/snack food there was. yes, I cringed at the price at checkout, but knew it would be worse in the parks.
If you are not "Big Breakfast" people, I would suggest you consider oatmeal, poptarts, etc in the room. This will easily save $6/person. I found the food court breakfasts to be among the most disappointing meals.
We DID buy the refillable mugs and felt they were worth it.
We also got each kid a water bottle to carry and repeatedly refill in the parks.

 

[deerh]

Thanks all for the advise. We will take pop tarts, etc as the kids will NOT be in the b'fast mood!
We will also take H20 bottles as well. I may rent a frig, as I like to freeze the H20 and then go to the parks.. We will "sneak into" the parks some goldfish (little crackers, not the fish,LOL), and some small snacks like that.. You are pretty much stuck buying cokes/H20 after the intial one goes out, cannot drink FLA H20, UGH! We also share meals at times as well, although this time teenage son and friend and daughter will be in tow.. WOW, talk about food! Plus me and DW.. Oh well, can't wait to get to the BWV and the frig, and the stove, and the jacuzzi........
Thanks for all the info so far.
Only bummer is to Microwave 1/2 mile down the road, (in the food court), What a pain.. Will not be doing that, they will just have to eat pop tarts cold, or cereal..
deerh
T-3 days till Pop, then BWV......

 

[mickeymousefan]

What I did for our last trip to ASMo was: (we drove)

Bought a cooler that I filled with ice daily for milk juice
Bought a coffee pot, coffee, filters, creamer (of course... always unplug pot when not in use)

Right before we left I went to Walmart and bought a ton of snacks, cereal, pop tarts, granola bars and zip loc sandwich bags.
Anthing not individually wrapped I broke down into snack size portions and put into the zip locs. The zip locs and other individually wrapped items all went into a big bag and we just grabbed a bag of whatever the kids wanted. It was very conveinent.

 

[crisi]

I believe the POP food court is one of the places that vouchers are a pretty good deal (maybe not the great deal of Pepper Market, but a better deal than the "save a buck or two" of a place like Cosmic Rays). You might want to check out the voucher thread at the top and the menu's at AllEarsNet and see.

 

[ADisneygirl]

deerh ~

I agree with your assessment of Fl water. Since we moved here, it still hasn't grown on us! But to save $$ at the parks you should consider buying the Brita water bottle. It is the small version of the pitcher, one that looks like a sports bottle. It changes the way the water here tastes. (makes it drinkable!) You can get free ice water at any counter service restaurant in all the parks -- no purchase necessary. Take that ice water and pour it into the Brita bottle. Ice cold and good! You can buy one at any Wal-Mart or Target.

Have a great trip!!

 

[Nanu57v]

Why is the water bad? Is it a statewide problem? Personally I don't recall the bad water, but my husband talks about it alot.

 

[ADisneygirl]

Nanu57v~

I really don't know why it tastes so bad. We just got a water report in the mail from the county stating the usual, you know, how many mg of this or that per million, but it said everything is within standards. No reported problems. But.......... we think it tastes TERRIBLE. In our opinion, water shouldn't really have a taste. In NYC they get their water from the upstate aquifer and it was good. Always came out of the tap cold too. Here in Fl it is always lukewarm in summer. We have to have a filtering system in our home, and we drink bottled water or water we have also filtered through the Brita filter pitcher. (still not as good as back home)

 

[DMRick]

We actually found the water decent this trip, except for some of the fountains in the park!

We used Q & C certs in the food court and found expecially for pizza that for us it was a good deal. The pizza (individual with as many toppings as we wanted with the cert) was $5.99. It fed two and we thought very good. Also with the coupon we got
Fruit and cheese $5.89 (as our side)
Large orange juice (which I saved in ice for morning, since we had mugs) $2.99
Apple pie (we actually got it ala mode, but they put the ice cream in a sep container so it woud last til after dinner) $3.59.
We shared everything and it was plenty.

The sub total was $18.46, $1.20 tax for a total of $19.66. For about $11.50!

We've also gotten the rib dinners and they still let us get a side, so the savings was more. Sometimes we just got a side salad, and the savings was less.

We brought our own hot cereal and bowls from home, and used the tea hot water for making those, and we bought our bread in teh POR store and used their toasters to toast it.

 

[frstimer128]

I am sure you have heard all about the Brita Water Bottles but I will mention it again in case you haven't. Mine just arrived the other day and I love it! I paid full price for them on line because after looking in a few different stores, I got frustrated at not finding them. For around $20 I got 2 water bottles, which come with one filter, and a 2 pack of extra filters. At J&R Music World (www.JR.com) I did not pay tax or shipping.
You fill the bottle from the tap and the water gets filtered as it goes out. We are going to Sesame Place in PA this weekend and they are coming with us. From what everyone has posted, I think we should save quite a bit of money not having to buy bottled water.

 

[Jordan's MOM]

One way to stretch your food budget while eating at the food court is to get just a hot sandwich at the FC and add chips (pringles are good), cookies and can drinks that you brought from home. You can eat in your room, by the pool or even in the food court. Some meals are also big enough to slit. Breakfast foods from home can be heated or toasted in the food court. WE also take a cooler and keep it filled with ice. Saves 10.00 a day.



Jordans' mom

 

[DonnaSue]

We always do breakfast in the room more for time savings than anything. The money you can save by doing this is money saved or money that can go towards something else. On our last several trips, we also have just kind of "snacked" on "whatever" until dinnertime. We started this as not to waste time, but you also save a lot of money as well. You just need to remember to stay well hydrated. I really think that is one reason we aren't as hungry as you might expect - because of all of the water that we manage to consume!!!

Donna