Food budget based on days and family size.

[garate55]

Family of 5
Budget of $1200

I am taking my family (5 of us) @ the end of March.
I am curious as to what others pay or budget for food for the week(or how ever long you go). As this could be a huge part of the vacation budget for most.
We eat mostly in the parks and DTD so I will be keeping track, plus my wife is NOW on a strict diet(bad timing, but it should be fine).

Our family consists of myself, my wife, 16YO daughter, 12/13YO son(birthday in Disneyland) and 5YO son. So 5 of us will be eating in the parks and I will report back but I am budgeting $1200 for 6 days.
I figure about $40 for breakfast, $50-60 for lunch and close to $100 if not more for dinner.

Chime in with your experience as this could be a good way for people to get a feel for the food budget they need to consider...

 

[sonnyjane]

Here is a link to a great resource when budgeting for food. It lists all of the DL eateries and their menus with pricing: http://allears.net/dlr/din/menu/menus.htm

I think your budget is low. It might be doable if you're only doing counter service and are willing to share. If, however, you wanted to do a at least one table service restaurant each day, your budget is really too low. Check out the prices at that link for some of the places you might be interested in and see if it jives with what you were planning for. Also don't forget to include the inevitable snacks that will likely pop up!

 

[AustinTink]

I agree with the previous poster. You have budgeted what I allow for our family of three. You may want to bump it up a bit.

 

[grumpyskirtgirl]

I budget $50/person/day. So you would be a couple hundred short with my budget. I also dont do character meals, but I DO the WOC meal once.

 

[mystic_path]

Yeah I would bump it a little if you can, if not then maybe you can think of things that you can do to really help minimize the costs a bit. I have a few suggestions

1. Does your hotel have free continental breakfast? If so then DEFINITELY take advantage.

2. Drinks start at about $2.75 each in the park. That sucks up so much money each day when everyone gets thirsty. I would recommend that you bring in different flavored drink packets of Crystal Light, Cool Aid etc. You can refill water bottles, and or ask for ice water at any counter service. It is free, and you can get as much as you need.

3. Bring in your own snacks such as granola bars and nibble on those during the day.

4. If you eat at Mimi's on Harbor, you can sign up for their eclub (Dont do this until 2 weeks to your vacation as it expires 2 weeks after sign up), but it gives you a free meal per table.

5. You can always look into getting a grocery order from Vons and prepare meals for the park. You cant bring them into the park, but you are allowed to leave them in a locker and eat at an eating area just outside the main gates.

 

[garate55]

I have the DL Dining app for my iPod and this will help alot.
Not really going to do any table service except maybe once(Blue Bayou-$200?).

I think I will bump it up to $1500 just to be safe, the 5YO doesn't eat much at all. I watch what I eat and might share with my daughter but with the wife on her super restricted diet the $1200 should be doable but I don't want to cut ourselves short.

Good advice and remember to add your own experiences so others can reap the benefits.

IF you have an iPhone or iPod Touch don't forget to download the DL Dining app(it is free, although needs to be updated with new menu items). I have an iPod touch and the app downloads completely to the device so you won't need WiFi to view.

 

[wdwfan22]

I think your budget is pretty good. I like to eat in the park as well, it is just part of the experience for us. The one thing I would suggest is trying to eat breakfast in your hotel room. Not only does it save money, but lots of time. It is so important to be at the park 30 or so minutes before scheduled park opening to take advantage of shorter morning lines and not stop for breakfast. We bring breakfast bars, pop tarts, Bagels and cream cheese, and cereal. We can buy milk in the hotel gift shop.

We do usually do a character breakfast to break up the in room eating, but it sure saves on breakfast money and precious morning ride time.

A good app for up to date menus is mouse wait. I am also obsessed with their wait times. I have it on my droid, but i suppose it comes for ipods too.

 

[pennym]

We do $50 per person per day. Some days we end up spending less, especially if we have cereal and bananas in our room for breakfast, and then eat counter service during the day. This allows us to have several full service meals - we never miss Blue Bayou, Cafe Orleans is nice too, and you might want to get the WWC dinner package one day, which is pretty expensive too.

 

[Dobie]

How much you spend depends on where you eat and how much you snack. Forty dollars per person per day is very doable, but you can easily spend much more than that, if you eat a lot of table service, snack a lot, etc. We don't drink pop, so that saves us a lot of money.

And then there's the booze factor. . .

 

[mystic_path]

I have the DL Dining app for my iPod and this will help alot.
Not really going to do any table service except maybe once(Blue Bayou-$200?).

I think I will bump it up to $1500 just to be safe, the 5YO doesn't eat much at all. I watch what I eat and might share with my daughter but with the wife on her super restricted diet the $1200 should be doable but I don't want to cut ourselves short.

Good advice and remember to add your own experiences so others can reap the benefits.

IF you have an iPhone or iPod Touch don't forget to download the DL Dining app(it is free, although needs to be updated with new menu items). I have an iPod touch and the app downloads completely to the device so you won't need WiFi to view.

Sounds like you are going to be just fine! We always do adult trips and we generally go for 10 days and I spend on myself $250 for the entire stay including a little splurge here and there. Usually on a $3.50 chocolate covered strawberry from Pooh's Corner. So hopefully that can give you an idea. It is really good to go and make your own experiences, you are so right about that, because others definitely benefit. Good call on the iPod app. I have one as well on mine and it's good to know what you can do without having to walk your feet off to figure it out when everyone is hungry PRONTO!

 

[charmama4]

First of all, love love LOVE your avatar OP. My DH collects patriotic mickey things. He would like that too.

OK, we are a military family of 6 (DH, me, 14yo, 12yo, 10yo, 7yo), we usually go for 3days but have been known to go 5!! During off season (4 nights) our budget is:
hotel:$270 (peak season would be $640),

Gas $250 (have to increase that now with those raging gas prices now!!! Oh and we hail from Travis AFB).

Food: this can kind of get tricky. Let me break it down for ya.

Travel food (on the road roundtrip) $70

Parks food $720 ($40/pp a day includes 2 meals and churro treats ) Of course this is increased if my DD and I have lunch with the Princesses or the whole family have a meal with the Characters. Figure $60-$250 extra

We have a PAP so we save 20% on food and don't need to factor buying tickets into our budget.

Hotel food (snack type foods, case or two of H2O and breakfast items bought from our commissary) $100

So, my total budget with 6 people for a 3 day park trip would be $1410

This is not including souviners of course.

We always eat our breakfast in our hotel. I even bring my own toaster to toast bagels. It's not only cheaper but it does save us time so we can get to the parks faster

Because we bring our own snacks, we save a lot of money that way.

Hope this helps.

 

[Huff]

It depends on where you wish to eat. We're two adults and two girls ages 8 and 12. We spend closer to $125/day for the 4 of us, often less.

We stock our hotels fridge with cereal, milk, fruit, muffins etc. That saves considerably from eating breakfast at a restaurant or in the parks.

For lunches we'll grab something at Jazz Kitchen Express or other DTD counter service. About $8-$10 per person. One or two days we'll have a TS lunch at House of Blues or ESPN.

All counter service restaurants in the parks will give free cups of water rather than the absurdly priced bottled water and sodas.

Dinners would be something similar and I figure in costs of a few snacks during the day. If we are not staying late we'll have dinner outside the parks somewhere inexpensive.

We rarely do TS meals or character meals as they're too expensive. We may do so this coming trip as its a first time to DL for one of the girls.

 

[disneychrista]

Here is what I budget:

Kids meals $7 each or $10/day (including 1 extra drink)
Adult Meals - $15 each or $35/day (including 1 extra drink)

We do breakfast at the hotel. Don't really snack much at the parks. But we do usually end up with an extra bottle of water each/day, in addition to the drinks with lunch & dinner.

 

[bnbheartdisney]

IF you have an iPhone or iPod Touch don't forget to download the DL Dining app(it is free, although needs to be updated with new menu items). I have an iPod touch and the app downloads completely to the device so you won't need WiFi to view.

Thanks for the information! I look forward to downloading this app!

 

[Cagirl767]

We are a family with two adults and a six and four year old.

Usually, we stay at a hotel that offers free breakfast and light dinner so we take advantage of those. We eat one or maybe two sit down meals in the park a day. We do snack a lot, but sometimes end up just eating something light such as a Mickey pretzel for dinner. We spend around $125a day on food and that's only buying a drink or two during the day, we bring our own waters and the kids meals include a drink. We don't go in summer, fyi. Otherwise, I'd say we don't skimp.

I'd say a median/typical adult meal would run around $13 per person. My kids at six and four are just about adult portion eaters now and they're not big eaters. There are some places such as Rancho and Plaza Inn where two would be able to split a meal at times. We split a churro on occasion and bring baggies for splitting things such as a popcorn or jelly beans.

 

[misty7260]

Thanks for this thread op. We are going for the first time and I have a budget of $1200 for 4 people, me, dh, dd8, and dd6. We are doing 3 character meals, and staying conceirge, so I plan to use that for water and snacks, as well as breakfast one day.

Does anyone think I need to up that budget?

 

[blackjackdelta]

Thanks for this thread op. We are going for the first time and I have a budget of $1200 for 4 people, me, dh, dd8, and dd6. We are doing 3 character meals, and staying conceirge, so I plan to use that for water and snacks, as well as breakfast one day.

Does anyone think I need to up that budget?

How many days?

Jack

 

[misty7260]

oops, forgot that part. We are like 3 1/2, our first day will be potc4 premiere day and we won't be arriving until early afternoon, 2 or 3 o'clock, so I wasn't sure we would make it into the park that day or not or just dca and dtd.

 

[garate55]

oops, forgot that part. We are like 3 1/2, our first day will be potc4 premiere day and we won't be arriving until early afternoon, 2 or 3 o'clock, so I wasn't sure we would make it into the park that day or not or just dca and dtd.

You should be more than fine for that amount.


We spent just over $1400 for all 5 of us for a total of 8 days(175 per day / 43 per person/day). Like I said earlier the 5 YO doesn't eat and he didn't prove us wrong. Of course he ate but only snack foods(and yes there were healthy foods in there).

Arrival day was eating dinner only at Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney with ice cream at the Hagen Dazs store(*overpriced* $11 for 2 ice creams-ouch).
Day 2 through Day 6 we ate the continental breakfast at the hotel and did not skimp on lunches or dinner. We also had small snacks throughout the day, bringing our own water into the park was helpful but we ended up buying drinks as necessary, and I had a few beers as well.

Last day we did Ariels Grotto with W.O.C. preferred seating, like I said the 5YO would not eat so we explained this and they let us bring him for free but he didn't eat so don't try sneaking your kids food from your plate or they will charge you. This was a bit pricey but worth the $200 for the 4 of us to eat and get great seats for W.O.C. I recommend getting to the seating area when they drop the ropes, about an hour before the show.(highly recommend doing this).

And Day 7 we had lunch in Downtown Disney and left about 3:00pm so no dinner here.

The best value was the all-you-can-eat chicken and ribs at the Big Thunder Ranch Barbeque for lunch, $19.99 per adult and $9.99 per kid. Beware the coleslaw is spicy. We tried here for dinner but they must close earlier than we want to eat.

I think this thread could help people plan their dining experiences.
My wife will be blogging about our dining experiences here and has already posted a recipe for a Monte Cristo that we had at Cafe Orleans for lunch, this is a must do also.

I will post more in depth of each dining experience, if wanted, or just read my wife's blog she has pictures and it is easier to read.

 

[chickyann]

We buy cereal for our room & mostly have breakfast there, except for a character breakfast that we prepay before we leave home & maybe another breakfast out in the parks.

We budgeted $100 a day for the 4 of us, DH & I can share some meals, particularly the bigger serves & DD8 is not a big eater & can share with her sister a lot of the time.

We exchanged Aussie for US cash before we left home & just grabbed $100 out of the safe a day & some days we had money left over & some days we used the extra cash from the day before, it worked well for us.

When we went to the Blue Bayou we used the credit card.