What is your Disneyland budget once you are in the parks?

[jemmi]

I just saw this post on the budget board for DisneyWorld and it got me thinking what I should budget for our trip to Disneyland for meals and souvenirs. Once you are at Disneyland what do you allow for spending money, not including hotel and parking? We are a family of 2 adults and will be in the parks for 4 or 5 days. Thanks!

 

[rentayenta]

I just saw this post on the budget board for DisneyWorld and it got me thinking what I should budget for our trip to Disneyland for meals and souvenirs. Once you are at Disneyland what do you allow for spending money, not including hotel and parking? We are a family of 2 adults and will be in the parks for 4 or 5 days. Thanks!

It totally depends on the time of the year and when our last trip was. Where are you planning on dining? Are you shopping for specifics or whatever catches your eye? I'd love to say I stick to a budget but usually get caught up in the magic and just go with it. Have you been before? Do you drink alcohol? There are lots of variables but you can make it work and have a total blast with any budget.

 

[Dot2Vegas]

We are pretty bare bones for our in park budget. We visit a few time a year and don't feel the need to spend a lot once we are in the park.

We typically buy lunch and dinner at the parks. For a family of 5, counter service, we spend about $50/ meal. Add a snack to that and ice cream and we probably spend $120-$150 day. We bring in our own water and small snacks. If the budget is tight we sometimes pack our own lunch.
We don't spend a ton on souvenirs. Each kid is given a $20 budget. I usually buy a mug for $15. We only shop on the last day. Every couple of trips DH or myself will splurge on a jacket or nice sweatshirt. Shopping is low priority on our trips. We make frequent trips to our local Disney store to feed our addiction between visits to the park haha!
And that's it. We don't do anything extra in the parks and have a blast!

 

[cali_crafter]

I'm fine with a 0$ souvenir budget but I know others need more! Check out allears.net for meal prices. There are plenty of interesting CS meals around $10/each if you drink water, add in a few snacks around $5 each and you could do a day for $50-$100. Of course, being a vacation, costs can rose significantly but I could do $50/day bare bones for two adults if needed.

I'm planning $100/day for food for my family of 4 and the kids will each have $40-$50 spending cash for "stuff".

 

[Malcon10t]

Food budget is usually $50 per adult, and I usually come in way under that. And we eat our meals in the park. I do add $$ for days we do special meals (ie Club 33 or Napa Rose.)

 

[CaliDisneyMama]

I don't usually budget. We don't buy a lot of souvenirs (one or two things for DS, a mug for me, and that's about it; we also collect the pressed pennies, which is cheap and fun), and we don't do a lot of table service meals. We generally just wing it.

This time, though, because it's kind of a last minute trip, and Christmas is coming up, I'm budgeting. I'm figuring on about $100 a day for food for four of us. We're planning to eat breakfast and dinner in our hotel room (because the parks close at 8 while we're there, it won't be a big deal to eat when we get back to our room at night), counter service for lunch, and a few snacks/treats throughout the day. We do have one table service meal planned for lunch on our last day, so I've added a little more to the budget for that day. As far as souvenirs go, again it will probably just be one or two things for my son, one or two things for my little sister, and a mug for me. We also do souvenirs on the last day, so we have had a chance to decide exactly what we want.

 

[mikedoyleblogger]

For two of us my partner and I budget $125 a day to cover dining and incidentals, with another $100 for small merchandise and take-home candy. We never hit the $125, so we use our dining balance for one nice table-service meal per trip. We're APs though, so without our dining/merch discounts we'd probably budget a bit more per day. We also love counter service in Anaheim, and that helps a lot, too.

We used the same strategy at WDW and came home with a huge balance, though. The food was more expensive but we hated the Orlando counter service options. Basically lived on rice krispie Mickey treats.

 

[allsaintsatx]

We budget with a credit card!! Haha!! We only get to go about once a year, so we budget about $150-200 per day for anything that goes in our belly, and a $100 a day for merch and stuff.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

We don't have an actual budget. We just buy food and drinks, and anything else within reason.

 

[ToodlesRN]

Back in the day when our kids were toddlers (free meals) we would budget for $100 a day, now since there older I really don't have budget, I still try to stick around $100 but with character meals that $100 is blown out the door!! Were going in Dec for 5n/6d and budgeted $2000 to bring and spend. We don't use credit cards, we use gift cards, cash and debit.

 

[RuthieT]

We trying to stick to $150 per day with food for the 4 of us and any other goodies, but if we go over we go over

 

[MateasMom]

Two adults and two teens, and we budget $100 a visit. We're local and eat breakfast before the parks. Our budget is 100% food. We don't do expensive sit downs, and we don't skimp on treats, lol. We come in at just over or under $100.

 

[Escape2Disney]

I'm a budget queen! For meal, I plan ahead using allears.net. Since I know what we would typically eat at each restaurant, I'm usually spot on for that part of the budget. I also calculate tips for each day (i.e. bell hop, housekeeping, etc.). The budget for shopping depends on how tight our overall budget is on each trip. Since we stay 6 days on average, I try to keep it to $50/day for shopping.

By calculating every last thing like this, I tend to come home with extra money.

 

[soma151]

Disneyland for us is like going to the Ocean..We only go and stay at the Ocean if we can afford a Ocean view room. We only go to Disneyland if we can go and not have a budget, last visit 6 years ago..We take CASH..2 grandparents..1 grandson one week stay, 3 days at Disneyland, 4 days in San Diego. Zoo, lego land, Knots Berry farm,Tijuana, hotel and car payed for. We are taking $10k...So the budget is like $1150 a day.

 

[awinangie]

Wow, you've got quite a variety of responses...

Mine is different, so I'll share.

My ten-year old daughter and I will be going for 6 full days and two half days in February. The only way we can do such a long trip is to budget carefully, so we're staying at the Desert Inn & Suites @ $69/night.

We'll be having breakfast and lunch in our room (I've always done it this way.) and will have dinner in the parks. We'll generally share food (ex. pasta and salad at Redd Rockett'--looked at the menu, and the prices seem awfully close to what I shared with friends a dozen years ago!) We'll also bring in healthy snacks but splurge a bit on yummy treats to share also. I'd originally planned on $30/day for this, but decided to go to $35 to allow for a bit more flexibility.

I'm budgeting with Gift Cards. It's a bit of a risk, since I've got 8 $35 gift cards plus others (listed below). Will be a big loss if we lose them, but it's a much bigger risk for me to allow myself to bring in a debit or credit card into the parks...

For spending money, I've budgeted $100 for hoodies, since we both want one and they seem to be about $60 for adults and $40 for kids. I've then allowed myself $100 for the entire trip for spending. Hopefully that's too much and I can save it for another time, but I have a hard time resisting the cuteness. My daughter is much more practical and will sometimes talk me down from buying things we don't need Not sure how much she'll have. Depends on if she gets gift cards for Christmas. I'm thinking about $50 will do it for her.

She also wants to do a Character Breakfast, so she's asked for a $50 card from either her Grandma or Grandpa. She knows they might have other gift ideas, so we'll go if we have the money. And I know she wants to do Studio Disney 365, so I've gotten her a gift card for second level cost of that. Anything more there and she'll take it out of her own gift card.

Have fun!!

 

[jemmi]

It totally depends on the time of the year and when our last trip was. Where are you planning on dining? Are you shopping for specifics or whatever catches your eye? I'd love to say I stick to a budget but usually get caught up in the magic and just go with it. Have you been before? Do you drink alcohol? There are lots of variables but you can make it work and have a total blast with any budget.

Thanks for all the responses!

We're going to be in the parks the first full week in May. We've never been to Disneyland and I do want to do a couple character meals and a couple table service meals. I already have those figured out, now Im trying to figure out how much we'll need for counter service. I have a couple specifics in mind for souvenirs but Im sure things will catch my eye, I love all things Disney! Thanks for the tips, they have given me an idea on what kind of budget to have for the fun stuff!

 

[Amommy21]

I would go ahead and look at links to those menus and kind of put meals together you would be interested in eating and see how much it all adds up...

Then check out disneystore.com and you can see the types of things you are interested in. they have different things in the parks, but this also helps because then when you are in the park you can tell yourself, oh, they had that online I can get that later or whatever.

I buy DS a t-shirt every trip and a sweatshirt once a year. DS also likes to get small stuffed animals or stop at the magic shop. It's different every time... but $25 would be one small souvenir and so sometimes I give him a card with $25, but realistically we spend $100 a trip on him.

We like to have one nice meal a day at Blue Bayou, Carthay Circle or Napa Rose or even Storytellers. You can spend more than $100 for 2-3 people easily. But we eat out often and are used to that sort of thing in our every day activities so it isn't such a shock.

We always end up spending more on drinks and bottled water than we plan because sometime you just want something cold. And even though we bring in small snacks DH usually wants to get a treat every day in the park.

 

[WestMom2two]

We budget about $200 a day. SO if we are gone a total of 5 days its $200 per day even if it's only 4 days in the park. We are a family of 4 and that covers a lot. We ate at Ariels grotto, Minnie and friends, rain forest cafe, Naples. Kids had face painting done and plenty of souvenirs.