For those that pay OOP for meals, how much do you budget?

[KatieCollette]

Planning our next trip in Feb, and I think we're going to do this one out of pocket instead of getting the DDP. It's going to be just an adults only trip, so the the FD deal won't really benefit us as much as the 35% off.

So how much do you budget a day and for how many people? I want to start putting money away on a Disney gift card soon for it

 

[summermac]

Well today I made our ADRs and I'm coming up with an estimate of $500 in TS restaurants right now for our family of 4 just by thinking of what we may order. That's $83 per day. I intentionally chose some expensive stuff in my estimate and we are also doing 2 character meals which are quite pricey.

 

[budbeerlady]

I go to all ears and check out the menu prices. I pick out what Dh is most likely to order, myself and add a few bucks for drinks/appetizers. I put each days $ in an envelope with the tip amount. I was about $10 for our Le Cellier dinner this past time, more shopping money for me!

 

[summermac]

FWIW, I'm coming up with about $510 for our trip in TS meals. (2 adults/2 kids) One of these meals is Akershush and it's pretty expensive. I also assumed my kids would each get their own meal and I'll be surprised if that actually happens, save the one we have to do that (buffets).

This leave us an add'l $300 before we get to the price of DDP which is an additional $50 per day beyond the average $85 per day I have figured up. I can't imagine us coming close.

Also some of our TS meals I booked w/ the assumption we'll get a free dining code so I'll probably cancel at least 2 of them if we don't luck out with free dining.

 

[Mrsjvb]

Budget?! wassat?!

seriously, we don't worry about that at all.

we pay off the CC before we go, we eat what we want when we want to( and we do a lot of TS and Signature dining) and when we get back, we pay off the cc. but based on past trips, I'd say roughly $175/day for the two of us. but Like I said we do a lot of TS and signature and tend to split a CS and snack at least one meal a day. Oh and no Buffets to fill up on either.

Jiko and V&A are must dos every trip and those alone run us close to $200 each.

 

[Lindsayrg3]

Planning our next trip in Feb, and I think we're going to do this one out of pocket instead of getting the DDP. It's going to be just an adults only trip, so the the FD deal won't really benefit us as much as the 35% off.

So how much do you budget a day and for how many people? I want to start putting money away on a Disney gift card soon for it

Husband and I are taking what it would have cost us to purchase the DDP (regular, not Deluxe) and making that our "food money." It'll be interesting to see if we come home with money left over, as the DDP just wouldn't work for us.

 

[clanmcculloch]

For my early estimates, I just use the cost of the dining plan. We never spend that much on food but it helps to see the high end of what we might spend if we were to really splurge or choose some more expensive options. As we get closer to our trip and I've booked all of our ADRs I fine tune the budget by looking at menus and figuring out the prices of the most expensive options that we'd be interested in and use those numbers for our budget. That's always less than the original budget and then when we're there, there are always some things we end up not ordering (we may not all order desserts at restaurants where they've been budgetted because we're too stuffed or we may skip or split appetizers when I've budgetted for each getting appetizers because we love them at certain restaurants or we may feel like pasta when steak's been budgetted and so on). I like coming in under budget but by setting the money aside for more expensive options we feel free to order whatever we want even if the items are expensive.

 

[Pakey]

We just got back and averaged $750 per day for 6 adults. We ate out one meal a day and dined at V&A, bluezoo, Jiko, Brown Derby, Saana, Biergarten, Rose and Crown. We had breakfast in our villa and did Food & Wine snacking for lunch.

It's really hard to tell you without knowing what types of places you are going to and if you are planning to do alcohol.

We never do the dining plan because our favorite places are not on the plan, none of us order dessert.

 

[OhThePain]

Budget?! wassat?!

seriously, we don't worry about that at all.

That's how we roll, too.

We also usually do a Signature at night, which will run anywhere from $120 to $175 for 2 of us. If we tried to censor ourselves with a budget, we would miss out on a ton of fantastic meals. We don't book a trip to Disney until we have enough saved up to feel comfortable spending almost $2500 in food alone for the 2 of us over 9 days or so and not feel guilty about it (we don't really come close to that number, but we could).

 

[ptsst7]

Last trip we were able to do things pretty reasonably and all OOP. We were there a week and only did 3 TS meals:

2 adults, and a 2 year old boy. All my estimates include tips. Also, we ate all breakfasts in the room (DVC suite with small kitchenette)

San Angel Inn - $90
Whispering Canyon Lunch - $50
Cape May Cafe Buffet dinner - $80 (my son ate free)

We at mainly CS meals and were able to do so for about $50 a day total. That included a CS lunch and a CS dinner for my wife and I and purchasing kids meals as well. Most of the kids meals are reasonable ($4.99). The CS meals were tasty and filling and tons of variety. Some of the ones where I thought we got really good value:

Flame Tree BBQ
Pizza Planet
Casey's
Pastry Shop in France
Germany Pavillion
Pecos Bills

All in all, we spent around $500 over parts of 8 days. This included snacks, drinks when we were thirsty and sampling some of the beers at Epcot.

This March we are on the Dining Plan, but only because its free and included.

 

[TEK224]

I generally figure about $75 day for me. That includes 3 meals, snacks and drinks. I usually stop at Publix when I get to Orlando and get breakfast items, snacks and drinks to keep in the room. I try to mix it up between CS and TS.

 

[annnewjerz]

We also usually do a Signature at night, which will run anywhere from $120 to $175 for 2 of us. If we tried to censor ourselves with a budget, we would miss out on a ton of fantastic meals. We don't book a trip to Disney until we have enough saved up to feel comfortable spending almost $2500 in food alone for the 2 of us over 9 days or so and not feel guilty about it (we don't really come close to that number, but we could).

+1 for this. We typically do two sit-down meals per day (one being Signature) and then some snacks as a meal for whatever one we aren't sitting down for.

I do "budget", but that's more for the sake of keeping myself occupied in the months leading up to the trip (you know, looking at menus, drooling, deciding what we might order when we're there, etc.). I in no way, shape or form stick to a budget on the trip though.

In the past, I would say that we would spend about $1600 on two adults for a week-long trip. So since this trip will be 8 full days I would guess we'll spend about $1800 including meals, tips and adult beverages. If we spend less, great! If we spend more, I'm sure it will have been worth it.

 

[MickeyNicki]

For DH and I, well I budget $150-200 a day including snacks and cocktails but some days we are well below this and others we are well above it. While in WDW we add and cancel things all the time so this will change the budget too. Our last trip we were there for 11 days and I overbudgeted $600 ... guess we were not that hungry

 

[Pugmalion1]

We don't budget, so all I can really tell you is our atypical situation. We our two young adults with no kids. We like to eat at a bunch of signatures, but we don't always order entrees. We even sometimes hop from restaurant to restaurant and just browse on appetizers and sides at the bars. We also like our alcoholic beverages.

All of that being said, on our recent trip, including the day and a half we were stranded in WDW thanks to that weird snowstorm in the Northeast (seriously, thank you, snowstorm), I'd say we dropped about $1600 on food and drink over seven and a half days. That comes out to about $215 a day for the two of us, and that's about what we forecast before the trip.

Take out the fair amount of dough we dropped on the Food and Wine Fest, and that number probably drops below $200.

 

[NLD]

Really depends on your eating habits. How many TS? Which TS? When (breakfast, lunch, dinner)? How many snacks per day will you eat? Do you drink water, soft drinks, or alcohol with meals?

For our upcoming January trip, for two adults and one child (age 8), 6 nights / 7 days, I'm budgeting about $700-$750 for the trip.... plus we've got CRT breakfast which has been pre-paid ($137).

So all together, somewhere between $800-$900 for three people for seven days, including tips.

In reality we probably won't even need that much, as I still expect to cancel at least one TS... but we'll see. We could probably easily make up the difference on snacks.

For our party of 3, that total includes:

Breakfast at CRT
Lunch at Sci-Fi
Breakfast at Tusker House
Dinner at Teppan Edo
Breakfast at Whispering Canyon
CS meals for all the other lunches and dinners (10 total)
$20/day for seven days for snacks


This is us, YMMV. We prefer not to do lots of sit-downs. I prefer plain old water with my meals. We'll bring some breakfast items for the room. And with CS I'm likely to not get a full combo, which also brings the cost down. (Go to Cosmic Ray's and order a burger with no fries--they knock some $$ off the price...)

 

[Eliserose]

Husband and I are taking what it would have cost us to purchase the DDP (regular, not Deluxe) and making that our "food money." It'll be interesting to see if we come home with money left over, as the DDP just wouldn't work for us.

I will probably do this next time and add a bit to it since we would do some additional breakfasts that the ddp would not cover. We used the ddp last time, but I don't think I would again. I am a vegetarian, so usually my meal is the cheapest and I also found we wound up with a lot of snack credits.

 

[rt2dz]

I use All Ears menus and prices to determine if a dining plan or OOP is more cost efficient by planning our ideal dining experience. So far, it's always been OOP. I then use that same cost estimate to put our dining on a gift cards (our grocery store sells them and then I get discounts on gas or I purchase for a slight discount at Sam's). Then we pay for dining via gift card. If onsite, I pay with cc and pay the bill with gf at the resort that evening to rack up Disney Reward dollars.

It gives me slight discounts/money back on dining and keeps us within budget.

 

[krb2g]

We don't really budget. I do calculate three spending scenarios: DP v. OOP v. TiW. I'd recommend using AllEars menus to get an estimate what you might spend (based on ADRs + your family's eating habits). If it's more than the cost of the DP a day (but matches DP eating patterns), you might want to consider adding the DP at cost. Remember, DP doesn't cover alcohol, so plan on paying for drinks OOP either way. If you're going for a longer trip, use the OOP estimate to see if TiW makes sense (basically you'll want the 20% discount at TS restaurants to be greater than the cost of upgrading 1 ticket to an AP and the cost of the TiW card).

 

[handyl03]

We just returned from a week long trip, two adults, one 10 year old Disney Adult, and one 8 year old child. We skipped the dining plan this year because my 10 year old who is now considered and adult does not eat like an adult and it would have been a huge waste of food. The deluxe dining plan would have cost our family around $1800, instead we ate what we wanted, where we wanted and spent around $800 for the week! We had just upgraded to the Premier APs so we were able to get a TIW card that saved us 20% on our table service meals. We always got appetizers and usually skipped desserts at the restaurants and got ice cream and other treats a few hours later in Downtown Disney or in one of the parks. My kids sometimes shared an adult meal if something on the menu appealed to them. We ate at Liberty Tree Tavern twice , Via Napoli, House of Blues twice, Raglan Road, Cookes of Dublin twice, The Plaza Restaurant, counter service at Typhoon Lagoon, counter service at the resort twice, Hoop-de-Doo, Rainforest Cafe, had lots of icecream from Haagen Das and Ghirardelli, pretzels from Wetzels, and many cupcakes and assorted cookies and drinks in the parks. Being on Pacific time we woke up late and ate lunch for breakfast around 11:30am, had a snack mid-day and then dinner around 8pm. This worked out great for us, we saved a bundle and didn't waste a bunch of food or over stuff ourselves!

 

[Kimbysmom]

This post is perfect for me right now, because I'm trying to figure out whether the DP is right for dd and me on our first trip. I'm more of an appetizer person than dessert, and my dd, who will be 8 during our trip, is an adventurous eater, so I can't really see her enjoying the kids DP all that much. I'm just trying to figure out a realistic food budget, because being our first trip to the World, we want to experience a lot of TS meals and character meals as well. Thank goodness I have time to figure everything out (and budget it all in)!