Tips for Staying Offsite!

[katt789]

Hi there!
I was just wondering if anyone had any tricks/tips for staying offsite while doing a Disney Trip.
-We're going from May 3-9th 2010, it allows us an arrival day, 1 day at each Disney park, 1 day at WWOHP, and a departure day.
-For accomodation, we'll be staying at the Marriott World Centre.
-The main thing we're still trying to figure out is the best way to do dining on a budget!
If we were to eat breakfast at the hotel, and just do a small lunch & diner at the parks, how much would that cost?
-Any other suggestions?
As a bit more information, we're all female, 21 year olds, and its our first trip to Disney.

 

[Local_Girl]

Food and tickets are your biggest expenses on a WDW trip...and the amount of $$ you spend on food is easier to reduce than what you spend on tickets, due to more limited discounts on the latter.

We stay offsite when we go to WDW, but we usually stay in a condo, so we do all breakfasts (except for a special one at Crystal Palace on our next trip!) and some dinners there, which is a huge savings. You can plan to do some meals in your hotel room, even if you don't have a kitchen. You can keep a cooler in the room with sandwich makings (cold cuts), milk, yogurt, etc. or keep them in a small fridge if one is available in your room. You can take picnic food into the WDW parks in soft sided coolers (not sure about the US parks).

For dinner, many folks do pizza take out, some do cooked rotisserie chicken from the nearest grocery store and add some sides. Many offsite restaurants are very reasonable compared to WDW restaurants.

If you want to eat in the parks, I'd suggest planning to do mostly counter service restaurants, and choosing any TS restaurants carefully (and sparingly). We are splurging on a couple of pricey meals (well, pricey to us, anyway! ) like CP and 'Ohana for dinner and then we've chosen a couple of TS meals where we'll be able to share meals (50's PT and Yak and Yeti). I chose these restaurants for the atmosphere/theming. IMHO, even many CS meals can be shared between 2 people--in fact, I think my DH and I would be able to share a large burger or sandwich w/fries at many of the CS restaurants in the parks and have plenty to eat.

Hope you have a great trip!

 

[ben1993]

We didn't spend that much on food when we went for a week in June, breakfast in the hotel and then a meal in the evening. I found that we were just too busy in the day to really think about being hungry (that and I knew I had to keep a reasonable budget). I found eating out pretty cheap on International Drive, Dennys, Chilli's etc. and theres plenty of 'All You Can Eat' buffets around.

 

[reelmom]

We stay off-site also. We eat breakfast at the hotel and we eat CS meals. You can split a lot of the meals because the portions are so big. We are a family of four and we budget 100.00 a day for food and snacks but usually have some left over.

 

[BridgetBordeaux]

In the parks, you can get a counter service meal with drink for about 9-10 dollars. So............if you have breakfast at your place, 2 meals would cost 20 bucks per person per day.

Bring in your own snacks and small drink pouches for a mid morning or mid afternoon break. As long as you do not bring in glass containers or alcohol, you can bring in your own food....................we have done it for years and that helps us keep our costs down.