how much too take for 3 weeks???

[a jay]

This might be a little bit cheeky, but how much spending money does anyone take for a 3 week holiday. I'm not sure how much to budget for each day? There are 3 of us (2 adults and 1 child of 10). To give you an idea we don't want to count every penny but at the moment we are not in the position to blow caution to the wind, either(husband has been dropped to a 4 day week!!!) With the exchange rate lower than last year i don't know if i should pull some savings out to boost our spending power. i don't want to take out any furthur credit cards. Any advice will be great.

 

[bombhead444]

Me an DW regulary do three weeks and allow ourselves a $100 a day budget for food and drink etc this doesn't include shopping!!!, but its just us two and you have a 10 year old which will probably need feeding every few hours.
The $100 we do will cover parking in the park, lunch, a few drinks and an ordinary dinner in the evening but as i say it all depends on your eating and drinking habits.

 

[Claire L]

I would say $125 a day for food, drinks and small items but add extra for shopping and a few alcoholic drinks, if you plan on drinking.

Claire

 

[wayneg]

Totally depends on where you eat.
We are family of 3, if you skip breakfast then have lunch in park and eve meal you can spend as little as $50, have 3 meals a day at expensive places and it could be $500 a day. There are places for all budgets.
In August we have free DDP and then a Disney cruise so all our food incl, apart form tips and gas not expecting to spend much, maybe $200 on trainers and bits.
We average about $80/day doing lunch in park offsite eve meal, but I hardly have an offsite meal without a discount or buy one get one free voucher.

 

[pigby]

Me an DW regulary do three weeks and allow ourselves a $100 a day budget for food and drink etc this doesn't include shopping!!!, but its just us two and you have a 10 year old which will probably need feeding every few hours.
The $100 we do will cover parking in the park, lunch, a few drinks and an ordinary dinner in the evening but as i say it all depends on your eating and drinking habits.

We always used to take $100 a day out for the three of us (2 adults and one child) but have found that on more recent trips we have needed to budget more than this. Then again we have always stayed on site and food is more expensive - we have usually gone for 1 CS meal plus 1 TS plus snacks plus a little bit for general 'spends' during the day (not major shopping). The DDP does work out a bit cheaper - if you are planning a similar sort of schedule, I would agree with the $125 per day but I would carry a credit card just in case - or if you are staying on-site,charge any purchases back to your room. If you are staying off site, I suppose you can get away with less than this per day.

 

[1andrea]

We usually take £3000 for 3 weeks but with the exchange rate lower we will need a bit more for this trip.

That usually covers most meals onsite and a couple if taxis and a little bit of theme park shopping and a few pins.

I then take cards for the Mall and Outlet Shopping, we sometimes use a bit of our spending money if there is any left over but there not often is!

 

[Pegasus928]

To me the answer depends on what you intend to do when you get there. If all the money you need is for food then the answers above will cover it. If you are planning trips to the mall, buying gifts for the folks back home, buying souvenirs or ride photos, offsite activites (Skycoaster at Old Town, Skyventure, Boggy Creek - that sort of thing). Have you rented a car, will you need to hire any cabs, do you plan on taking all of your toiletries with you or are you going to get them from Walmart on arrival.
The list of variables is extensive and will have a huge bearing on what you need to take.
Generally we take about $3000 with us when we go - then just use CC or the hole in the wall if (sorry - when) we get through that.

 

[madmumof2]

It does depends on a lot of things. Where you want to eat, what activities you have planned...etc

We're staying onsite and have a lot of ADR's planned so food will cost a lot, but we won't be doing much shopping I don't think, although I'm not sure lol. I'm planning on taking $3000 minimum for 16 days worth of spending, but am aiming on $4000 if I can.

 

[pixiepower04]

This is a tricky one to answer as there are many variations.

There are 4 of us (2 adults, dd10 & ds8) and we take £1000 for each week so for the last 2 holidays we've had £3000 ($6000), this is purely spending money (including food).

In 2004 we had to pay for food and I remember eating alot of junk but we came home with alot of souvenirs, last year we had free dining so we spent £1000 of our £3000 just on touristy stuff like Cirque du Soleil, Deep Shark Dive, Hot Air Baloon Ride, NFL game etc but we came home with very litle in the souvenir stakes and we felt very sad, we were glad to have done the excursions etc but felt we didn't have much to show for our almost 4 weeks there.

Next year we'll still take $6000 but are hoping to get free dining again and we will do one or two touristy things but hope to come home with alot more souvenirs

 

[Beep]

We've never budgeted an amount per day before, but last time we took £2500 for 3 weeks and bought some back with us. We did put a bit on CC's but not that much.

I see the 3 weeks that we are away as enforced saving from our salaries so the money that we don't spend in the UK for that time goes to pay the CC's.

This time round we are very conscious of budgets as we are getting married at Disney. At least 3 days of the trip have been accounted for in the wedding budget and we are looking at taking around £2500 again so with the exchange rate difference (and the 3 days accounted for) we figure this will work out around the same amount that we had in 2007.

We are 2 adults and we ate in a few expensive restaurants last trip. This trip we have taken those into account and budgeted outside of our £2500 for them.

 

[Lizzybear]

I tend to be a bit spendy in the US, though I prefer to let my cards take the worst of it than take a lot of cash or TCs. Last year we budgeted $100 a day for food and fuel (2 adults) This was California which is a bit pricier foodwise than Orlando but some days we did have money left so it was just added onto the next day's budget. We used credit cards for shopping. This year we have breakfast included at the hotels for 10 nights and the dining plan for our Disney week so that's quite a lot of food already covered but we'll probably budget the same amount per day and use any leftover for shopping.