So, who's cooking more in their villas these days?

[MELSMICE]

For those of you who will have a car and want to dine off site occationally, there are a couple of Good places to eat not far off site. We found Bahama Breeze this trip. There are 3 locations near WDW, and their food is very good and not expensive. LOVE their fresh squeezed lemonade too!

Where is the closest Bahama Breeze?

99.9% of the time we go off-site for dinner. We'll be there on Sunday & will probably do Ale House, Earl of Sandwich, Pizza Hut take-out & most likely the Ale House again. We have one more "dinner night" to fill.

 

[nolanboys]

We always eat breakfast in the room and usually lunch or dinner. We are going in March for a week and have 5 TS reservations. One is Chef Mickey's - which will be the most, but it is on my son's 6th birthday so a special treat. We do have the TIW card, which will help. We rarely eat out at home, so when we go on vacation I don't mind spending a little more. I tried to schedule the TS at convienent times to go with plans we already have and restaurants to that we've wanted to try.

 

[zulaya]

We ate out only three times over an 8-day period.

All of us (me, DH, DD14 and DS14) felt so much more relaxed about not having to rush to and fro to ADRs.

We all agreed that this is the way it would be from now on.

We did our usual Crystal Palace breakfast. We actually skipped the Garden Grill ADR because we were tired and opted for burgers at Hurricane Hanna's. And we tried the La Hacienda, which was fabulous, by the way.

Mary

 

[dianeschlicht]

Where is the closest Bahama Breeze?

99.9% of the time we go off-site for dinner. We'll be there on Sunday & will probably do Ale House, Earl of Sandwich, Pizza Hut take-out & most likely the Ale House again. We have one more "dinner night" to fill.

8735 Vineland Avenue. It's just before you get to 535. We saw it on our way to the Publix.

 

[MELSMICE]

8735 Vineland Avenue. It's just before you get to 535. We saw it on our way to the Publix.

Thanks!

 

[burnsoc]

For an inexpensive meal I recommend Sweet Tomatoes. They recently opened one at The Crossroads by Downtown Disney. I've been to several and it's a buffet with really fresh food.
http://www.souplantation.com/locations/restaurant.aspx?store_id=116&store_name=Lake_Buena_Vista

We have definitely cooked more in the villa the last few trips. Now that we have 3 kids it's not that enjoyable eating out a lot. I would much rather prepare our own food we know the kids will eat and is better for them. Our next trip we will only eat at two character meals and one TS. We always begin our trip with a grocery shopping run for food, baby needs, drinks, and wine. I love that you can buy wine in the grocery store in Fl. One stop shopping! I keep the store rewards cards with our annual passes.

 

[Jerry@dvcstore]

If I am not using the Meal Plan, I'm cooking in the room all the time. It SAVES SO MUCH MONEY.

 

[theww228]

Our last trip was 12 days and we only did one TS (Boma as a date night). It was okay, but not worth $80 for two. We never go off property, but we do plenty of cooking in the room, which I actually enjoy. It is kind of game to see how many things I can come up with to cook. My DW and DIL's are very impressed with my creativity. BTW, Wegoshop is the best thing ever for folks without a car!

 

[spiceycat]

hey like Perkins and Golden Coral - although on this last trip Perkins was still excellent - but Golden Coral was pretty bad.
\
wonder what happened at Perkins - we usually go to the one on US192 - which is never that busy.

went to the one near WDW on 535 and boy it was so busy we left - the wait was for over 45 minutes - then they have to fix your food....

 

[DVC SSR Owner]

Bahama breeze is great, so is china jade buffet and Orlando ale house. Cholos is close to typhoon lagoon.

 

[Uncleromulus]

To answer the question directly--not us!!
Have no inclination to cook while on vacation. A big part of vacation for us IS going out to eat in nice restaurants.

 

[Alexander]

Those sound good - I think we can make some of those in our villa.

Still sounds expensive to me though, at over $5.00/pp if 5 people eat, if it's less people, than it costs more per person. Plus, you still have to add food to some of the entrees. Sure it's much cheaper than WDW food, but it's still a lot more than cooking yourself. Our food is expensive here in Canada, and we spend just about $5.00-6.00/dinner for the 4 of us to eat (2 adults, 1 toddler and 1 school age), and that is for stuff like chicken, steak, veggies, rice, etc. Dinner includes: meat, starch and veggie, but I know the big bulk of your cost is labour, delivery, and prep. It's interesting to see the comparison, and a good option to have besides off-site or eating exclusively at Disney.

Good option though, if it works out for you. Having food delivered is always cool! Enjoy! Tiger

Yes, these things could be made in your villa but only after you buy all of the ingredients including all of the spices and little snip-its of things that the recipes would call for, and once you purchase all of that "stuff" what do you do with the leftovers?

The key here is everything is packaged and ready to be cooked. No cutting up veggies, or seasoning anything, it's done! Most meals are ready to eat in under 20 or 30 minutes, to me, when on vacation, that is priceless!

There is enough food here that we will not only have our dinners covered, but at least half of our lunches which makes the per person/meal price drop. Honestly, if we like the food, we will be using them on a regular basis at home. I HATE to cook, and HATE to grocery shop even more, so for us, this is worth every single penny!

 

[Tiger926]

Yes, these things could be made in your villa but only after you buy all of the ingredients including all of the spices and little snip-its of things that the recipes would call for, and once you purchase all of that "stuff" what do you do with the leftovers?

The key here is everything is packaged and ready to be cooked. No cutting up veggies, or seasoning anything, it's done! Most meals are ready to eat in under 20 or 30 minutes, to me, when on vacation, that is priceless!

There is enough food here that we will not only have our dinners covered, but at least half of our lunches which makes the per person/meal price drop. Honestly, if we like the food, we will be using them on a regular basis at home. I HATE to cook, and HATE to grocery shop even more, so for us, this is worth every single penny!

Good points, but we come from a restaurant family, so we know lots of short cuts. We sometimes don't follow recipes, and would never buy all of the spices called for, so I do agree with you there. I guess it will save you time too!

It does sound like a good alternative between eating out and cooking in villa.

Happy eating, Tiger

 

[Alexander]

Good points, but we come from a restaurant family, so we know lots of short cuts. We sometimes don't follow recipes, and would never buy all of the spices called for, so I do agree with you there. I guess it will save you time too!

It does sound like a good alternative between eating out and cooking in villa.

Happy eating, Tiger

Eating is always happy!

 

[pmcpmc]

we had so many forced marches planned we only managed to eat four times in three weeks.
Drank a lot of water though.

 

[Ron from Michigan]

The only meals we have in the room are breakfast. There is no way that I wan't to cook while on vacation.

 

[SuzanneSLO]

We just got back from our first DVC stay that did not include a trip to the grocery store. We brought coffee, tea and creamer from home and bought Pnut butter and bread at the BWV market (20% off discount for PAP!). We had a couple of sit down meals with a D23 event, but otherwise ended up spending about $20 per day per person for food at quick service dining and snack carts. It probably helped the budget that it was cold out so we did not drink nearly as much water as we usually do. -- Suzanne

 

[photobob]

I am taking five of us to BCV the first week in june and I definitely plan to do more cooking than in the past. I never spend the kind of money WDW charges for meals when I am home. I have to agree with others as well most of the meals the quality of the food doesn't come close to price charged. I don't mind paying fair prices for good food but many times at WDW you don't get either. I think we may try to stick with some of the better counter service meals we can find for lunch and have breakfast and dinner in the room. Even counter service will run me probably $60 for the five of us but that's better than $150-$200 for food many times no better than Applebees.

 

[franandaj]

One of the reasons we bought into DVC was for the kitchen. Even 10 years ago when we went to New Zealand I booked us in a couple different rooms that had kitchens. We stay at places like the Residence Inn and Homewood Suites, in addition to DVC so that I can cook some of the meals when we're on vacation.

My Partner is disabled and often times getting up and out of the room for breakfast is difficult, especially when she needs food to offset her pain medication. I also enjoy cooking us a couple bacon & eggs breakfasts on slower days, being able to have a leisurely breakfast in the Villa really makes me feel like I'm on vacation.

In addition, I one of those people who really likes to cook, I find it relaxing, and I enjoy eating my own food when on vacation. Eating a lot of rich food, tends to upset my stomach, and that what I end up eating at WDW. On our last trip we had breakfast in the room every day, cooked four out of ten nights and had half of our lunches in the room. Like others have said, the dinners were pretty simple. We grilled chicken and vegetables on our private grill at the THV, another night was keilbasa with sauerkraut, and then tacos. By the final night for dinner in the room we fixed ourselves dinner morphed out of leftovers. Our next trip is during F&W next year, for three days of the trip, we plan mostly to make our meals from the festival offerings. We'll make a couple reservations at CA Grill & Artist's Point, but other than that we'll eat in our room the remainder of the time.

The quality of the restaurants has really gone down since my first trip over 15 years ago. The menus at the hotel restaurants have become pretty generic, with the exception of the Signature Restaurants and some at EPCOT, dining out just isn't as enjoyable as it used to be.

 

[Xizor2002]

I wish I had read even a third of this thread prior to going to WDW last week.
The 30% coupons for counter service made lunch reasonable but I was completely blown away by the table service meal prices @ Olivia's, Chef Mickey's and Hollywood N Vine. The most reasonable dinner was at the boardwalk @ ESPN. Which was a treat since I have never been able to step foot in that place without having to wait over 2 hours for a table. We walked in on Christmas Eve around 5:30 and it was the cheapest of our 4 dinners out.
TIW is nice but what does it save you if you deduct 20% then add back 18% for a mandatory tip? Kind of defeats the purpose I thought.

On Saturday's it appears that by some hook or crook a pizza company named Romano slid a coupon/advertisement under our door. My son had a hankering for pizza so we called them. It was a 45 minute wait for a large pepperoni pizza that was smaller than a Little Cesar's large $5 pizza. But they forgot the salad. The delivery boy said he'd be back in 71/2 minutes with the salad. Needless to say after 15 minutes there was no sign of him. We called the place back only to realize that the store had no record of another salad being sent, would not send it, would not issue a refund, told us to F off and that was that.
They had the nerve to put another one under our door on Saturday evening again. I took it to the front desk and told them it was a lousy pizza and a poor excuse for a business and that they should do whatever it is they do to miscreants like that.

So much for saving a buck. If I had known about some of the places this board mentions I would have been far more pleased with the results.