How much do you typically spend in 1 day at Disney?

[Mom to Will and Finn]

This argument (or post) goes around and around. Disney is not cheap and when on vacation we want to eat well. WDW is particularly expensive for anything that is not counter service or fast food.

What can you eat in a cramped room for breakfast that does not have you hungry later? Does no one drink? All teatotallers on this board?

Stay offsite where breakfast is included or you have a full kitchen and you can keep prices down. Take lunch to the park and splurge on dinner.

We have bagels and cream cheese, cereal, poptarts, fruit, etc in our room and we're never hungry until lunch time.

We do drink alcohol on occassion, but it's easy to pass it by. I don't think I had one drink last time we went. Dh may have had a beer, but I don't think so. For us, it's not important or especially enjoyable. Like I said, though, we do splurge on souvenirs.

I absolutely do not recommend staying off site. We kept prices down just fine staying on site. In fact, we spent a lot less than we thought we would. We're not used to eating out a lot, so even (most of) the counter service meals were a treat for us.

 

[jadejazzkayla]

$135. a day for 2 adults, 1 teenager and 1 8yr old. snacks, lunch, dinner and spending money. 5 days this past november. we didn't have a "budget". that is just what we spent.

 

[Forevryoung]

I was budgeting $250 for the week (cash) and then I have a cc which I dont mind using for a bigger souvenier. Then again, I wont be paying for breakfast and most dinners. Should I increase that to $300 to be safe?

 

[calie_j]

I went over our food budget and our daily budget for food including tax & tip is $190. Some days are less (low of 149), some are more (high of 247). We plan to eat good since this is a trip in a lifetime. That would leave us $70 for souveniers on a 200/day budget. We have a family of 4 with a 14yr old we have to pay adult price for at buffets/character meals. I could do it alot cheaper then this if I needed to. We don't need alot of souveniers so I'll probably just do a weekly budget of $100/person and keep that out of the daily budget.

Calie

 

[amwhitaker]

The easiest way to evaluate how much you might spend is to go and look at the menus at the All Ears website and get an idea of the dollar amount on meals.

 

[tracy51]

Our trip will be for 8 days and right now I have a bit over $800 as our food budget (2 adults & 11 yr old). The first and last days are travel days so its not really 8 full days we need to eat on-site. I put our souvenirs in a separate budget - along with snacks. That right now is about $500 for the trip but this is the 'flexible' area of the budget. We can do less sovenirs & snacks or do more depending on how much extra money we save.

As someone pointed out, it really depends on how you want to eat while you're there? Do you consider dining as a big part of your vacation experience? Or do you just want to get some food in you? For us, eating some place nice every day is not our priority. For others it might be. It's time consuming but the best thing to do is spend some time looking at the menus on allearsnet.com. Figure out roughly how many sit down meals you want to do and how many counter service meals. This will also give you an idea of what PS's you need to make. Once you get an idea what the menus are like and the price ranges you'll have a better idea what you'll typically spend eating. I also budget a bit over for every meal to be safe.

 

[laura001]

We are a family of 5 and budget $200.00/ day and eat our breakfast in the room, bring some snacks with us and our water for the day. We always eat one big sit down meal, the other meal being counter service or perhaps pizza in our room later etc. Budgeting this way always leaves us enough to do one night at hoop dee doo or the like which for 5 runs us almost 300...
Hope this helps

 

[emmalgin]

does no one drink or go out (ie. Pleasure Island)? Our park days 2 weeks ago (March 21, 23) included breakfast at our timeshare and I made subs and brought drinks. At the park we bought some ice cream.

I also think Disney frowns on food in the room (why do you think there are no fridges) and yes bringing to park as I did. Know people do bring but that is not what I posted.

Offsite dinners were cheap as we had brother & sister in-law and their younger kids. But we made margarita's and drinks at our timeshare. However if I wasn't such a cheapskate and we did any character meals or something like Hoop-de-doo (don't get me started) at $50/person the price skyrockets.

Food & sometimes drink (why are All Inclusives so popular) to me is a huge part of the vacation experience. Particularly bad sweet tooth.

 

[laura001]

Some of the rooms do have a fridge. We are staying in POR and we will have a fridge in our room. We bring our own drinks and or alcohol drinks, but that doesn't mean that we don't still buy some in the parks or have a glass of wine etc with dinner. Usually my hubby and I go out one night for dinner by ourselves and then to Pleasure Island...just be careful (speaking from experience) not to have too many marguerita's and the shooters that they sell on the the street! Pleasure Island is a blast!
Oh, one more thing....Hoop dee doo is expensive but was definately one of the highlights of our last trip and we hope we can do it again in a couple of weeks when we go.

 

[EthansMom]

does no one drink or go out (ie. Pleasure Island)? Our park days 2 weeks ago (March 21, 23) included breakfast at our timeshare and I made subs and brought drinks. At the park we bought some ice cream.

I also think Disney frowns on food in the room (why do you think there are no fridges) and yes bringing to park as I did. Know people do bring but that is not what I posted.

Offsite dinners were cheap as we had brother & sister in-law and their younger kids. But we made margarita's and drinks at our timeshare. However if I wasn't such a cheapskate and we did any character meals or something like Hoop-de-doo (don't get me started) at $50/person the price skyrockets.

Food & sometimes drink (why are All Inclusives so popular) to me is a huge part of the vacation experience. Particularly bad sweet tooth.

We love to eat and drink at WDW. We eat a nice breakfast at the hotel or pick up something from Main Street Bakery, usually have a decent sit-down lunch, and will do character meals for a couple of dinners. Using the 20% discount from DDE, we'll run about $125 per day for two adults and one child (plus the baby who just eats off our plates), including the occasional snack.

$125/day includes the occasional beer for DH, dessert (usually we share a large dessert), etc. We don't eat breakfast in the room, but we do make DH his Starbucks coffee every morning and do have Soy milk for the kids. WDW moderates do include coffeemakers and refridgerators now.

We've stayed offsite and eaten offsite. It would take us longer to drive to/from an off-site restaurant than it was worth. Some people are off-site folks and some are on-site folks. We're on-site folks.

Regarding the OP's original question, in addition to the $125/day to feed 2 adults and one child, I also budget $100/adult and $50/child for souvenirs (usually 1 t-shirt/sweatshirt per person and 1 toy per child).