Onsite vs. Offsite food costs

[erbeaman]

Trying to decide if I want to stick with my original plan and do a split stay (half offsite, half in a value), or if we want to stay onsite for the whole trip with the new late summer discount. With the discount, lodging prices will be the same, and we won't have to rent a car. My question is, will having to eat on property exclusively totally blow our budget? We will have YES tix, so no dining plan. We will probably do snacks for breakfast (muffins, croissants..) and mostly CS meals (maybe 3-4 TS meals). Does anyone have a comparison of what they spent on food off site versus on site?

 

[mrsklamc]

If I were in your shoes, the deciding factor would be whether or not I was willing to cook in your offsite lodging.

 

[hsmamato2]

well, I know what I would choose, I have no interest in offsite at WDW myself the food costs as you put it, are not too prohibitive- simply put, many cs meals are pretty ok (search allears for menus) and not too expensive, especially if you choose carefully,for instance, off site at sweet tomatoes costs 50-60 for 4 of us, by the time we paid for drinks,etc.
Sizzler looks cheap, but by the time you get past the cashier, it's still $$$-
in contrast, sunshine seasons in Epcot can feed my fam of 4 for dinner for around 50.00,if that (we share a drink) or Earl of Sandwich at DTD costs about 33.00 for a satisfying meal for 4 of us. ( I love the blt and tomato soup for dinner,my DH can't get enough of the earl gray tea/lemonade drink)
I also love walking Epcot,and each of us get the cs stuff we like to eat...it is so fun,and usually around 10.00 per person around dinnertime....
So...having done what you're planning,I vote for all onsite.

 

[mikehn]

Depends on how long your total stay is. Splitting a 7 day stay would not be in the cards for me. Whatever savings (if any) would not negate the trouble of packing, unpacking, checking in, checking out.

 

[willowsnn3]

We always stay onsite except for a couple times we were able to go earlier so stayed offsite for one night. We live close enough we do a lot of short trips instead of just one long trip, so sometimes we do the dining plan, sometimes not.
We have found that eating off property can be just expensive as the quick service options at the resort or parks.
Keep in mind there is no "dollar menu" at McDonald's near the park, lol. And their value meals are more than at home too. We have ate a lot from the Hess station too & our kids love CiCi's pizza (look at travel centers for the buy 1 buffet/2drinks get one free buffet coupon) so we usually do that once during the trip when not on the dining plan.

 

[Haley]

I would just stay onsite the whole time. I don't think the CS prices at WDW are bad at all. I mean here at home you can easily spend $7 on a meal at Subway or McDonalds, which isn't much different than at WDW. Disney's portions are usually big, too, so you can split meals to save $$.

 

[Marionnette]

Trying to decide if I want to stick with my original plan and do a split stay (half offsite, half in a value), or if we want to stay onsite for the whole trip with the new late summer discount. With the discount, lodging prices will be the same, and we won't have to rent a car. My question is, will having to eat on property exclusively totally blow our budget? We will have YES tix, so no dining plan. We will probably do snacks for breakfast (muffins, croissants..) and mostly CS meals (maybe 3-4 TS meals). Does anyone have a comparison of what they spent on food off site versus on site?

I think that whatever you save by not renting a car and paying for parking will certainly offset any increase in the price of food you might see by having to eat all of your meals in Disney.

 

[DisneyEater]

Bring drinks to the park and your costs for CS meals will go down drastically. We always bring our own water and that saves bit $, except at epcot where we are not drinking water.

Also, check out the menus ahead of time. You would be suprised how cheap some of the prices can be for sandwiches in the bakery at France vs. say the Mexico CS. Waffle sandwiches at Sleepy Hallow in the MK are also a great deal.

 

[mrsklamc]

I missed the split stay part. I wouldn't bother splitting a stay. A whole week, IF you cook at a house/condo, you can offset the cost of renting a car and parking. But eating out offsite for a few days is not going to be worth it. If you want a cheaper meal onsite, just have pizza delivered.

 

[luvsmickeymouse]

I would stay onsite for the entire trip and not rent a car.

 

[tosha27]

I don't have a comparison per say, but if your ONLY reason for doing a split stay and renting a car is just to save on food then it seems to me that you would be defeating the whole purpose. I assume you would have to pay for parking on your off site days unless the hotel has a shuttle. If you eliminate your car rental then you will eliminate your gas costs as well.
You can find the prices of everything on each menu - I can't remember the website, but I am sure someone knows. I added everything up based on what I thought my family would order and I don't see any benefits of eating offsite when comparing the quick service places to fast food places off site. You need to consider your time as well and for me the time it takes to eat offsite just would not be worth it, as well as the hassle of transferring hotels.
Now, the TS meals can be quite expensive, so that is something that you will have to consider.
For me, I'd rather give up all of my TS meals and stay on site.
I hope you have a great trip!

 

[BubMunkeyBles]

I don't think the food differences are that much unless you plan on eating real fast food for most your meals off site. With the car rental savings it's probably about the same. I'd stay on site.

 

[Claire&TheBoys]

I really don't think you would save much by splitting your stay once you factor in cost of the rental car, parking fees and gas. And I don't think Disney's CS meals are that far out of line with fast-food places off-site. It's about $25 for my family of 4 to go to Chick-Fil-A here at home; my 9-yr-old has graduated to adult meals so that's for 3 adult meals and 1 kids' meal. At Disney a CS meal for the 4 of us runs about $35 and we could make it less by sharing a drink or fries. Spend a little money on getting some water delivered, maybe some juice boxes and take some powdered drink mix to add to the water instead of buying sodas for every meal. I really think the cost difference would be minimal, if anything, to splitting your stay.

 

[diamondpixienc]

As someone has already mentioned. Staying on site gives the Disney transportation so the money you would save there would mean more towards your food budget. So I would go with on site.

 

[eliza61]

Trying to decide if I want to stick with my original plan and do a split stay (half offsite, half in a value), or if we want to stay onsite for the whole trip with the new late summer discount. With the discount, lodging prices will be the same, and we won't have to rent a car. My question is, will having to eat on property exclusively totally blow our budget? We will have YES tix, so no dining plan. We will probably do snacks for breakfast (muffins, croissants..) and mostly CS meals (maybe 3-4 TS meals). Does anyone have a comparison of what they spent on food off site versus on site?

If u plan on doing cs I think you wont blow ur budget.
We tend to eat at least one ts meal a day and always eat better and less expensive offsite. I'll try to find my last trip expense sheet. Let me say my family consist of 3 men. There are no menus we can split so tricks like that don't work for us

 

[manning]

Also compare room rates, Disney vs offsite.

 

[snarlingcoyote]

DH and I were thinking about a short trip to Disney this fall and found that once we'd figured in the cost of a rental car vs. no rental car, it was actually cheaper for us to rent the lowest end DVC studio.

If we took a long trip and really, really needed to economize AND had time to drive down, it would work out cheaper to go off-property. The rental car is our deal breaker.

Of course, we're two adults. YMMV.

 

[At World's End]

I posted our meal food costs for an offsite trip in Jan. 2011. I did not cook at all offsite. We ate lots of TS meals onsite, and ate quick meals offsite. We stay for 10 days, and I prefer offsite for that long of a trip mainly for the space, but also because my kids would only eat chicken nuggets off the kids menus (at the time). That would get real old after 10 days. As I found in my analysis for onsite vs. offsite, my costs ended up being about the same as staying at a moderate with free dining.

Personally, I would not do a split stay for a week trip. It just seems like too much of a hassle.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2651035