Oz Disney Budgets

[Willow25]

I was wondering if you all would be brave enough to share your Disney budgets with everyone. I am trying to plan a trip hopefully for next year. We normally spend 10-14 nights in DW and the rest of the time with my family in Oregon. I was just wondering for those of you who go for longer stretches what you budget for things like food?

 

[alicia1506]

we haven't been to WDW, but we did a 2 x week long vacation across america flying from point a to b to c to d and back again, including airfares, accomodation, tipping, insurance, food, souvenirs/spending money/shopping for clothes etc, ESTA applications, luggage fees, transfers and transport all for about $6700 each.

carlo and i are planning a 7 night disney cruise, plus a few extra nights before/after, plus 4 nights in chicago, plus 10 days at disneyland, including every single possible expense for $6500 each.

we budget $50.00 a day for food and we manage to do really well on that. obviously sometimes we blow it, and we're not total penny pinchers, but we eat mostly counter service things and take water bottles. plus, we tend to avoid trying for 3 x meals a day and instead eat with our mood & how hungry we're feeling... we find that while on vacation, breakfast is usually skipped, or just a piece of fruit or a muesli bar, then we eat around 11 and then around 5pm, with maybe a snack in between and something small before we go to bed.

not sure whether this compares favourably with other's budgets, but we find it works for us and we don't feel like we're over-spending. having said that, we usually take around $2000-3500 spending money to indulge if we want to

 

[deakam]

I used to budget $100.00 a person per night. Last year we upped it to $150.00 a person per night. I think that the way the cost of everything has gone up since our last trip we are going to raise it once again. Probably $200.00 a day per person.

Of course this is the base...the amount we plan to put away for the next trip. It could be less depending on the deals available at the time of our vacation.

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

I was wondering if you all would be brave enough to share your Disney budgets with everyone. I am trying to plan a trip hopefully for next year. We normally spend 10-14 nights in DW and the rest of the time with my family in Oregon. I was just wondering for those of you who go for longer stretches what you budget for things like food?

Hey Willow. It's so subjective isn't it, budget. Some of us spend more on some things and less on other's, it really just depends on the family and what you are interested in.

With that said, I am quite different from Alicia. She is obviously a great budgeter, especially to be able to pull those figures so quickly. I am a bit more fluid with my budget I would say. This is my vague budgeting that has worked for both trips. I plan for $1000 per day for the total amount of days we are away for and I generally come home with a few thousand plus at the end (this includes airfares, accom, food, activities, shopping, everything). So on our 2009 trip which was for around 4 weeks I think I budgeted $30k and we spent around $28k. I know that's alot of money by anyone's standards but it was our first trip OS and we did things in style and didn't restrict our spending much. We went to a Bruce Springsteen concert in New Jersey which with tickets, food, drinks and car with driver to and from event came to $1200 alone. We saw a Broadway show, a Cirque De Soleil show, a baseball game, we stayed in really nice hotels, had cars pick us up and take us to every airport, ate well and shopped up a storm.

Second trip to US in 2010 was only for around 19 days and I budgeted 20k and we spent $17k. We had free dining at WDW this time but we shopped alot alot alot more since we were awake to how awesome the pricing was for this trip. We went to a Broadway show, a Yankees game, WWE wrestling, had car transfers again, ate even better.

For my upcoming trip I'm still working on the around $1000 per day theory but because we may be taking MIL and absorbing some of her costs I'm going to hope and pray for free dining, try to look for some great accom deals when I can, and am doing alot of research of great restaurants that aren't over the top expensive. We love to eat out so I don't want to limit that, just find a way to make it a teeny bit less expensive. This trip will be a little over 30 days, perhaps 32-33 but I'm still only budgeting $30k. Our shopping will be extremely strategic this time, we will buy sneakers and clothing for the children that will last for a few years, same for both my DH and I.

Food budget per day - whew that is so hard. I would say somewhere around $160 if you averaged it out across the whole trip but some days it would be way way over that and others it would come in under but that's just my family. We love to eat out so much so that is part of the holiday for us.

We are fortunate now that we have made some changes to our long term plans to not have to tighten the purse strings too much but I definitely can see how easy it would be to bring it in alot cheaper than what we spend.

NYC for eg. you can get breakfasts so cheap. It is astounding. The meals are huge too so it would be easy to share 2-3 meals amongst a family of 4. Sticking with water instead of soft drink and alcohol would save minimum of $25 a day I'd say.

I'll stop now because I know so many others have much more experience on budgeting for trips than me but I wanted to chime in because I always find these discussions interesting and hope others will share also.

 

[Willow25]

Alicia, that budget is amazing!

Deakam, what is the size of your party? What does the $200 a day cover?

Ms shuttergirl, first can you adopt me? Actually we usually spend 20k and that is with half of our accommodation free staying with family. We built our dream house a year ago and need to cut back. Sometimes I wish we had stayed in a cheaper home!

We usually budget $100 a day for food.

 

[Sugarglider]

Budget?? Ummm ... I can't really ever claim to have gone down that route.

So everything for me starts with discount offers! Until a discount hits the table I am not even thinking of a trip. and then because 'it's a bargain' I eventually upgrade everything. (except that blackboard should read 1+1 = 57 for my budgeting!) So that skews having a budget.

I add the costs as I prepare and do a lot of option comparison and pricing. There gets a point where my intuition starts nagging me about "that's enough now"

I just did a 2 week trip in Nov and all up it cost me at least $10,000 - that included a $3000 PE airfare, 10 days hire car, accommodation $200 - $350 per night, a lot of tours and F&W events and shopping. I think of $50/day for food cause after that point I might as well buy a dining plan

 

[PrincessInOz]

I target the following:

Airfare: $1500 per person or less (Will stretch to $2000 if needed)

Food: $50 per person (for 3 of us, that's $150 per day). I have an allowance for about $300 on top of this for extra special dinners at top restaurants. I would say that gets us 2 special dinners, which we would do per fortnight.

Accommodation: max $300 per night, depending on the city. I do tend to get away with $100 - $150 per night for most locations except for NYC.

Car hire: as reasonable as possible. We have gotten away with $250 - $300 for a week and that includes the full insurance.


My food budget is the most stretchy part. I normally look for accommodation that includes breakfast. If breakfast isn't included, then we are likely to need more money on that day. If breakfast is included, we are likely to need less.

After that, it comes down to entertainment/attractions. How long is a piece of string? It really depends on where we go and what we do. But I do tend to work off about $50 per person per day for entertainment/attractions.

Food, accommodation and entertainment comes to about $500 - $600 for my family per day. That's a tick under $200 per person. That's way too much for some trips, particularly WDW where entertainment works out way less the more you stay.


Shopping is completely different. Everyone is different and will have a different budget for this. We tend to be strategic shoppers...both DH and I will cull our waredrobes and take note of the gaps before we go. We make a list and pretty much target stuff on our list, and any other value for money things. We also take a walk round DJs and Myers with our list before we go and take note of how much the equivalent item might cost here in Oz. That way, if we see something in the US, we'll be buying what we want and with the price comparison in mind.

And we don't just shop for clothes and books. We include camera equipment, small electricals and musical instruments in our list as well.

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

Budget?? Ummm ... I can't really ever claim to have gone down that route.

So everything for me starts with discount offers! Until a discount hits the table I am not even thinking of a trip. and then because 'it's a bargain' I eventually upgrade everything. (except that blackboard should read 1+1 = 57 for my budgeting!) So that skews having a budget.

I add the costs as I prepare and do a lot of option comparison and pricing. There gets a point where my intuition starts nagging me about "that's enough now"

I just did a 2 week trip in Nov and all up it cost me at least $10,000 - that included a $3000 PE airfare, 10 days hire car, accommodation $200 - $350 per night, a lot of tours and F&W events and shopping. I think of $50/day for food cause after that point I might as well buy a dining plan

Your $50 per day budget for one person makes sense because what I was saying was a $160 per day budget was for 4 and you are right, often it is more like $200 per day for 4.

$3k for PE airfare makes me feel nauseous but I've never experienced PE so I am not fully aware of the benefits . Probably best not to even try that because for the whole family that is simply not affordable for us. All plane seats except for First Class are uncomfortable in my eyes so I'd rather use that money for awesome experiences. This is another example of how diverse we all are because I know many of the aussie and nz disers like PE.

 

[alicia1506]

re my budget workings... there were only 3 of us for our first trip, and 2 of us for this trip... this means that accomodation costs are cheaper, we're willing to be squeezed into smaller rooms and we're able to share meals etc if they're too big. also means transfers etc are cheaper for us.

i totally get that others would budget approx $1000/day for their trip, especially if taking the whole family. i also want to confirm that we fly vaustralia and pay no more than about $1500 for economy seats (we paid $1300 for our last flights) and our internal flights were all bargain/budget arrangements with delta/southwest/jet blue and we paid no more than $150.00 pp for internal flights.

i'm a fan of spending money on shopping/experiences entertainment/food and so forth and really cutting back on accom/flights/transfers.

eg. we spent $179.00/night at the DI&S for our 2 room suite, $175.00/night for our rooms at the pod hotel in NYC, $249/night for the RPR in universal studios, but that was part of our harry potter package and included theme park entry & celebration events, and we paid $74.99/night in vegas. while we had 2 x rooms in DI&S, 2 x at the pod hotel in NYC and 2 x in vegas, we were still splitting costs between the three of us... so it worked out really, really well for us. having said that, if you have a large family and you're not splitting costs... then your $$ amts will seem huge in comparison to my little trips

 

[alicia1506]

also re PE -- i totally wish i could talk myself into doing this...

if you've read my TR from our 2011 trip, you will know that my trip from BNE-LAX was unmitigated hell. just... bad to the nth degree. and i got off that plane vowing to win big in vegas, buy a jet and fly home in style.

well. that didn't happen, but our trip back from LAX to BNE was totally fine. a little squishy, but nothing like the horror of the trip there. i totally get flying first or PE. i get it. i truly, truly do.

and when we looked at doing our next trip... i wanted to book PE. i really, really did. but i just can't seem to justify the gap between $1300 for economy and $ 3200 for PE per person... that's a lot of extra drinking and shopping and so forth for nicer seats.. nicer food.. more legroom.... yeah, see. i keep equivocating on this issue. but then i look at the bottom line for our trip, and i think... i can do economy.

maybe.



we'll see.

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

Alicia, looks like you guys made some really wise and frugal choices for your accom and I do agree about going cheaper for the basics so you have more to spend. You are clearly a woman I should follow for budgeting advice I think

 

[Kangarucci]

We flew over economy and back premium on Vaustralia. Once you have the taste for it it is hard to go back!

 

[ratty05]

You could always make some curried bumnut sangas to eat in the car!.......wink, wink, nudge, nudge......or share your cans of coke between 5 people before opening a new one (they stay colder that way).
P.S. Can I come?

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

You could always make some curried bumnut sangas to eat in the car!.......wink, wink, nudge, nudge......or share your cans of coke between 5 people before opening a new one (they stay colder that way).
P.S. Can I come?

This is obviously some kind of inside joke that is between you and who knows????

 

[Sugarglider]

I admit it is easier when I am just paying for one or two people - not a whole family.

One trip we flew over in economy - it was a "daytime" flight so we didn't have to try to sleep - made it a lot easier. But came back PE.

I somehow still manage to spend all of my available cash no matter what I do!

Maybe we could launch a competition - we all have to go to WDW and see who can get the best p.p. deal?! who's in?

 

[Willow25]

Oh ratty you found me! You can come but you have to sleep on the box spring. And you are in charge of taking back half of the tip left on the table and oh dint forget your big bag for the buffets.

 

[viaggiamo]

This thread is great, I am new here and planning a trip in October with our two children.
Taking notes!
C

 

[ashmarie06]

Coming from someone who lives in the US, For our upcoming trip for 5 days/6 nights dbf and I budgeted 1500 for the 2 of us for park tickets, dining plan and hotel. Hopefully we get the dining plan free which would bring our grand total to about 1200 for our trip. or 1543 if it isnt. So barely over budget. For travel we are renting a car and with gas our budget is 400.00. For souveniors and OOP things we are budgeting another 400.00 a person. so our total trip budget is 2700! Ballin on a budget!

 

[alicia1506]

we definitely like to splurge on indulgences while we're travelling...

ms shuttergirl.. i would love to do a trip like yours with lots of awesome entertainment, eating out at various table service restaurants and so on. that's my ideal vacation and the one i will do for my solo trip, which i'm planning hopefully next year.. my issue is that my fellow travellers wanted to always be moving on to the next thing, not stopping and smelling the roses.

having said that, my trips were only like... 14-16 days long... so if you think about it... a budget of $6700 per person x 2 = $13400/16 days = $835.70per day for the trip, which isn't that far off your budget either...

we also take extra money for 'indulgent' meals in nice restaurants, or a huge blowout on room service or drinks or going out for entertainment that we didn't plan but decide to do along the way.

 

[Aust]

We're going to DL, not WDW, and for 2 weeks, and going off my nerdy planning spreadsheet we are budgetting a total of $4,600 per person (2 adults, 3 kids) - $329 per person per day approx.

I have allowed $200/day total for food - based on prices on allears.net and a bit extra, plus taking into account we are staying on concierge level at PPH so will have breakfast and most snacks covered. It also doesn't take into account my 10% AP discount.

I've already paid for the airfares and paid too much,which I knew at the time but I couldn't wait any longer!

I booked the room at 10% AP discount rate but am hoping for further discounts closer to the time which will be a bonus.

Spending money is a bit of a guess - who knows??!! I plucked a number out of the air but it will depend how much we have saved by the time we go and what we actually want to buy.

The budget also includes extras like passport for youngest child, my AP, 14 day passes for the other 4, ESTA, Halloween party, Fantasmic dessert seating, travel insurance, transfers, car hire for a couple of days, and day trips to Knotts Berry Farm, LA and down the coast.