Larissa
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 31, 2011
- Messages
- 164
Here's a list of coupons/discounts I found along with my food spending in Disneyland (including groceries from Vons).Downtown Disney: $13.08 total
Earl of Sandwich - $6.49 + tax
I ordered the Earl’s Club and my friend ordered the Chipotle Chicken Avacado. Because both were completely free, I threw out the receipt and don’t remember the total. We signed up for the Earl of Sandwich’s Club Sandwich online and got coupons for our first one free. I signed up on January 27th and got a coupon the next day that expired on the 27th of February. My friend signed up shortly after and never got it, so she tried again with another email address the night before we left and got it the day we arrived. They accepted the barcode off her ipod.
Wetzel’s Pretzels - $5.71 (or $2.86 each)
BOGO coupon from the Entertainment book. I have the 2015 Vancouver & Fraser Valley Area Edition one, but I activated my account online and was able to find coupons for DTD by searching by area.
Jamba Juice - $3
I signed up for the Jamba Juice Insider online. I just had to enter my phone number at the register and got $3 off my drink, which brought the largest one down to something like $2.99.
Disneyland/Disney California Adventure: $11.09
4 day non-hopper ticket - $22.17 compared to the Disneyland website
I bought the tickets online through the entertainment book (the 2014 one).
Hotel and Airfare: hard to measure.
Three nights at the Tropicana Inn and Suites, YVR-LAX flight with Alaska, and LAX-YVR flight with WestJet for $1186.47.
I wish I could tell you how much we saved, but I can’t, I just remember that we did save money. I looked today at booking all three separately, but everything is a fair bit cheaper. I’m wondering if it’s because we were there over a STAT holiday weekend for B.C. (Family Day). Anyway, I’d encourage you to check sites like Priceline for package deals, because you might luck out like we did.
Vons Grocery Delivery: see below.
Other coupons I didn’t use:
-Free appetizer with meal at the Rainforest Cafe through the Anaheim Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau site.
-10% off La Brea Bakery from the Anaheim Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau site.
-$5 off $20 or more at the Rainforest Cafe through the Entertainment book website.
-BOGO pretzels from Wetzel's Pretzels
-I also saw one for the ESPN Sportszone on the Entertainment book website, but my location rendered me ineligible to redeem it.
If you plan on eating off-property, I’d encourage you to look at what other restaurants are outside Downtown Disney. I saw a lady on a site called Couponing to Disney to AMAZING things with coupons, some of which were off-property.
My ‘Meal Plan’ (which I totally deviated from, but that’s ok).
When I checked the Disneyland website and compiled a list of the cheapest and most expensive foods at each in-park restaurant, $5.79 was the cheapest meal I could find (you can find that list in the link in my signature). Most of the cheap meals were $7-9.
If we ate ‘where we were’ instead of planning specific dishes based on price and just picked the cheapest thing on the menu wherever that was, I figured I would spend about $8 for each meal of the trip (save for the first and last, breakfast at YVR and dinner at LAX). That would bring me to $80 for three breakfasts, four lunches, and three dinners. Add $5/day for snacks and you’re at $100 a person (but note that all in-park snacks save for one were over $5 each unless I split them).
Here’s what I did:
Pre-trip Grocery Order – from Vons
For Canadians, enter the numbers in your postal code and then 0s when ordering.When we searched for food, we set search options to show us the cheapest things first and generally went with those.
We stayed at the Tropicana Inn and Suites. Our groceries we all delivered on time and kept in the back for us with the perishables in the fridge. There was also lots of table/counter space for our groceries in the room, which was nice.
Note that prices and availability are subject to change. We placed our order so early we actually ended up changing and adding substitution notes a couple times. Here’s what I ordered:
-PB&J combo
-Store brand bread (If I could do it over I would have skipped the sandwiches and eaten the granola bars I never touched).
-Carton of milk (not the big 4L, I don't think it would have fit in the mini fridge)
-Disposable plates
-Assorted disposable cutlery
-6 bottles of water (should have done more, especially at $1.50 for 6)
-Baby carrots (we brought ziplock bags)
-A box of cookies that came in ten little bags
-9 assorted muffins
-Chocolatey granola bars
-Fruit granola bars
-Two bags of potato ships
-Four oranges
-Six apples
-Six yogurt cups
-A box of mini pretzels that came in ten bags
Total: $46.87 or $23.44 each. After our $5 off coupon and free delivery code because it was our first order.
Friday –
Breakfast – granola bar from home + tea and scone from YVR Starbucks, bought with a gift card.
Lunch- Earl of Sandwich (free)
Snack – Dole Whip Float – $5.61
Dinner – Clam Chowder at Royal Street Veranda - $9.99
Saturday –
Breakfast and Lunch from Vons.
Afternoon Snack – Churro Bites from Cozy Cone Motel, shared with my friend - $5.82 for two so $2.91 each.
Dinner – Club Sandwich and a Chocolate Mud Pie at Flo’s V8 Cafe, split with my friend - $17.69 for two so $8.85 each.
Almost-midnight Snack - Wetzel’s Pretzels at DTD with BOGO coupon - $5.71 for two of us so $2.86 each and Jamba Juice at DTD smoothie with $3 off coupon - $2.99
Sunday -
Breakfast and Lunch from Vons.
Snack – Frozen Lemonade from Tomorrowland - $4.75 (if I could do one thing over from this whole trip it would have been ordering more water bottles from Vons. It was like $2 for a flat of six. What were we thinking ordering just one? It was hot when we were there too, like twenty two degrees Celsius, and I was in jeans. Full, disclosure, I’m from Vancouver. We wear shorts in 22.
Dinner – Jolly Holiday sandwich and hot chocolate - $13.58
Midnight Snack – McDonald’s Sundae - $1.72
Monday - Breakfast and Lunch from Vons.
Snacks from Vons
Lunch – I’ll admit I threw out my sandwich and went for the Ghiridelli Chocolate Shop’s Muir Woods Sundae. I do not regret it - $10.75
If you’re keeping track, that brings us down to $87.45. That’s with me eating three snacks on Saturday, three on Sunday, and ridiculously expensive ice cream for lunch on Monday (Friday was the only day I stayed on my one-park-bought-meal, one-park-bought-snack plan).
I could have saved more, but I have bad impulse control, I can’t resist pretzels or chocolate, and I was SO THIRSTY (why we didn’t ask for water in cups I don’t know, because they would have given it to us).
We left three muffins, an orange and two untouched bags of chips (not to mention a bunch of milk and half a loaf of bread), so we did not need those nighttime snacks by any stretch of the imagination. We didn’t even eat all the food we packed in our bags each day. We went home with a bag of cookies, a bag of pretzels, two ¾ full boxes of granola bars in our carry-ons.
Had I stuck to my plan by only getting one afternoon snack a day and not eating ice cream for lunch on Monday, I would have spent $80.66. That would mean savings of $19.34 (based on the aforementioned $100 for ten cheap in-park meals and four $5 snacks).
Strawberry chocolate on the left, Muir Woods (Cherry vanilla ice cream with chocolate fudge, whip cream, and a cherry. I consider myself somewhat of an ice cream aficionado, and this was GOOD. I also rarely order anything that is not chocolate, so the fact that I am saying this about cherry ice cream is notable).
