How much do YOU spend?

[tink713]

Its just DH and I and we usually spend $1400-$1500 on food. Thats 8 nights of food.

When we go this November I've budgeted about $2000 for food. Thats for 10 nights with Victoria and Alberts.

 

[jsrj21]

Great question!!

My family of 3 [myself, wife, son 14] usually spend between $800-1000.00 per week. We do mostly counter service and always [Ohana, Boma, Biergarten]. We did the dining plan once [last year] and that was great other than having to run around so much to make it to the restaurants. That's why this year we want to purchase the quick service dining plan and go when we want. The restaurants on the plan aren't that bad either.

Hope this helps.

Jose

 

[Serling126]

For people who brought some of their food, how does your budget differ than those already listed here? We are planning on doing a couple of TS meals, some counter service but we are going to try and save some $ by bringing snacks & sandwiches into the parks.

 

[indimom]

I've gone through the menus on allears and my budget comes to about $50 a day per person. This allows us 1TS (no signature dining and over half the ADRs at lunch time), 1CS and 1 snack a day. Since we're driving, we'll be bringing breakfast food for the room and maybe some sandwich options and snacks to fill the holes.

 

[honeydiane1953]

I plan to spend $1200 for two adults and a 2 yr. old. We will share with her. I am spoiled since Disney picked up the check on previous trips. This time I had to crunch the numbers myself. We will stay seven nights and six days.

 

[goofy4prez]

I don't add it up, I just buy the DDP and eat away and not worry about it.

 

[NMW]

Well, we used to spend a lot more before the Deluxe dining plan. Now, our family does the deluxe plan and the only things we pay OOP for are lunch at ESPN our arrival day (a tradition) and lunch at the Brown Derby (go for the cobb salad, so not worth 2 credits).

We did the basic plan the year before the Deluxe came out and spent A LOT of money OOP on TS breakfasts, a couple dinners so we would have enough credits for signatures, a couple TS lunches-we got SO sick of CS lunch food by day 5 I was begging the BC concierge to get a TS lunch in Epcot one morning! Plus, with only 1 sanck credit per person we spent about $15 every time our family all bought sodas or water bottles. I know the basic dining plan works for some people, but it did not work for our family.

Paying cash as we go we did one trip and it was scary how much money we spent. I would never want to do that again.

 

[LaurenT]

Its just DH and I and we usually spend $1400-$1500 on food. Thats 8 nights of food.

When we go this November I've budgeted about $2000 for food. Thats for 10 nights with Victoria and Alberts.

lol..you might want to up your budget a little. Are you going to get the wine pairings with your V&A dinner? We did V&A a few years ago and it was $450 for the two of us.....we did the wine pairings and did a few of the upcharges. Each course has I think 3 options to choose from, and then there's a really exceptional item that you can get for an additional fee - as if everything on the menu isn't exceptional enough! - DH did an upcharge for a special caviar and also for a Tokay wine that until that fall had only been served to royalty...lol...
You may walk in thinking you're spending enough and will stick with the basic menu, but be prepared...being surrounded by opulence and having a staff waiting on you hand and foot as though you were royalty will make you feel like you should upgrade everything!

 

[mb_uh]

I feel so much better we are doing 5 nights on the deluxe plan which will cost us $900 plus 2 more nights using the GC while I know I will have tips to pay I was thinking that this seemed like a lot for meals but we wanted to do a lot of character and signatures but given your totals for 5 people (1 under 3) I think this is about right. Plus I am happy because except for tips it will all be prepaid.

 

[Leota]

I've never added up what we spend on food. It might be pretty We are essentially empty nesters who go to WDW for F&W Fest (Our son is 21 & only comes with us now if we plan a big family trip)

Looking at an average day for us, I'd guess we spend about $250 a day on food & beverage. That's assuming a TS breakfast, lunch around the Festival & a Signature dinner with drinks/wine.

 

[MickeyNicki]

We like to do signature dinners and that can run us around $120-150 depending on ordering another round of drinks (we have the TIW card)

Breakfast is usually CS stuff and is about $17-22 and lunch is usually CS stuff too $22-26

Snacks and other alcoholic beverages $15-40

Just for the 2 of us a day

 

[DaisyD]

We have a family of eight and usually budget $300 if we are not on the dining plan. We usually stay 8-10 nights.

Is that $300 a day? I would think so but wasn't sure. lol I've never really thought about it but last time we spent almost 2k for 7 days for 3 adults and one child. We usually do a quick breakfast, CS lunch, and always a sit down dinner. We don't do a budget. We just EAT.

 

[GeorgeG]

There's just the two of us and I guess we spend anywhere from $100 to $200 a day. We don't usually make our decisions according to price, which is a lot easier than if we had a family to feed.

 

[Belle5]

Is that $300 a day? I would think so but wasn't sure. lol I've never really thought about it but last time we spent almost 2k for 7 days for 3 adults and one child. We usually do a quick breakfast, CS lunch, and always a sit down dinner. We don't do a budget. We just EAT.

Oops... yep! That would be about $300 per day. We have switched to off-site (two rooms at the Embassy Suites hotel) for this trip. We are only going with seven (one son is opting out) this time and are still allowing for the $300 per day. If we were not getting that huge cooked-to-order breakfast we might have had to budget closer to $400 per day. As it stands, I think we will have one table service per day at WDW and either split some QS meals or just snack. That breakfast really is going to save us a lot of $$!

 

[Hollymom1229]

DH and I typically spend $100 a day average while at WDW. With some extra drinks and everything else we budget $1000 for a 9 day/8 night trip. We like to have quite a few adult beverages over the week, and like to eat at least two signature meals. But we tend to eat all but one breakfast in the room (cereal and milk in our DVC studio), all lunches are CS, and then depending on the meal we often share courses. We don't do DDP as it doesn't match our eating habits, so we use TIW.

 

[deerhart]

too much!

For a family of 4 (2 kids 3-9), last year we went for 9 days 8 nights. Our average CS bill was $50, our average TS bill (before tip) was about $100. This DOES include extras like alcohol and soups and such that weren't included on the dining plan. We also ate 2 or 3 sit down meals oop (I don't remember if we paid oop for Shutters, Rainforest, and Beirgarten or just shutters and Rainforest).

I anticipate this year (now with 1 kid 10+) that our average CS meal will run closer to $70 a day and TS will be closer to $150-$160.

 

[grecorj]

Love the thread.

For our family of four I'd estimate that $150/day has been our average.

Like a lot of people, we limit to 1 TS a day and then CS the other two meals. We do room service on one night of the trip ... kids love it.

We don't usually do the higher end restaurants (i.e. V&A, Le Cellier, etc.).

I love a big breakfast, but I think it can be the easiest meal to save $$ on, either by having cereal in your room or grabbing and sharing a few things from a CS. Plus, it lets you get to the parks that much earlier when you aren't doing a sit-down.

 

[SuzieN]

We always get the DDP so we don't have to worry about food costs while we are in WDW!!

 

[badblackpug]

We do DxDP. We always look at the bill and think "WOW!" but we have never actually calculated how much we spend in tips and drinks.

 

[MouseEarsJenny]

We took a trip with DH, me, DD12, DS9, my sister, BIL, DN(iece) 9, DN 3, DN 2, and my mom and dad last summer. So, total of 11 people. We stayed at Disney 8 days and seven nights. Our food totals were:

We spent $122.37 out of pocket, mostly on alcoholic drinks and appetizers.

We spent $456.10 on tips.

We spent $2190 on the dining plan. To see if we got a good deal, we kept receipts and discovered that if we hadn't been on the dining plan, we would have spent $3261.89 (not including the tips or things we bought out of pocket).

We ate at a lot of character meals because it was probably the only chance our nieces would have to do so - their parents are not at ALL interested in paying Disney prices for food and lodging, so we treated them so we could do it our way, lol. We didn't do any signature meals.

On our next trip, we'll probably spend $250 on food. We have the free quick service dining, so we've only booked two ADRs, and there are only four of us this time.