NonDisney days food budget??

[marius97]

I'm too lazy to do the math. For nonpark days in a rental home, what do you budget for food per day? We hit the parks for a day or two, but the rest of the time we are at our rental home in Daytona. I've come up with a budget for doing things, but am struggling with coming up with a food budget. We'll eat mostly at the house with some family restaurant days. Has anyone come up with a seasonable per day budget?

 

[dougsmom98]

That is so hard to predict because every family has different eating habits. We have similar vacations to you and only go to the parks 2-3 days and hang out at the villa. I buy a couple boxes of the kind of pancake mix that you just add water to, syrup, coffee, milk, juice, a couple dozen eggs, 2-3 six packs of bagels, cream cheese, butter, and fresh strawberries. That takes care of breakfast for the week. Maybe that costs $35-$40. We will often just snack around lunch time since we had such a hearty breakfast. Sometimes we just have hot dogs or cold cuts and chips if we need real food that costs $20-25 for the week tops. For dinner we almost always get take out or we go out. If we go out to eat, I figure $15-$20 per person including tax, tip and drinks. We eat at places like Golden Corral and this year we are trying Mannys Chophouse. If it is a fast food type place, I figure $10/person and it hardly ever comes to that. We do pizza one night and that is usually $30. We do Chinese one night at the might come to $45. We went with $800 cash last year for 8 days including our travel days and we come home with a couple hundred dollars - that money included the $35 we let each kid spend on souvenires. We paid cash for everything and we weren't trying to save money - everyone got their own meals. We did only do counter service at the parks. I think you will have to do the math for your own family though since you know what they eat.