Budgeting for food

[snowwite]

With that many days you definitely want to supplement with groceries. Disney isn’t that great on you getting enough fruits & veggies. Lots of cheap carbs in their meals.
We always buy water, breakfast foods and snacks from grocery stores. Next time we are getting a full kitchen and I am planning on making dinners in the room.

It’s definitely worth it. I don’t love cooking a lot on vacation but I do like having the ability to make breakfast, pack some snacks, water and a couple dinners. Even getting salad and pizza saves money.

 

[DisneyHardin]

Like others have said, if you are planning to eat on Disney Property for all 21 days, then your $8000 budget is probably about right. 21 days of restaurant food is going to add up fast.

 

[easyas123]

We budget $350 per day for the two of us, usually at least 1 table service meal per day, but we only visit for 3 or 4 nights at a time.
Those cocktails & beers add up

 

[Cruising Engineer]

www.distripplanner.com
Has a calculator to decide if the dining plan is right for you. But without the dining plan, you still can use it and it would calculate roughly what you would spend on food out of pocket given your preferences.

I just tried the calculator and it is pretty good at estimating costs. We always pre-plan $100 per person per day. I estimate 4 days with 2 adults at $800 and the calculator (knowing which TS, CS we often use) was $835. This is a great tool. Thank you.

 

[igrsod]

I just tried the calculator and it is pretty good at estimating costs. We always pre-plan $100 per person per day. I estimate 4 days with 2 adults at $800 and the calculator (knowing which TS, CS we often use) was $835. This is a great tool. Thank you.

I did notice that newer restaurants aren't updated. Hopefully whoever owns this, will update it when/if the dining plan comes back. I have used this calculator many times for our trips.

 

[Cruising Engineer]

@igrsod I only inputted the TS, CS that we frequent often. Guess I'll need to bump up the cost for new restaurants.

 

[SharonZ]

I would plan a couple of "sample" days for where and what you would eat and calculate the prices. Keep in mind that an $8,000 budget now, may not cut it later in the year as prices continually go up. Even if they do bring back the dining plan, it's not the deal that most think it was in the past.

 

[Minniedoc]

Yep Mickey bars are 6.29 now

 

[Cruising Engineer]

Yep Mickey bars are 6.29 now

And to think, we pay about $6000 to get free Mickey Bars on the cruise ships.

 

[kathy884]

Yep Mickey bars are 6.29 now

Now I really do need to up my food budget. You can buy these in packages at Walmart, but the problem with that is that I would eat too many. Safer to make that a splurge on one of my Disney days lol.

 

[Trinity524]

We budget $100 per person per day, and that includes tips and a 1 time purchase of a resort mug. We only get water from a delivery service and everything else is from WDW. One sit down daily. I will tell you that after a while, the food gets boring. For 21 days, I’d get a full kitchen like others mentioned.

 

[MrsPete]

I don't think the OP's too far off in terms of planning one big meal per day, but I'll add these thoughts:

- We only go to Disney during hot weather, and we don't want to eat as much /don't want to eat big meals, but we drink a good bit.
- We've never gone for 21 days. That might feel different.
- We usually plan a heavy snack in the evenings /when we're "home" and have showered -- hunger hits us then, not in the heat /while we're walking -- a pizza delivered, sandwiches, whatever. I like to make things in advance at home /warm them in the oven on vacation; examples: burritos, pizza dip, meatballs.
- All-Ears Menus is a great resource -- Disney meals do come with sticker shock. Don't neglect tax and tip in your calculations.

Yep Mickey bars are 6.29 now

Yikes! That can't be true, can it?

 

[monorailsilver]

We go to the store, get breakfast foods and some snacks and water, lots of water. We have refillable insulated containers and bring lots of extra water with us-at least one bottle is empty with our refills before the park is open. We don’t buy drinks in the park. Water! I told my kids 2 trips ago that they can drink all the soda they want on pool days with their refillable mugs but park days are water.

We split some meals too. We go in the summer and just aren’t hungry. We did go to polite pig in April when we were passing thru and really felt like pigs. We could of split a few of those meals.

I usually look at menus before hand and figure out the price of meals and then go from there. I think I am up to $60/meal (lunch and dinner) for our family of 5.

 

[isabellea]

In the past, I put the $$$ that the regular dining plan would have cost me for my family on a gift card and that is our food budget. I often had some money left over at the end of the trip. We are driving so I bring a kettle for oatmeal in the morning, cereal cups (buy milk at gift shop) and some snacks. I also bring a few gallons of water from home because I hate the taste of the bottle water I find in grocery stores in FL (except Fiji or Evian but those are expensive).

 

[hsmamato2]

Hi,

After having to postpone our first trip to Disney in Florida for two years due to the pandemic, it looks like this it will finally happen this year!

We are two adults and two children (12 and 14, so not really children) who's plans have been changed slightly with no dining plan available this year. What would you recommend we would need to budget for 21 days without being overly conservative. We were thinking maybe light breakfast, snack and full meal at night, plus drinks?

Any advice on calculating it would be much appreciated.

TIA
Mike

Go to one of the many sites that list out the restaurant choices and menu prices, run through your days mentally,and it will give you an approximation of what you'll spend. (it's going to be a lot) I have no recent experience, but I know they just recently upped their (already high) food prices. On average, figure a quick service breakfast will probably run $15 pp, about the same for a qs lunch,and if you go table service,it could be anywhere from $50-$75 per person per meal.
Example, at your Disney resort,qs breakfast with coffee,that's about $17. Lunch is a burger and fries in a park, so about $15 (add more for each drink you buy) Buffet meal somewhere onsite for dinner is $50+ per person,plus tax and tip. Multiply that time 4 people,and then multiply that by the number of days.
SO from my example, that's about $350 per day,times 21 days =$7,308.
That's an average of course.

 

[Simplemick]

Hi all, thank you all for your replies and help! We have gone back to the drawing board and upped the budget to accomodate. No real way around it, if we are going to have a good time and not worry about it, then it's a cost. Just a bigger one than expected!

 

[ktlm]

We were thinking maybe light breakfast, snack and full meal at night, plus drinks?

You might think about getting supplies for a light breakfast, or breakfast snack in the room before you head out to the parks. We used to do that through a grocery service, but as DD got older and less picky we typically just bought some stuff down in the hotel shop and kept it in the room. If your kids aren't early risers that is an easier way to have them grab something while they are getting ready and get them out of the door, and it also typically saves some money.

You also might think about flipping your full meal/snack plan. As others have said, all that park activity can get you needing a bigger meal during the day. On most days we would eat something light in the room before heading out, then we would have a big sit down full meal lunch, and then just grab a snack or if people were really hungry a QS meal for dinner. The big lunch would always be a nice break during the day and give us energy and a little rest to keep going all day. We preferred the big lunch to a big dinner. Of course, some of that depends on the restaurant, like Be Our Guest where we typically would want a dinner because that was the only sit down menu meal there and the only meal where Beast was around.

 

[robinb]

Hi all, thank you all for your replies and help! We have gone back to the drawing board and upped the budget to accomodate. No real way around it, if we are going to have a good time and not worry about it, then it's a cost. Just a bigger one than expected!

Are you staying onsite or offsite in a condo/house? Will you have a car? If you're offsite then you can save some by packing in a lunch and snacks some days.

 

[LovesTimone]

We use to budget 100.00 dollars a day per person...

Now we are more the 125.00 to 150.00 a day per person...

You have 2 teenagers, well simply put... teenagers can eat... alot....

Why you ask... price increase pretty much across the board... that's not just at Disney its everywhere, I'm a local I live in Winter Garden, food cost have gone up everywhere... Adult beverage are not cheap, As well there is always some sort of event going on in Epcot and they have some pretty tasty kiosk offerings...

So for a 21 day trip, I am assuming that you will be leaving the bubble to check-out possibly other parks like Universal or SeaWorld, drive over to the beach, go out shopping.... So when you leave hit up fast food spots McDonald's and let them get the junk food fix... I know that SeaWorld offers an all day dinning pass, it was around 45.00 buck per person, ...not sure if that is available yet, or what restaurants are included... you might want to check it out, if you are going there...

Stock the room with bottled water, soda, juice, gatorade or other sports drinks, you might even want to get you each a water bottle nothing fancy to refill in the parks ice water is free... this will save you alot of money since a bottled water is 4.00 to 5.00 each... Adult beverages for in the room and the cost of pool bar drinks is shocking... We had our grandson, DH got a beer ( 10 to 12 dollars) I got a frozen margarita ( 15 to 20 dollars) , and our grandson got a smoothie ( 12+bucks) so over 40.00 without tip... if you plan pool days them I strongly recommend bring your own adult beverages, you might want to invest in a collapsible cooler, we have one we take everywhere with us, just tuck in the luggage... Stock protein bars, cereal bars, chips, cookies, crackers, cheese sticks, yogurt, a bag of apples or those cutie mandarin oranges. If your kids eat cereal a box of cereal for a nighttime snack is filling, my DD's loved PB&J sandwiches... something else that you might want to consider...

You might want to think about the refillable mugs... not sure if they are available yet ( someone know the answer? ) ... We always have gotten those, morning coffee, refills on soda kids can really go through it...

Are you going to the water parks?... double check what you are allowed to bring into the water parks... We always seem to spend more on food here... lots of treats...

 

[My2CrazyGirls]

Hi all, thank you all for your replies and help! We have gone back to the drawing board and upped the budget to accomodate. No real way around it, if we are going to have a good time and not worry about it, then it's a cost. Just a bigger one than expected!

Where are you staying for 21 days? That is a nice long trip, enjoy! There is no way we would be able to eat Disney food for 21 days. Have you thought about that? Do you usually cook at home or order out a lot?