How do you budget for Disney?

tophee99

Mouseketeer
Joined
Mar 9, 2006
Messages
196
Ok, so I know the room rates are rather stable.........but how do you plan for the rest? What is your food budget? Extras? Souvenirs? Travel to get there?

We are hoping/planning for a disney vacation either November 07 or January 08.......I know I have a lot of planning time, but I figure the earlier I start the better.

Please share all your ideas!!! :thumbsup2
 
For food, I look at the prices at the places we will probable eat at and do an daily average.

My daughter's spending money comes from gifts, money saved by eating at home or taking lunch, etc. I buy her one item for every 4 days of vacation, which is usually a top or sweatshirt. Anything else comes from her own money. I usually buy a couple of items for others and one or two items for myself.

We have to fly to WDW, so that is not something we can change much.

I make a detailed plan (but we don't necessarily follow it), to set the budget and add $500 - $1000 for emergency. We always spend less on food then I plan and always come home with the emergency money plus a few hundred dollars. I hate being short on money!
 
Food: I usually budget for $100/day for our family (two adults, one preschooler, one toddler). I expect that to cover a modest breakfast at the food court, and one meal at a sit-down and one meal at a table service place per day.

Travel: I look at the current flight prices, budget that amount and hope for a sale. Likewise with car rental.

Souvenirs: We don't spend much money on "stuff", so I budget $50 for each of the kids and $100 for each DH and I.
 
I always make an Excel spreadsheet and record hotel, tickets, airfare etc... I have spreadsheets for all my trips for the last several years. This really helps!

We usually eat breakfast in the room because it saves us a lot of time. Two children eat while the other is in the shower etc... We bring OJ, cereal, fruit, oatmeal etc... food that is hearty, healthy and easy to prepare.

We usually eat lunch at a counter service place and schedule one sit down meal per day - usually a character meal. You can save money by doing your character meals for breakfast or lunch, though. The restaurant prices are posted on various websites so you can get a good idea as to how much you will spend on food. Budget for a few snacks in the parks.

With young children you may find it convenient to pack a backpack with snacks and water bottles. This will save time and money.

For airfare check farereport.com to get an idea of how much you will spend on air tickets. We always get a great deal by shopping for sales.

Each child usually gets about $50 to spend on souveniers. This is probably much less than most people but we aren't big shoppers.

We have a 5-night trip planned for the end of August at Port Orleans Riverside with free dining and it is going to cost $3,000 excluding spending money. I will budget $750 for extra spending money but probably won't spend it all.
 

before each trip I plan and tweak and plan some more. But no matter what I do, every trip we go on, no matter where to, seems to fall in the neighborhood of $4,000-$5,000 anyway. So I could just save myself a lot of trouble by budgeting $5,000 :rotfl:

For us the one thing we have very little control over is airfare, so that's first on the list.

Next comes lodging - we can adjust where we stay, or for how long to make it work. But for us, since we have to fly so far, and that's usually the biggest chunk, we figure we get more bang for our buck by staying longer but going less often. Once you've spent $1500 on airfare, might as well spend an extra $500 on a few more nights and not leave feeling like you've missed stuff and have to go back immediately. Our next trip we're using our DVC points, which certainly made this part of the budget fun to write down - $0!

Then for Disney there's park tickets to consider. Not much can be done about those either, but you can decide how many days, who has the best deal on them, and whether or not to do park-hoppers, non-expiring, etc. to adjust things a bit.

Then food: I either look at menus and average the cost of 1 sit-down and 1 cs meal per day and round up for snacks, or I allow 150 per day (family of 5, two of which are growing boys). Either way that comes out pretty similar. We could spend less on food if we brought a bunch of our own, or didn't do a sit-down each day, but dh loves fine dining, and we already do bring stuff along for a quick breakfast or maybe a snack in the room, and any more than that would feel very "un-vacationy" to me. So the food budget pretty much is what it is.

Then spending money. I try to make sure we have a couple hundred at least, but that's really the most flexible of all the expenses. Theoretically you could go on vacation and not buy a darn thing to bring home, kwim? But what works for us is to see how much we actually have, and either give the kids a budget, or give them their own portion, depending upon their age. Then they have to decide what's most important to them with the $ they've got, and they do really well with that. Last trip, the boys were old enough to have collected some birthday and extra chore money to add to what we gave them (which was $50 each - for a 14 day trip). They were really careful with it, and it was fun to see them work through the process of making their money really count). For dh and I, we pretty much decide before we go: are we getting beach towels this time? Shirts? Music CD's? then plan accordingly.

So then, when I see that it all equals somewhere around $4000 to $5000, I figure out how much of that can come from our income tax return, and how much we can spare every month to put in a special savings account or an envelope, or send to Disney - depending upon the situation, and start working on it.

We actually used to have a dedicated trip savings account - well, we still do - but now it gets used for all of our weekend trips for our boys' hockey tournaments and boy scout outings, etc, etc.. Sigh. So the real vacations are fewer and farther between than I'd like, while we spend more time in seedy hotels, campgrounds, and hockey rinks than I'd like to in the meantime lol.
 
I budget like this
fodd we bring to the park I start buying out of my weekly food budget usually 4-6 months ahead. examples koolaid,Coke, bottle waters , pop tarts, oatmeal, chips, pretzels, penutbutter , jelly
so I really do not put that cost in with my wdw budget
I set our family of 7 a 2,000 budget for spending and gas
My kids all ready will be given 25 $ each any other money they would have to save.... tooth fairy and money earned
Me I take out of my spending money ( over the course of 9 mnts ) I but dd , so I will have 200 for me and dh to spend at the parks. I usually buy Christmas orinments and maganets.
then I start saving my change in my change jar
here is what I have saved for this far
12$ refill mug I wrapped the change and put it with my dd
15.$ toll money I wrapped it and set a side
20$ laundry money wrapped it and set a side
20$ Pizza hut gift card came from change jar.. I will use that on our drive home. again from change jar
50$ wrapped and set a side for when we stop in VA at our familys.... I plan to buy Pizza for everyone.
I have 8$ currently and I plan to gather 20 more in change by the 30th and this will be for fast food on the way home

:cloud9:
 
We get the DDP so that we know our meals are taken care of no matter what else comes our way. We take breakfast bars and such and then eat an earlier lunch. One way we save is not to spend any coin we get back. We have a huge jar that we throw it in and right before vacation I will get it out and roll it. ( I have an advantage because I work for a large discount store that will let me cash it in.) This year I've rolled it and I already have 220.00 with a little over a month still to save. This is usually our gas money there so we won't have that to worry about. ( And yes--we drive a very fuel efficeint car.)

Also if you are driving, purchase gift cards for restaurants like Cracker Barrell, McDonalds, Applebees, etc; throughout the few months before your trip to use there and back!
 
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