Food Cost Breakdown of your trip...Please

[BelleRN]

I'm planning my May '04 trip. Family of 5 includes Me, DH, boys (8,11,13) staying at the Dolphin (RN discount, can't wait) I am trying to guestimate the cost for food. I have looked over the menus and I think I am going to gain 50 lbs this trip. If you have a rough breakdown of your food budget, I would love to have your thoughts on planning.
In general, we are not big breakfast eaters, lunch would be light if early and then a big dinner, or hearty lunch with light dinner.
Thank you for sharing your budget thoughts.

 

[AirForceRocks]

Our kids are 9 & 7, and I guesstimate $25/day for each of them and $50/day each for DH and myself for $150/day.

 

[FonFon]

DH and I do a light breakfast, and then one big meal a day (usually a buffet/all you can eat), and then snacks, or splitting some fries or something.

Since we are staying concierge, I budget $50 for the two of us total per day. The breakfast is included in concierge, and we're scheduled for one all you can eat place per day (Chef Mickey's, Ohana, Whispering Canyon Cafe, etc.) We usually have a late lunch or early dinner, and then we'll probably eat cookies or something in concierge for a late night snack.

We always seem to be full at Disney World - maybe because the food tends to be heavier?

 

[disneysteve]

You're going to get a wide range of responses to this one. We're usually on the low end.

Last trip, Nov. 2002, we averaged $54/day for the 3 of us (me, DW, DD 7). We ate breakfast in our room (cereal, pop-tarts, etc.). Lunch and dinner was either counter service or casual sit-down (like Beaches and Cream). Also did Boma one nite (with CM discount - friend joined us). We also carried in snacks - granola bars, candy, etc. We drank tap water almost exclusively - just the occasional Coke that we all shared. A few meals were eaten offsite.

If you search around, you may turn up my post detailing everywhere we ate. I'll try and find the link and add it to this post.

Steve

 

[AirForceRocks]

There are tons of ways to make a good guess about what you might spend. My amount includes snacks and drinks throughout the day as well as the 3 meals.

I would HIGHLY recommend going to Deb Wills' site and checking out the menus there. If, like me, you have a good idea of what your family likes to eat, you can get a really good idea of what your meal costs will be.

 

[Alice28]

I think for our family of 4 (two adults, 5 year old & 2 year old who at times eats more than the 5 year old!), we averaged around $100 a day. We ate every breakfast in the room (brought cereal/granola bars/bagels & my mom paid for a fridge in her room- our rooms were adjacent so we had milk, grapes and go-gurt too), lunch for us almost always was between $26-28, and dinner varied...if we ate counter service again it was that magical $27 or so, if it was sit down it was around $60-70. A few meals put us over budget- DH & I went to Shula's one night and that was $135, but we had planned for that. And then a few meals put us under budget- we had planned for a nice meal, but ended up at the Food and Fun Center at our hotel. I think if you plan most of your meals out via www.wdwig.com, and add about $15/day to that just to be safe, you will come out just fine.

 

[crazymomof4]

I was so happy with the planning of our food budget that I started a thread about it. Here is a copy:
My DH and I were worried about the expense of food for the 6 of us in WDW so we came up with a plan. We are staying in a rental house so we knew we would do at least a small breakfast. My DH suggested getting up a little earlier and making a full breakfast (pancakes, bacon, eggs, etc.). Cooking is a "hobby" for him so the actual amount of effort for me will be minimal. DH's theory is that with a big breakfast in us, and taking some things to snack on (granola bars, crackers) we will last until about 1-2 pm before we get hungry. Then we will have a decent size meal at the counter service places we chose, snack some more from our supply until a light meal around 6-7pm.

Next, I printed out the menus from deb's site and my DH and I looked over them together and chose places to eat. Then we told the kids to pick out what they would want. This at least gave us a "ballpark" figure.

Here are some of the totals we arrived at for the 1-2pm meal at counter service places:
~ Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe- $26 for the family dinner and 1 other entree/side to supplement.
~Pecos Bill's- $27 for burgers and salads, fries.
~Sunshine Food Fair- $33 for veggie wraps, salad, chicken strips, etc.
~Yakatori House-$28. for skewered beef/chicken & rice.
~Sommerfest-$33 for smoked ham, bratwurst sandwiches.

For the light meal at 6-7pm we plan on getting nachos, eggrolls, baked potatoes, turkey legs, etc. No definite plans, just grabbing things as we pass something that looks good. These snack-type foods could add up to another $20-$30/day. And then add another $20. for ice cream/cookies. We will be bringing water with us so beverage costs are minimal.

Anyway, with this plan it looks like most days we will be under $100/day total for food. This is well under the $200/day I had originally budgeted.

I understand that not everyone wants to eat soley at counter service restaurants. This plan is sufficient for us, for this trip. We really want to put our $$ toward fun in the parks and food is secondary to that. My DH and I did several trips before the kids came so we did the "two sit-down meals a day" thing. We know we will do that again when we are "empty-nesters", so for now saving $$ is the priority. The kids would rather eat in a more casual setting. So everyone is a winner here! We have 2 exceptions planned: Character Breakfast at 1900 Park Fare (came free w/ our ticket purchase from Paramount) and lunch at Sci Fi (We wanted the kids to experience the drive-in atmosphere)

I thought I'd post bc. I am so happy with the results of this planning. So much better than going down there, having no idea what we're going to be spending on food, then trying to keep track of it while we are down there and still being shocked when the credit card bill comes in.
Also want to add that we will be eating at Pepper Market and Beaches and Cream after our days in Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon. At those 2 places we will be using 2 vouchers ($11.25 each) and ordering kid's meal for the two youngest to split. total cost there should be under $30.
One dinner at RFC (5pm seating)- Using 2 VKL vouchers @ $30.50 (for two surf and turfs), plus a kid's meal = nice dinner for under $75!!!

 

[Cindy B]

This trip was 8 days/7 nights... we returned on 8/30

We used 29 Q & C vouchers for both lunch & dinner ($11.25 a piece)


We bought some groceries first night offsite $25 (we wound up taking some home/this also inculded our first offsite nights dinner as well...)

We bought one muffin $2
One breakfast platter $4

Most of the rest of the time was stuff we brought from home, cereals, oatmeal,granola bars, etc...

One night the kids had Sonic and we had milkshakes total approx. $9 (we used one voucher between the two of us for dinner later)

Two breaksfasts at Whispering Canyon.. one was $25/tip, another was about $35/tip.

We also did one lunch at 50's Prime Time.. and that was $44 (for the four of us).. we had a $50 AMX that I received for a test drive incentive so that was FREE.

 

[BelleRN]

I am so excited about going that I want to eat Everywhere!!! I know I have to narrow it down, and we truely are not a 3 big meal a day family. I will collect my menus now and try to decide by what dh and the boys will eat (real meat and potato kind of guys). Thank you all for your thoughts.