Staying offsite- Food Budget?

[Serling126]

We are staying offsite during our visit this August. We will be there 8 nights and will probably be in the parks on 6 or 7 days. Many of the food budgeting threads are about if people should get the DDP or not, but that's obviously not an option for us.

We are planning on 2 TS character lunches and will probably do some counter service meals but I would like to bring snacks/sandwiches into the parks and also have some in room dinners at our hotel. We will have a small fridge and microwave in the room.

My kids are not big eaters so I can't really justify spending tons of money on food, especially when they are just as happy eating a PBJ Maybe when they are older we will stay on site and splurge on the dining plan!

So, my question is, for those of you who bring most of their food into the parks (or eat in their hotel rooms), how much did you spend on food?

Thanks!

 

[ILMICKEY]

Hello,
You didn't say whether you were driving or not so I will tell you what we did when we drove.

Months before our trip I would occasionally pick up microwave food at the grocery store and store them in a tote.

Cereal
Oatmeal
Spaghettios
Ravioli
Ramen Noodles
Dinty Moore Dinners (do not have to be refrigerated)
Chunky soups
Oriental Noodle Dinners (just add water)

It worked out well for us. We had a variety of things to eat. We would eat one counter service meal in the parks. Saved so much money doing this and nobody complained. I'm sure there are tons more things that can be cooked in a microwave that don't have to be kept cold. Don't forget the disposable bowls and silverware!!

Oh another thing I did was buy gift cards to fast food places little by little. I started that as soon as I began to plan the trip. I had one for everywhere. That helped a LOT!

 

[momejay]

We tend to eat at Subway alot in FL. I start buying gift cards at the grocery store a month or 2 in advance. It's less cash to carry around. I usually have $40-50 for just that.
We have been driving down to FL so I bring a box of food, a case of water, & a cooler with turkey, cheese snacks, fruit & veggies. We usually get a room with a kitchen, but in this economy...

To answer your question...I plan to spend at least $100 a day on food & "IWANTS" (family of 5 Pooh sized peps) I hope to spend less than $50, but some days that Dole Whip just calls to you. Some days we don't eat a meal in the parks. We may just get a snack or share a meal & have a piece of fruit. We don't usually do fast food places, but on vacation sometimes we do splurge for items on the dollar menu.

We make sure to get a hearty breakfast. Typical for us is...eggs in the microwave with a sausage patty & thrown on a mini wheat bagel with slice of cheese or oatmeal. We bring veggie sticks, crackers & fruit to the parks. We leave for an early dinner & return for fireworks.

 

[Local_Girl]

We also drive down and stay offsite. Our family consists of 2 adults and 2 teens. My family would balk if I tried to do the canned ravioli or stew thing and would insist on eating out, which would blow the budget! For our upcoming trip (10 days) I'm planning to make some of our favorite dinner meals and freeze them to take with us (chicken enchiladas, lasagna, meatballs, etc). I'll just have to thaw and warm them up. Other ideas include rotisserie chicken and deli sides from the grocery store (should run $10-15 for such a meal) and subs (like momejay suggested) with maybe some soup to go with them.

Breakfasts will be almost exclusively in the condo, unless we do a special bakery run one morning. For lunches, we'll have some CS lunches in the parks and take some picnic lunches in, and I'm planning on 5 dinners in and 5 out (a couple of our fave Disney restaurants, and a some offsite, cheaper alternatives!). This way, we'll still feel like we're on vacation (and I won't have to cook all the time!) and we'll save a bit on our food budget. Sorry I don't have an exact $$ breakdown, but I'm hoping to keep our food spending at about $500 for our 10-day trip (not including what we bring from home), which will include at least a couple of nice dinners out.

 

[BuzznBelle'smom]

It depends on if you drive or fly. We stay both off-site and on-site (DVC), and there's 6 of us. I'll tell you what I've found with my gang--YMMV.

My kids really don't care to eat out for days straight. They'll do CS-type meals (whther in a park or a Subway type place), but prefer the relaxation of mom-made meals. OTOH, I'm on vacation, too, and have little interest in slaving over a stove for hours on end. So, our compromise is to have a bunch of stuff available that requires very little effort. I buy frozen chicken strips (or sometimes breasts that DH grills up), frozen meatballs, frozen pizzas, etc. We have grilled chicken caeser salad, spaghetti, home-grilled burgers, and so forth. Lemonade is our drink of choice. I buy more junk than normal--chips, etc., and get break-and-bake cookies. I also buy breakfast stuff (cereal, pop-tarts) and snack things like Cheez-its. We do lunch meats and cheeses, and PB&J.

Given this wide variety of stuff available, the kids just graze or pick what they'd like, and I fix it. They don't care to go to sit-down restaurants, either.

While I don't keep an actual budget, I woudl guess that I spend $20 more than I might on a regular grocery week. That's based on getting, say, small bottles of condiments and more prepared foods, but then we also eat out some, so fewer meals overall.

We buy bottled water and bring cracker-type snacks into the parks, but no meal items. It's not worth it to me, to lug that stuff around all morning. I figure I make up for it with the homemade dinners.

I should also mention that while I'm cheap, I tend to spend a little more at vacation time-that's just my style.

For Disney dining, I'm using my Disney credit card, and I'll cash in the rewards points to spend on our next trip.

 

[Local_Girl]

BuzznBelle'smom,

I love the idea of the break and bake cookies! I usually make homemade, but we like these too...they'd be quick to make with little mess, and we can enjoy nice warm cookies. Thanks!

 

[kelleyrn2000]

We stay offsite too. Our plan is to balance eating in our room, sit down dinners, character meals, and CS meals at the parks. We are a family of 5 (two adults, kids 7 and 8, and a 24 month old).

I have a Visa Paycard that right now I am getting my sales commissions from my home party business put on. I have a goal of $500 for that by our vacation in June. I plan to use that for our sit down meals and character meals. That way we will only have to pay for our CS meals, and groceries.

We plan to make a stop at Publix the first night to get bottled water, juice, milk, cereal, microwave popcorn, pb&j, and soda. We will have a full kitchen available which means we can also pick up mac and cheese, eggs, make toast, etc. which will help too. But, like some of the above posters, part of the fun of vacation to us is eating out!

I also read on another thread that some of the CS meals are big enough for two to share, so we may end up doing that at the parks, and just bring lots of snacks with us.

Also, right now my two oldest are doing extra chores to earn "Disney Money" so they can buy souvenirs and treats at the park like ice cream, etc. They don't get an allowance so this is a learning process for them too, and hopefully they will have at least $20 each earned by June.


I don't have a $$$ breakdown either at this point, sounds like some of you are planning on $50-$100 per day per family, which sounds reasonable if you plan to eat out at least twice a day, depending on if you do sit downs our not. I think that is similar to what we plan to spend.

 

[CherylA]

We just did this, almost the exact same scenario as you, me hubby and kiddos 5 and 7 (girls and don't eat much) We also did 2 sit downs in the parks. We did Crystal Palace breakfast and Teppanito dinner. Each of those cost us about $85 including the tip. When we were down there my daughter also wanted to do Rainforest cafe, there was only a short wait so I said okay. That ran us $90 and we didn't splurge at all! Anyway we also did a sit down dinner offsite at Chilis one night $40 and 2 dinners at Sweet Tomatos (I had a coupon for 1 night) for those two nights it totaled about $60. And I picked up a pizza at pizza hut one night that we ate in the room $10. All our breakfasts we ate in the room from things we bought at Winn Dixie, I spent $50 on groceries which included pop tarts, donuts, cereal, milk, chips, granola bars, waters, sodas, juices, cookies, muffins and strawberries. We ate all our lunches (6) and 1 dinner as counter service in the parks. I didn't have to pay for drinks at our CS meals, since we brought in a cooler with drinks and chips/cookies. So for just the food (usually we got two adult meals and 1 kids meal or a yogurt or fruit cup) those meals were $25. We splurged on lots of snacks. We each had a snack each day plus we probably shared another 2 snacks each day so 6 snacks a day times 6 days at about $3.50 per snack is 126.00 in snacks. That about covers it. So lets see total it up for a grand total of 721.00

I know it's long winded but I thought I'd try to be accurate. We could have cut out about half of the snacks (save $63) and still been really happy and have done a CS instead of the Rainforest Cafe (save $65). So if we were really being frugal we could have cut it down to just under $600.

 

[stahshee]

we have done it ! we would have dinner out once a day.. One time we stayed in a condo and only ate out 3 times out of 10



I also start shopping months a head ( with my coupons and great deals)

I get stuff like
pop tarts
lays chips in a tube
gronola bars
gushers
pudding
penutbutter
squeeze jelly
kool aid drop inns


all of the things I bring are real treats because my kids do not eat that stuff normaly

all sort of treats that my kids do not usualy get at home

 

[SDSorority]

I have a $50 walmart gift card from Christmas that we're going to use on groceries. We're staying 1 full week (Saturday to Saturday), with 5 TS meals and 1 CS meal on my list.

I'm going to buy things like cereal, milk, fruit, bread, peanut butter, granola bars, orange juice, etc.

 

[AllesonWonderland]

I looked up our budget for our first trip to WDW a few years back. We stayed a week at Windsor Hills so we had a full kitchen. We spent $425 on food. That included 1 breakfast for the 4 of us at Chef Mickeys and seats very close to the stage for HDDR. We ate breakfast at the townhouse, packed snacks like trail mix, beef jerky, etc. at the parks, shared or had light lunches at the parks, then cooked dinner back at the townhouse. We're going again in a week with more family, so there will be 9 of us instead of 4. It will be interesting to see how much we spend on groceries this time around.

Good luck with your planning!

 

[SDSorority]

I looked up our budget for our first trip to WDW a few years back. We stayed a week at Windsor Hills so we had a full kitchen. We spent $425 on food. That included 1 breakfast for the 4 of us at Chef Mickeys and seats very close to the stage for HDDR. We ate breakfast at the townhouse, packed snacks like trail mix, beef jerky, etc. at the parks, shared or had light lunches at the parks, then cooked dinner back at the townhouse. We're going again in a week with more family, so there will be 9 of us instead of 4. It will be interesting to see how much we spend on groceries this time around.

Good luck with your planning!

How was driving back and forth to eat dinner at your condo? Was it a pain or was it ok?

 

[AllesonWonderland]

How was driving back and forth to eat dinner at your condo? Was it a pain or was it ok?

It was quick and easy. We'd stay til 2 or so at the parks, drive home, relax, watch some TV (maybe the adults would nap--LOL) then the kids would play in the splash pool right off the living room while I fixed dinner. (Very easy dinners) Then after everyone was recharged and refueled we could head back to ride some rides we missed, ride some rides we rode earlier and catch the fireworks show. I know we didn't go back every single night...our first day was at AK, so we had lunch there, then HDDR for dinner. One day we didn't go to the parks at all, just hung at the big resort pool and hit downtown Disney. But most of the days we took breaks and went back. That's my plan for our upcoming trip as well.

 

[SDSorority]

It was quick and easy. We'd stay til 2 or so at the parks, drive home, relax, watch some TV (maybe the adults would nap--LOL) then the kids would play in the splash pool right off the living room while I fixed dinner. (Very easy dinners) Then after everyone was recharged and refueled we could head back to ride some rides we missed, ride some rides we rode earlier and catch the fireworks show. I know we didn't go back every single night...our first day was at AK, so we had lunch there, then HDDR for dinner. One day we didn't go to the parks at all, just hung at the big resort pool and hit downtown Disney. But most of the days we took breaks and went back. That's my plan for our upcoming trip as well.

Fabulous! That's a great idea and very reassuring. I've never stayed offsite before!!

 

[Serling126]

Thank you all for the info and tips! This was just the sort of info I was looking for We will be driving down from NY so we will have room to pack food both for the trip down and for the duration of our stay, and we are not far from the Super walmart so we can restock if needed. I hate the thought of spending $100 a day on restaurant meals when my girls are just as happy eating a can of ravioli but bringing some food and having a few special meals is a good compromise

 

[TnTWalter]

meals I made won't work for you but might help another...

Here's my budget meal planning for dining at WDW and offsite and at condo...I broke down how much we spent each place. We didn't go 'cheap' but also not 'all out' either.

http://tntwalterdisneyworld.blogspot.com/2009/06/budget-meal-planning.html

 

[DreadpiratK]

On our last trip we discovered this, the kids liked it, but it's not for everyone. We stayed off site, ate a big breakfast and brought snacks like everyone says, but left the parks at 3-3:30 and went Golden Corral. Lunch prices before 4, but dinner food comes out after 4, so you get the best of both worlds One big, inexpensive meal covered us for the full day. I think we did this twice in a two week trip. Not the greatest food, but not bad for a buffet, and enough variety to satisfy everyone. Plus it's quick, and not too far from the parks. We also hit Ci-Ci's pizza one day like this, and Sonic. Other days we just went back to the condo. This worked pretty well in the off season, when time was not so pressing. When the parks are busier, it might not be such a great idea.