How much money...

[LSDisney]

How much money can a family of four expect to spend on breakfast,lunch, and dinner during an 8-day time period?

Please help.
THANK YOU!

 

[DonnaSue]

The menus are listed on www.allearsnet.com with prices, so that should give you some idea of what you might like to eat and what it would cost.

Donna

 

[stemikger]

Last year the three of us. Me my DW and DD. Spent around $125 a day. We would eat counter service for breakfast and lunch and have a nice dinner at a sit down restaurant. Some days we would skip lunch and just get a small snack. That also included my beer budget at the pool side bar in our hotel for me and my wife.

You can eat as expensive as you want or as cheap, it really depends on if you are going to eat all meals at counter service or sit down restaurants. The Birnbaum book has good descriptions of the restaurants and how expensive each one is. $ is cheap and $$$ or $$$$ is expensive.

Good Luck.

Hope this was helpful.

 

[JennaTX]

we are a family of 4 with 2 children ages 5 and 3, we budgeted about $100 per day, some days were over when we had character meals, some days were under with eating breakfast in the room, and my favorite DIS trick of ordering the double cheeseburger with an extra bun for less than a dollar that DH and I shared.

 

[wdwgoofeeee]

What we have done on our last few trips is to eat a large breakfast. We then either snack or have a light lunch. Then we end up with a big dinner. Another option is to have a late lunch. Many of the restaurants lunch menus are similar to their dinner menus but the prices are ususally lower for lunch.
Another option is to go to the many buffets available.

 

[lillygator]

depends on what your eating style is....we are a family of four but DD's are 2 1/2 and 5 months so no real $$ there but we always have a TS for dinner and that runs us $100+, breakfast was around $25 and lunches anywhere from $20-$60....

 

[crisi]

As with others, it will really depend on you....disneysteve manages to feed his family on less than $20 per person per day - IIRC, lots of offsite meals, lots of cooking in their condo, some sharing, no alcohol. We spend $20 a day in umbrella drinks watching the kids in the pool. Some families budget carefully, choosing one snack and sharing. Others get four Dole Whips, throw away most of them, and are picking up four funnel cakes when they hit Liberty Square. Some people will order a $100 bottle of wine with their four course dinner, others will split a double burger with an extra bun at Peco's Bills. Some people skip a character meal in favor of visiting characters for free in the parks (or skipping the character experience altogether), other people schedule four or five character meals in an eight day trip at $100+ a pop for a family of four.

There are two ways to go about this. One is to decide what you want to eat (check out the menus on allearsnet), figure out what it will cost you, and cut back from there as necessary. The other is to figure out how much you can spend, then plan your meals around that. If your budget is tight, hop over to the budget board for hints to stretch it.

hint one, Disney doesn't care if you bring in your own bottle of Diet Pepsi and a few granola bars or whatever.

hint two, most sit down restaurants are cheaper for lunch. The portions are sometimes (not always) smaller - and the menus are sometimes different.

 

[Ready to go in Ok]

Ok, this is probably overkill, but I am trying to decide between the dining plan and paying as we go. Anyone know the tax?

 

[Sharon Esch]

Family of 4 (DD6 & DS4), we only eat 2 meals a day and a snack. Eat something small at the hotel for breakfast (items we brought) and then we eat on "off-hours". It helps when you didn't have a PS. Spent $100 per day (that includes character meals). Have a grea trip!!!

 

[Avalanche]

Okay this is just my personal experience. I usually plan our meals, which will vary from day to day how much we eat. (one night pizza, one night character meal, one night counter service) No matter how well I plan it we usually end up spending about $300 more on food then I plan.

 

[luv2nascar]

We would spend between $125-$150 a day depending including snacks.
so for 8 days that would be $1,000 - $1,200 ouch.
Meal plan is cheaper for us.

 

[mickeysaver]

As an adult couple with no kids, I usually just budget for $100/day for the entire length of our trip....this usually includes a couple of days with my honey's family in FL before we get to WDW. This time, we are also allowing an extra $100 in the budget because we are planning to indulge a little by doing the Afternoon Tea, Chef Mickey's, and going to Kona just for coffee several mornings. We usually have money left over that we use on our last day to buy something special for ourselves. Maggie

 

[DisneyGirl83]

It's just me and my dbf so I usually budget about $130 a day for the both of us. We like to eat at a lot of nicer sit down restaurants so that's on the high end.

 

[packy]

For a family of four we budget $125 a day which includes a sit down dinner and lunch and the rest counter service.

 

[Cookie Princess]

We plan about $125 per day for a family of three and usually return with a little money. However, I LIKE MY SNACKS! The food aspect of WDW is as exciting to me as the attractions. You certainly could go cheaper if you wanted to.

 

[ChrisLei]

Reading all thse post make me so glad that we opted for teh dining plan! Seems the average is $100-125 a day for a family of four. We are spending $80 a day on the dining plan. Now dont know if we will be able to eat all that food! LOL