What to budget for incidentals?

[otten]

We are now less than a month out from our 8 day WDW trip and I am starting to think about a realistic budget for incidentals. Flights and hotel and dining plan are all paid for, so is memory maker. I know I need to budget for tips, possibly the occasional uber or taxi but what am I missing? DD will have a 20d/day budget for treats and souvenirs. Is 500 enough or should I expect more?

 

[Marionnette]

We are now less than a month out from our 8 day WDW trip and I am starting to think about a realistic budget for incidentals. Flights and hotel and dining plan are all paid for, so is memory maker. I know I need to budget for tips, possibly the occasional uber or taxi but what am I missing? DD will have a 20d/day budget for treats and souvenirs. Is 500 enough or should I expect more?

There's really no way of knowing. How many are traveling? Do you have alcohol with your meal (not covered by the dining plan). Are you big souvenir buyers? Do you pack a lot of stuff to take with you or do you travel light and buy things if you need them?

Personally, I would want more than $500 for 8 days if it had to cover the kid's souvenir budget of $20/day, plus cabs/Uber, plus tipping (don't forget that bell services, the Skycaps at the airport and your DME driver all appreciate tips!), plus incidental spending like band-aids, Tylenol or sunscreen and snacks at the airport. I'd take at least $100/day and hope to bring some of it home.

 

[otten]

We're travelling as a group of 4 but I am only responsible for the expenses of my daughter and myself.

We aren't big drinkers so that's not likely to contribute much.

 

[kathy884]

For three of us I budget $100 per day for full days of our trip and $50 per day for three of us for travel days for incidentals. On a week long trip six full days, seven nights for us that is usually $700. Airport parking for example can often run $80 or so for our trip. For me something else that is an incidental is gas and parking charges, but you are onsite with no rental car I'm assuming. But Uber could easily be around the same cost as gas and parking if you use it a bit. We don't buy souvenirs, but invariably someone will forget something and we'll pick up sunscreen, a fingernail clippers, or something like that at Walgreens and that would come out of these funds (You'd think with all the traveling we do this would never happen, but it usually does happen for us). And then there are thing that look fun that we do at the spur of the moment like rent those little mini speed boats at the Polynesian or Contemporary, play mini golf, decide to play tennis on the clay courts at the Grand Floridian, hit a smaller attraction on a non theme park day. I'm not talking all these in the same trip, but these are just examples of incidentals from trips past for my family. My big theme parks are a separate budget item, but I don't budget for smaller attractions and use incidental money for those. If you are doing theme parks every day you don't have a much of this, but we don't do them every day. And if it's a hotel, not a condo we usually leave three to five dollars a day for a tip for the maid. I always tip shuttle drivers a few dollars too.

I find that having a good feel for what to budget for incidentals each time gets pretty easy if when you go on vacation you actually track all your spending. From doing this for my family for several decades, it's super easy for me to budget. If it would be hard for you to go over your budget, I would maybe over rather than underestimate. If it would be no big deal to go over your budget by $400 or so, you can be less conservative and budget what your best guess is with no cushion.

 

[Thing 1]

I find tipping to be the biggest line item if you include that in this category. We rarely take a cab and are not big buyers. We might buy the occasional bottle of water or a bag of candy or something we don't use the DDP for. One year we forgot Dramamine and we all take it everyday so it got pretty pricey buying it in the gift shop. The other thing would be a real illness or injury that would require medical intervention but as long as you have a credit card for that, you should be fine.

 

[mommajo143]

Following because I'm always curious what other people do.

We are a family of 4; we always take $100/day (we travel for 9-12 usually) and always end up bringing home half or more. We use the money for luggage fees, meals @ the airport, tips, souvenirs, occasionally for drinks, and often a purchase at the LEGO store. We get the dining plan (usually free on a BB) & MM so like you don't have a lot of incidentals. Because we fly DSs are limited on size of things they buy & honestly because we go annually for the most part they don't feel compelled to buy a lot of "junk" - thought light up toys being pushed around by CMs are always a big draw for them.

 

[momma2ethan]

I did not have to consider tipping (we had qs dining plan) for 7 nights but I had about $550 total for myself in addition to a $40/day budget for my 9yo ds. It was the perfect amount of spending money for him. He had $20 left on his gc when we got to MCO and spent it at the Earport shop before we left on a pin and a few Tsum Tsums. I actually had quite a bit left from my personal budget, over $125, which I put towards booking our bounce back trip. For us it was the perfect amount of spending money and it gave me the freedom to buy myself some pretties and souvenirs for my mom, sister, grandpa, niece and nephew.

 

[canadiandisneynut]

We aren't overly big spenders but when we go for a week on the dining plan, our bill generally come to about $350 at the end of the week. That includes tips, a toy for dd, a christmas ornament and usually something fun like a trip to Pirates League. Unless you plan to spend big on disney merchandise, your $500 should be good.