Question for those of you who eat meals in the room

[Ned Land]

My family stayed at VWL last year and thought we would save money by buying groceries for breakfasts and lunch. Breakfast is easy. We have cereal in milk every day and do this even if we stay in one of the resorts. For dinner, we planned on eating at a nice restaurant on property each night.

Lunch was more of a challenge. We bought good bread and a variety of lunch meat and cheese. We also bought shrimp to have as an appetizer and some good desserts. On our first day, we were excited to leave the parks and dig in to our fresh food and laugh at everyone else who was paying a fortune for mediocre burgers and fries. However, each day thereafter, we found ourselves much less excited about what we had in the room. By day 4, the shrimp was almost unrecognizable, and we were really sick of beat-up looking ham and swiss. We absolutely did not want to have to drive off property to do more shopping in the middle of our trip, and we ended up eating in the parks for our last couple of days.

What do you do? How do you stay excited about food in the villa on day 7 or day 10 with all the good smells in the parks? Do you cook more extravagant meals? Do you make two trips to a grocery store?

-NL

 

[El&Asmom]

I am not much of a lunch person when making it myself. I agree, cold cut sandwhiches don't do much for me. We had lunch fixings for the kids, but actually preferred to eat out for lunch on property at a TS place, and then snacked at the room at night. If we were hungrier we would make an actual diner in the room.
We have done easy stuff that doesn't take a lot of items to make. We have done tacos, spagetti with meat sauce, burgers, and stuff like that. If it's cooked I look forward to it more than something like cold lunch meat sandwhiches.
Also, since we have two little ones, some of the meals in the villa were are best since there were days that the thought of taking the kids to a restaurant would have been much more work than it would have been worth. They are good, but three meals out a day is more than most adults have patience for.

 

[Chuck S]

We usually have a TS lunch in the parks, and have cold cuts or salads in the room for dinner. That way, our park day isn't broken up in the middle of the day. We are careful NOT to "overbuy" on the light dinner items, that way if we don't want to return to the room at dinner time, or get hungry i nthe parks, we grab a CS meal. We do have cereal and fruit in th room for breakfast most days, but break it up with occasional TS breakfasts, too.

By varying some during the week, you don't get as bored having meals in the room most nights.

 

[photobob]

We bought a few boxes of pasta salad that has spices and all included and ate that a couple of times. Easy to make and taste good. We have ham and cheese for sandwiches as well as a few cans of pringles. We take lots of snack foods and drinks. We do TS meals at lunch usually so supper is either a cs grab or in room fixins.

 

[marvali]

My family stayed at VWL last year and thought we would save money by buying groceries for breakfasts and lunch. Breakfast is easy. We have cereal in milk every day and do this even if we stay in one of the resorts. For dinner, we planned on eating at a nice restaurant on property each night.

Lunch was more of a challenge. We bought good bread and a variety of lunch meat and cheese. We also bought shrimp to have as an appetizer and some good desserts. On our first day, we were excited to leave the parks and dig in to our fresh food and laugh at everyone else who was paying a fortune for mediocre burgers and fries. However, each day thereafter, we found ourselves much less excited about what we had in the room. By day 4, the shrimp was almost unrecognizable, and we were really sick of beat-up looking ham and swiss. We absolutely did not want to have to drive off property to do more shopping in the middle of our trip, and we ended up eating in the parks for our last couple of days.

What do you do? How do you stay excited about food in the villa on day 7 or day 10 with all the good smells in the parks? Do you cook more extravagant meals? Do you make two trips to a grocery store?

-NL

Fresh fruit is more filling and keeps in-room meals from getting boring. Bananas, grapes and cantaloupe are great, and you can cut up the cantaloupe beforehand to save time. Depending on the time of year, you can also get a lot out of watermelon, and these can also serve as something to spice up breakfast. We also change things up with CS meals at times to keep it from getting monotonous. If you take a crock pot with you on the trip (if you drive) then there are a lot of those crock pot meals you can put on and leave until you return and want to eat. You can also slow cook spaghetti sauce that way too.

 

[Brian Noble]

We generally only have breakfast in the room each day---we have at least a 1BR, so that means scrambled eggs, bacon, toaster waffles, fruit, etc.

Lunch is almost always in the parks. Dinner is usually out, but every once in a while we'll pop in a frozen pizza in the oven or get something delivered if we'd rather just take the night off.

 

[goofydad99]

I don't know if you drive, but we did some pretrip cooking. I know it sounds awful, but I cooked a couple meals and froze them before we left. When we left home I put the frozen meals inside the cooler and off we went. Goofydad knows I get grumpy making a lot of meals. This was the best thing for use. We also had the sandwiches etc. as well. It didn't make for too bad of a trip. We still ate out quite a few meals. We were there for 12 days.

 

[katied]

We ate all but 1 breakfast and dinner in the room last trip. We at all lunches in the park. DSister and DBIL actually planned our menu (and cooked)! My job was cleaning up. We had groceries delivered (for 3 adults and 2 toddlers for 8 days, total cost was just over $200 - organic milk and yogurt for the toddlers was about $30 alone)/ The meat/fish we were not using the first couple of nights was frozen for later in the week. The fruits & veggies stayed fine - things that would go bad quickly we ate earlier in the week. Our menu was:

1st night - eat out
2nd night - pasta (canned sauce with ground meat added)
3rd night - chicken bake (with rice, beans, veggies & cheese)
4th night - chips & Guac, tacos (beef) and cheese quesidellas
5th night - salmon, spinach, rice
6th night - left overs
7th night - pasta with sauted chicken
8th night - breakfast for dinner (french toast & omlettes)

Cooking each meal - prep to table, generally took less than 30 min - sometimes only about 15 - 20 min.

We had lots of fresh fruit too - bananas, melon, oranges, apples, grapes, strawberries. Breakfast items included cereal, fruit, toast, yogurt, eggs, pancakes.

Overall, we ate very well on the trip, and for us, eating in with toddlers was much easier than eating out all the time.

 

[dopeygirl76]

We did a mixture of lunch/ brunch and dinners in the parks. We ate cereal or toast everyday for breakfast. We did two CS lunch, one character breakfast (late that was really lunch for us) and two TS dinners during our 6 night trip. I made meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans for the first night. We had chicken and noodles (one of those Lipton packets) another night and tacos for the last dinner in. We had leftovers for dinner one night and the rest was for lunch, including some lunch meat - I did not buy alot of lunch meat since DH takes that frequently at work so I wanted a little change!! I also took a packet of Ramen noodles because DH and DD4 love them!!!!

 

[dianeschlicht]

We usually do breakfast in the room and one sit down a day. We like to do our sit down midday around 12-3 and then do a light supper in the room. Many times we don't ever really get to the supper, but instead have an ice cream or a piece of fruit after getting back to the room.

If we are planning an evening sit down dinner, we will have a bigger breakfast in the room and have a more substantial snack in the middle of the day.

When we do cook real meals in the villa, it is often much the same as we would have at home. We have done pasta dishes, ham and roast in the oven that lasts for a few days of light meals afterward too. A favorite light meal of ours in the villa is baked potato bar. We do baked potatos and have all the fixings ready like veggies, cheese, sour cream, bacon etc, and have a quick meal of that.

 

[moredisneyplease]

I'm very much on par with KATIED above. For our recent 8 days I meal planned everything, used one luggage for dry groceries that I had bought in advanced on sale and then had the perishables (milk, eggs, lunch meat, bread, etc) delivered. Looking at a total of 24 meals we only ate out 3 of those.....all breakfasts in except for one character breakfast.....all lunches packed except for one quick service at Epcot.......all dinners cooked in (we have little kids so we dont stay out late) except for one at DTD.

I personally LOVE the breakfasts in because 1) it costs waayyy less for 5 of us to eat and 2) we arent waiting on everyone to wake up and get ready in order for us to eat

I love the packed lunches because 1) again the cost and 2) we never really had to stop and eat but instead nibbled on sandwiches and fruits while in line or while walking to the next ride

Dinners in are just OK to me....I'd rather not have to do serious cooking on vacation but it saved us a lot of money

 

[bszoo]

We usually stay in a studio and I do a lot of cooking in the room. We're driving so it makes things a little easier. I always bring a George Foreman grill to cook the meat. I freeze serving size portions of meat - some marinated, some plain. We buy salad, fruit and some veggies. We use leftover grilled meat on the salad to make a quick, easy meal.

 

[SLM]

Some great ideas! Since we get to the parks early we leave by lunchtime. If we don't have leftovers from the night before (eating out) we tend to eat what my daughter used to call "party food". Cubes of cheese, grapes, hummus, crackers, a premade dip like spinach/artichoke that can be warmed in the microwave, grape tomatoes. This is all easy stuff to go in a cooler and take to the pool. Restaurants with tired, picky toddlers is no fun for anyone-I remember those days! One of my tips to young parents is feed them dinner in the room things you know they like and when you get to the restaurant ask that they get a dish of ice cream when your dinner comes. This worked 99.9% of the time for us!

 

[Cinderelli]

We always have breakfast in our villa, then are usually still starved by 11 or 12, so have to have lunch in the park. Back to our villa by 2 for downtime and then have dinner in our villa around 5ish. Back to the parks in the evening for more fun and the best part...........dessert! It works out better because lunch is less expensive to eat lunch in the park than dinner. And, we are usually hungry again later in the evening since we've had dinner around 5......great time to try new snacks and desserts. We do usually splurge once or twice on a nice sitdown dinner, tho.

 

[bigsmooth]

We always do breakfast in, and then we plan a schedule ahead of time. If we eat lunch in, we eat dinner out. If we eat dinner in we eat lunch out. We then try to plan it so we have roughly an equal number of lunches and dinners in. That way we can mix it up.

What we then do is try to plan our meals out before we go shopping, fixing things that are easy to make with out a lot of preparation- like Tacos, Spaghetti, something to throw on the BBQ like Hamburger, Hot Dogs or Steaks. Mix in a salad and some fruit and we can keep it pretty simple. That way we are not eating the same thing every day, and we can keep the ingredient set simple.

I think on the last trip we only did cold cuts and sandwiches a total of two times, the rest were scripted meals. And we ended up with next to nothing left in the fridge when it was time to go.

 

[eporter66]

As you stated, breakfast is easy!!! We eat breakfast in our room every day except one because we always book one of the character breakfasts with our daughter

As for lunch - it varies, but when we stop at the market we buy some frozen stuff (pizza, burritos etc..) things that are easy and wont spoil during our stay. Also, spaghetti is always good, our daughter loves Mac & Cheese, so a box or two of Kraft works well. Hot dogs hold up fine. We obviously are not looking to eat big meals, but something that will get you through until dinner. We usually go back for the afternoon, if our daughter is tired, she naps, if not we head to the pool.

We usually eat dinner out every night, and sometimes skip lunch or grab a pretzel or ice cream in the park if we decide not to go back in the afternoon.