Have you ever Not spent money in parks?

[kokomos]

Just wondering if anyone has ever booked a package with room,tickets and quick service dining plan and not spent any additonal money?
I know I always blow extra money on junk or extra sodas just wondering if anyone has attempted it?

 

[crisi]

We never do a dining plan, but with the exception of food, we've taken trips where we haven't bought junk, and we seldom snack outside meals on anything but water brought from our room.

Not with kids along though.

 

[My3Princez]

We went with free dining once and spent less than $30 on other stuff on a 6 day trip.

 

[crazelion]

Yes. But that was in my youth. I will buy occasionally snack in the parks. I eat out parks now at places like DTD and offsite restaurants because I plenty of gift cards get free food.

 

[4luv2cdisney]

I think that would be tough on QSDP because we would still need to at least buy some cereal, milk, extra water bottles....something. If you include a small grocery budget in there, I'd say no problem! (Excluding transportation obviously).

I'm pretty sure our last trip we only spent $ on trans, room, tix and food. We had a budget of around $125/day for food (less than what QSDP would have cost) and stuck to it. We did have a box of granola bars and a case of water brought from home, since we drove. We never went hungry or felt deprived.

We've gone frequently enough to not be very interested in souvenirs. Our kids are older, it would be harder with younger kids.

 

[nmlovesdisney]

You can definitely not spend any money in the parks when you have the whole package with dining plan! We just went on a family vacation with my aunt and cousins family at the end of November 2012. My aunt and cousin stayed at the Nemo suite and I stayed at Little Mermaid with my two daughters. I purchased the room, base park tickets, and paid for the ddp with 1 table service. I did not spend any money on food and I had enough credits to buy snacks and 1 table service for my extended family. It was wonderful!!! You don't have to worry about how much money to bring for food each day. Worry free vacation!!!!

 

[kokomos]

I have pin code for free dining and will drive so drinks and snacks won't be a problem. We've been many times but usually buy things we don't really need. We were in Orlando 2 weeks ago visiting the other park. Went to dtd and managed to blow 400 in a few hours. Next trip I'm taking that challenge.

 

[4under4]

When we use the dining plan we hardly ever spend money in the parks. We go to DTD at the end of the trip for souvenirs, and tend to take breaks in the afternoon which limits the need for extra snacks/drinks outside the plan.

 

[Sagginit]

well tips aren't included with dining plan, but that's not really extra as you have to factor that into the package. two years in a row we had DDP. we spent maybe $50 between two people on a few adult beverages, and maybe $10 on snacks once. we both spent maybe $50-75 on souvenirs (mostly gifts for others) and that was it. in fact the second year we spent nothing on snacks as the first year we had a few credits on the last day.

 

[zy144622]

We only spent money in souvenirs in the parks and DTD while on DDP. We had a few snacks, water bottles and cereal in the room.

 

[purpledisneyprncess]

If you are on the dining plan it will be very easy to not spend money in the parks, as long as you stay clear of the shops. We spent most of our $ on food in the parks, and about $130 I think in souvenirs? Even that was more than we wanted to spend, especially since we bought the kids stuffed animals and stuff from the Disney store before the trip!

OP- If you have the dining plan, they give you soda with each meal and then you can always ask for ice waters too throughout the day. I think what steered me away from the FD and went with the room discount was the fact that we aren't soda drinkers or enjoy the desserts that come with the meals. We will be in Disney in Sept when it is super hot and none of us enjoy big meals in the heat. I would feel bad wasting food that we probably aren't going to finish. And we prefer ice waters anyhow, just a bonus that it's free.

 

[Marionnette]

Just wondering if anyone has ever booked a package with room,tickets and quick service dining plan and not spent any additonal money?
I know I always blow extra money on junk or extra sodas just wondering if anyone has attempted it?

I haven't done the QSDP but I'm sure that it's possible to not spend another penny on food if you're not a big eater.

Bring a filtered water bottle and you won't need to buy extra water. You can save your snack credit for something filling. There's a list of dining plan snacks in a sticky on the Dining Plan subforum of the Restaurants board. Check it out. You should be able to find something there that can be used for a breakfast or as a filling midday snack.

Order a dessert at your CS meals that can be carried and eaten at a later time. There's almost always a healthy fruit option on the dessert menu.

The only caveat is that the dining plans are per night, so if you are arriving early and departing late, you will find yourself short on credits. A 5-night stay is actually 6 days. If you are there for a full 6 days, you might need to pay for 1 or 2 meals OOP.

 

[danygirl]

We hit Costco before our last trip and brought awesome snacks into the parks each day. If you do that you can cut down on in park snacks

 

[lmi0927]

Hi! First timer here!? Is there a glossary for all these abbreviations? Dtp? Ddp?

 

[LJSquishy]

My husband and I did a trip without spending any additional money in the parks (other than on a couple of alcoholic beverages at Epcot).

We had the DDP though, not the QSDP. I don't think that would make a difference though in our spending habits...it would still be more than enough food. We usually would get one soda/milk to share, and get a bottle of water with the other meal so we would have something to drink around the parks. By the 3rd day or so, we both started getting bottled water because we were sick of soda and other beverages. lol We also used our resort mugs at our resort a lot! I loved getting hot chocolate in the mornings, and we would be back at our resort by 7pm or so at night and would fill up with soda if we felt like it.

We did turn down a lot of desserts at table service restaurants...it's just too much food. At QS restaurants, we would get portable desserts like a cookie to eat later on, or ask for grapes or some other fruit. We saved all of our snack credits and used them for breakfast (like a huge yogurt parfait at our resort...CSR, or a large muffin, or a cinnamon roll).

 

[MineMail]

Hi! First timer here!? Is there a glossary for all these abbreviations? Dtp? Ddp?

http://www.wdwinfo.com/abbreviations.htm

 

[pittsburghmom]

This past January we were on the qsdp and we did not have to purchase any additional foods in the parks/resorts....in fact we actually had 4 snack credits to burn at the end of the trip on candy items! We packed 2 loaves of frozen banana bread in our luggage and ate slices of that for b-fast for several days, got juice/chocolate milk for our beverage and muffins for our desserts if we ate at the POP food court (saved saved all these for b-fast) and used our refillable mugs for our beverages with our meals. We had a case of water delivered with our stroller rental for an additional $9...so we had plenty of beverages at the parks. We found the qsdp to be alot of food!! It was myself, dh, ds#7, ds#3, and dd#1 on our trip. HTH!

 

[ShhhQ]

I find it rather easy to not spend extra money.... seeing as I don't have any!! lol
Seriously, been on DDP 5 times and never HAD to buy food... only spent money on tips (which you don't need to worry about on the qs) and any souvenirs... which I don't buy that much of anyway. I did add a couple of items beyond the DDP but that was because I wanted to try some appetizers, but didn't have to do it.

 

[powellrj]

We went during free dining once when tips were still included and we spent less than $50 for a week. We really still don't spend much when we go.

 

[ilovemk76]

No.

We are not dining plan people but we will get popcorn in the parks, drinks too, and we bring back gifts or other items. We are on vacation.