Food Budget?

[lwilson105]

Hello all,

Just 2 more weeks until my first trip to Disney and all the family is excited. I have already purchased the tickets and the Hotel what I need help with is some idea on how much to budget for food. Here is a break down of our trip: We will be staying 5 days at OKW in a 2 bedroom villa, 2 nights at the Swan and from there we are staying 5 nights at a Best Western on I-Drive. I am buying most of the groceries at home except for the perishables. We are planning on taking advantage of the kitchen facilities at OKW for all meals for the first 5 days and will be having breakfast in the room the remainder of the trip. How much should I budget for the remaing 2 days at the swan and the 5 days on I-Drive. There are 5 people in my family- me, DH, DS(13), DD(10), and DD(7).

 

[bobcat]

Take a look at the menus on www.allearsnet.com

I plan $70/day for my family of 3, one adult 2 kids.

 

[dixipixi]

Hi! Since we've been to WDW many times as a family of 5, I thought maybe you'd be interested in our budget. We plan for between $250-$300 per day. Having said that, I cook everyday at home. We only eat out around 3 times per month. I refuse to cook anything on vacation . Since you will have a kitchen for part of your trip, you will save some there. Also, my youngest is now 11 (will be 12 by our next trip) so we are feeding 5 adults. DH and I are NOT fans of fast food, so most of our meals are in sit-down restaurants. We only eat breakfast out a few times during our trips. DH and 2 of the kids are not big breakfast eaters so we often have cereal bars and fruit in the room. We usually eat an early lunch (this is where the kids often have some luck in the fast food area) By 3-4pm we are really ready for something to eat and we have a nice meal then. Even if we go the buffet route, we can easily spend $150 or so (including tax and tip). Since they're all teenagers now, we don't do many character meals. By the time we have water/drinks/snacks , you can see how easy it is for us to reach the $200 mark. I try to plan things where we stay under $200 per day but I like to be prepared with the extra just in case.

 

[disneynan]

Hi, we save money on our meals by planning our biggest meal of the day as a late lunch. Most of the restaurants in the parks serve lunch until 2 or 3pm and the prices are cheaper than dinner. We always eat breakfast in the room to save time and money, and usually bring some non-perisable snack items with us into the parks.
Most of the time you will find Disney generous with the portion size and often we will only order 3 meals for our family of 5. Some of the counter service restaurants in the Magic Kingdom have large, delicious salads that DH and I share.
Another way to save is with drinks. On our last trip DH bought 2 large Britta sports bottles. They were about quart sized and have a small filter in the lid. The water in the parks doesn't taste very good, but the filters worked great. We would fill them with ice and water and just keep adding ice throughout the day. Any counter service will give you free cups of ice on request. They even had handy straps for hanging on our shoulder or the stroller.
We also have used the non-spill type sport bottles or sippy cups for our younger kids. I fill them with water from the bubblers and brought a small tupperware container filled with powdered drink mix. Just add a bit with the water and we had instant kool-aide all day.
Hope this helps.