How much do you spend on food?

[AmandaK]

I am trying to figure out how much do people that are paying out of pocket spend per day on food. (kids and adults)

 

[FantasiaMickey63]

When we went in March 2008 we averaged about 40-50 dollars per meal for the 4 of us. Of course we usually only ate at the hotel food court ,very rarely in the parks. The only place we went overboard was at The Rainforest Cafe.

 

[vicki_c]

For rough estimates for our family of 4, I figure:

$25 breakfast
$40 CS lunch/dinner
$100 TS dinner (maybe $75/80 for TS lunch)

We have 3 adults now (although DS is just 10 and he does get kid meals sometimes) and 1 child. But for buffets and all you can eat, he's an adult.

We are going for 5-6 days in January, and I estimated $1000 for eating! It's crazy. That does include the F! dinner package and breakfast at CRT, dinner at Le Cellier, and a few others. So that might be a bit overstated depending on what you're planning.

 

[disney4us2002]

It depends if you eat all counter service, all table or mix it up. My family of 5 with three teenaged sons(!) average $200+ per day. We were very happy to get a code for free dining last year. Disney lost big on us!

 

[ROEDISNEY]

BK $ 10. PP
Lunch $15. PP
Dinner $15-30 pp it depends where you go & what you eat
Not inc tip & alcohol drinks

 

[francie57]

As others have said, it depends on where you go. For us the DDP is the only way to go. We are a family of 4 adults and when we were there in Aug. a TS meal for us was well over $150 and our CS ran about $45 a day. It may be worth looking at the menus here or on allears to get an ideal of what meals cost at the places you want to eat.

 

[dvcdisney]

I agree with those that said that it depends on what you want to eat.

For us, (2 adults, 2 children - 10 and 5), I budget:

$0-$25 cs breakfast (we share or sometimes we eat cereal in our room)
$25 cs lunch (we share)
$10 snacks (we share)
$80-$150 ts dinner (depending on restaurant)

Since my ADRs are booked for each day, I budget based on the restaurant I booked for each day. For instance, one day may be a budget of $120 while another is $210. But I have found that the average is about $165/day.

(In the past, we've had the DDP. I can't even remember our budget before the DDP. Our upcoming trip will be the first OOP in a long time, so I tried to plan out each meal to get the best estimate.)

 

[cglaura]

DD17 & myself

Breakfast: Not big early eaters, we bring granola bars, etc.

Lunch: Split a combo, add 1 extra side, 1 soda, 1 free cup of water...approx. $15

Dinner: same as lunch $15

Snacks: $15 per day budgeted, it depends on how we feel that day, sometimes we only each get 1 snack...so $6. But if we are closing a park, we usually wind up getting a late night snack, so I budget higher just in case.

So $45 per day x #days, then I add in any TS meals I'd have, but keep the CS budget as if I were eating CS at all meals, so I have cash slush fund for unexpected splurges. Convoluted, but it works for us! I take the amount I figured in a traveler's check or gift card and apply it to the room and only use my room card for food. We each have a gift card for souvies.

We are not big eaters though, so splitting meals is something you'd have to decide if it would work.

Definitely check out the menus on wdwinfo & allearsnet to get an idea of prices.

So for our upcoming trip I have for 14nights/15days:

CS meals $675
TS meals $225 (lecellier lunch; scifi lunch; chef mickey's breakfast; plaza lunch)

We also have TRex, Yak & Yeti, & RFC lunches, but I have gift cards from mypoints for them so didn't include in budget ($175 in gc).

So I budgedet $1000 for the trip to give me a $100 buffer just in case.

We normally only have 1 or 2 ts meals, so this trip is alot different. It is a gift for dd's graduation so she requested some special perks

 

[Pugmalion1]

We enjoy splurging on food, so I'm probably not the best one to gague here.

We spend anywhere between $125 and $200 a day on food. On our upcoming trip (less than a week away), we are only planning on eating at five non-table service restaurants over the eight days we're there, three for breakfast and two for lunch.

 

[MommytoaSweetie]

Since it clearly varies so much between families, we actually add it all up to figure out our budget. Once I have our park days in mind, and when we might want to eat out of the parks and whatever, I look through the menus (wdwinfo.com). I pick a place we MIGHT want to go to (nothing is set), and list out the prices of items we might choose if we were there. I then add it all up and that sets an average for our budget (plus tax and tips if we're doing TS, as well as some extra for snacks and treats). From there, we can determine if the dining plan is an advantage for us (well, last year we got it for free, so it was certainly worth it ). This year, when I added up what we'd spend OOP, we were only planning on doing two TS restaurants and our girls are too young for the dining plan, so at CS restaurants we'd have to buy the kid's meals anyway and it worked out to be cheaper than either of the dining plans (we'd also not buy desserts or sodas as much). However, we got a gift card as a gift for Christmas, and decided to use it to book two more table service restaurants which then made the regular dining plan a better deal (even before adding in the extra table services that come with the plan, so it was definitely a better deal). Anyway, my whole point is that it might take a few minutes to figure it out, but I think it's really helpful.

 

[MommaMouse411]

since its normally myself and my son (under 2yrs old)..its not that expensive..but it is because its just one person i pay for...wait till i have to pay for my son when he turns 3!!!

so this last trip we had breakfast in the room (I brough a fridge/microwave) so we had oatmeal, bananas etc..

I packed a lunch (pb&J or turkey sandwiches) with lots of goodies, veggies, fruit, water, juices.

then we had dinner...$30-$50 a night...depending the reservation location (Mickey's BBQ was $50) ..

but if you don't have any restaurants reservations (character dinings, etc) if you just go up to one of those counter services you are looking at about $8-12 for food (not including drinks)...snacks like ice cream or pastries can be like $4-6 (ie Schoolbread in Norway at Epcot was 1.99 deeeeelicious!). I paid $8.00 for cheesesteak and fries at Cosmic Rays in Magic Kingdom..um it was ok...but I wasn't hungry anymore.

breakfast I'm not sure..depending where you are staying..if there's a fridge I would stop at a grocery store and buy cereal and milk, fruit...

for me eating out 3 times a day makes me feel yucky..

water and soda is expensive..I think water was like $2.50 a bottle. hope this helps.

 

[DisneyHolidayFan]

For just my husband and me - we budget $150.00/day. That is for meals and snacks.

 

[Cedarmom]

I just added it up earlier today, actually. We were on the (free) dining plan, but I was wondering how much we actually spent vs the cost of the dining plan.

We are a family of 5, with dh, myself, ds6.5, ds3.5 and dd9 months (she didn't eat lol). For 7 nights, we spent $889 on food (incld tax, not including tips). We ate as we normally would and had very few leftovers b/c we shared some meals, got grapes rather than desserts, used some snack credits for bottles of water, etc. We were not focused on getting the most out of the dining plan, although we might have ordered an extra kid meal or two b/c we had the credits. At the end of the week, we left with 10 Mickey rice krispie treats for friends and still had a couple of counter service credits left. I also ordered about $50 worth of groceries for the room (water, cereal, milk, half and half for coffee, granola bars, fruit, etc).

So, we spent $127/day on food, plus $50 in grocery items for breakfasts/room food. For us, the dining plan would have cost something like $715, so it was worth it (even if we had to pay for it!).

 

[Micca]

As a guess for me & DW $200 per day. We're DVC so we may have some drinks/snacks in the room. Most of our dinners are upscale signature restaurants.

 

[blanq]

For our 10 day trip this past January, our family of three (2 adults and one eat-anything-in-sight 16 y.o. boy), we spent close to $1200.00, or $120 per day. We did not do the DDP, and spent OOP for our meals and snacks. We did eat most breakfasts in our room (cereal, fruit, yogurt, bagels w/cream cheese, juice), so the figure above is mainly for lunches, dinners, snacks and just a couple of breakfasts. The figure also includes a pricey, close to $250 meal, at CG. We averaged one TS meal per day.