How much do you REALLY spend on food at Disney???

[Happyinwonerland]

When calculating the cost difference, be sure to factor in that the dining plan is 2 meals a day instead of 3. With 3 tween/teenage kids, skipping a meal each day may not be advisable.

I have never done the dining plan. It seem like a lot of work to come out a head on it. I prefer to just buy discounted Disney gift cards at Sam's club and each what I want when I want, without worrying whether I have enough credits.

 

[Darcy03231]

I've run the numbers more times than I can count and the only time the dining plan saves me money is if we're doing at least one character meal a day, and even then its more of a break even than a savings.

 

[tvguy]

Wow, it depends.
I've had days where we had breakfast-lunch and dinner in the park for $30 a person.
I've days where dinner alone was $125 per person.

 

[mamaode]

I'm probably going to give some of you a heart attack, but I have $4,600 budgeted for our Spring Break trip. This includes highest priced menu items, 20% tip for all table service and alcohol. I know that we all will not all order the highest price items, but that is how I budget. I typically eat a salad for most lunches, and sometimes split a larger meal with my daughter.

We are probably outside the norm, my son is high functioning ASD and are celebrating both his and my daughters birthdays. So if she really wants lobster, I guess, and my son loves steak. Haha.

We have done all of the different types of dining plans and also gone without. Typically during a festival we go without or if we do less than three sit table service meals per day.

Here is my budget without dining plan for this trip. I like the flexibility without the plan for this trip, we usually get a bottle of wine with dinner at BOG and I budgeted a bottle of sparkling wine for lunch at Cinderella Royal Table. We are doing some celebrating this trip. Six nights 7 days. We are a family of four on this trip (Me, DH, DD 17 and DS 16 man boy eats nonstop )

I know some of the TS locations are not fantastic....however they were picked by the children. I have to at least let them pick a few places. LOL.

$420 = $60 Snacks per day X 7 days
$250 = $50 for Breakfast X 5 days
$650 = $325 for Breakfast X 2 days (1900 Park Fare and Cape May Cafe) Includes one mimosa per parent!
$1365 for Lunches ($145 - Yak & Yeti, $300 - Brown Derby, $170 - Rose & Crown, $225 - Tony's Town Square, $200 Teppan Edo, $125 - Champagne CRT, $200 - Last day lunch TBD
$1425 for Dinners ($200 - Coral Reef, $200 - Mama Melrose, $200 - Via Napoli, $225 - Sci-FI, $200 - San Angel Inn, $400 - BOG (includes bottle of wine)
$500 for Drinking and Snacking around the world over the course of the week.

 

[pixiemama91]

i always have a budget going on an excel spreadsheet (even when I am not actually planning a trip). I usually ballpark at first when I first start planning and have a per day per meal/snack idea. As I get closer the 180 day mark and i have semi finalized our dining plans, I go into each menu and based off what I think everyone would order, I update our budget to show each meal total including tax and tip. I try to also have around $200 set aside for dining for any last minute changes that might occur during the trip that aren't planned for.

My meal Budget usually plans for
Quick Service
Table Service
Snacks
Alcohol (pool drinks or anything outside of a meal)
Grocery Delivery (for longer trips we usually order water, wine/beer and snack/breakfast items)
Refillable Mugs ( We don't always get these, especially for shorter trips, but I always add them to the budget just in case)
Dessert Party

 

[hsmamato2]

OP do you want a lot of pricey TS meals? if you do one pricey TS daily you should go with the meal plan deal for the 5 of you IMHO. a buffet with characters is approx 35 pp at the cheapest. add a qs,and a snack and it's a deal for 5. but the question is will you want this???? IDK....I've done both,and prefer light eating where I choose, not being tied to TS ADR's and a LOT of food to ingest to use up the plan. That said, we tend to be 3-4 people,stay for about 7 nights, eat maybe 1 (or possibly 2) Ts and the rest is cs....spend about 1k for food. if it's a $1300 difference I might go for it (if that 1300 includes the extra phopper prices and all 5 people)

 

[Darcy03231]

I've also found that we really don't like to do a table service meal every day. The time we did the DDP it felt like we were running our day around our dinner reservations. Because I made reservations at the popular places we couldn't easily switch our plans around if we decided to go to a different park or weren't hungry yet.

 

[DisMommyTX]

We enjoy the dining plan because of the exact reason OP stated. Without it, we certainly spend less on dining, but we cancel most character meals and tend to order less expensive options. No matter how many times I tell myself otherwise, I cannot help but factor cost into my order. With the dining plan, I don't care as much when the kids eat only a few bites of their $20+ meal or no one eats the dessert or appetizer with a weird texture. We try new things, expose the kids to foods they wouldn't normally eat, have more character and signature dining experience, etc. We also like planning one big sit-down meal per day, so it just works for us. We have found it best for us to split into two rooms and get the Deluxe plan for one room because we don't do much QS. Then, we also add a $100 grocery order for snacks, drinks, and breakfast in the room. For us, it is less about the cost and more about the type of vacation we want to have. You have to figure out what works best for you, but based on your opening post, I would recommend going with the dining plan!

 

[LaRaine]

You are also getting park hoppers now which you may not need but are sure nice to have. Plus, you may be able to add an extra day at a nominal cost to take advantage of the hoppers or go to a TS restaurant in a park since you get the ctedits as soon as you check in and have til midnight the dsy you check out.

 

[kydisneyfans]

We just spent a few pennies over a grand-4 of us for a week(46,45,21,19). Only TS was Jiko, where we split an entree but each bought our own sides. My wife had wine.
That includes $130 for snack and drink delivery to our room.
The only meals cooked were 2 breakfasts of pancakes/bacon/sausage.

The only time we've found the dining plan to help is if we have a separate 1 night reservation, followed by 5-6+ days elsewhere. We buy the plan for 1 night. That allows the mug to be refilled all week on a 1 night dining plan purchase. We then use the credit for 2 dinners and pay cash for breakfast since it's cheaper.

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

My super power is eating cheap on vacation. I am the queen of hotel room meals And my kids are trained to be just as frugal with food spending. On our last visit (March 2018) I budgeted $100/day for our group of 4 (myself, my mother, and my 2 kids ages 15 and 7) and I felt that that was high for us. The kids and I can easily get by on one full counter service meal per day and then we fill in with cereal, granola bars, dried fruit, nuts, energy bars, pop tarts, cup noodle, tuna and crackers, etc. that I pack in our suitcases. I don't track the cost of all the snacks I bring in our suitcases, but we spent about $900 out of pocket while in Florida, including our souveneirs but the majority of that was food. So we did go a little over my projection, but that was because my mother insisted on regular meals. Anyway, my point is that you can eat much cheaper than you would spend on a dining plan. Unless you all plan to spend a lot of time eating, you're not going to get your money's worth on the dining plan upgrade and you are better off sticking with your room discount, in my opinion. We've done dining plan before and it is nice to have the luxury of ordering whatever you want without considering prices, but it's a luxury that you end up paying extra for.

 

[Klayfish]

We're super cheap too. We stay offsite, so we pack our food. We spend roughly $300/week to feed a family of 5.

 

[StacyStrong]

I spent $305 (including taxes and tips) in December for one person. This included an Ohana and Raglan Road dinner, all snacks, and drinks.

This was a 6 night trip.

 

[cix00]

17 night trip in past Dec - Jan, spent on average $50 a person a day. That's with mostly quick service + snacks (and sit-downs on two days) on the park days (8 park days), and table service (lots of crab and lobster buffets) on non-park days. This is our first trip after my spouse and I started intermittent fasting, which not only went easy on the pocket books, gave us more energy to tour the parks, but most importantly saved us tons of time every day. On prior trips, we'd spend pretty consistently the ballpark of $80-$100 a person a day. Only downside (or upside, depending on how you look at it) of the new style for us is we were forced to be more selective with restaurant choices, so we could get all the necessary protein and veggies within the eating window.

 

[amymgould]

Looking at the cost difference, you might be better off doing the free dining deal. We never do the dining plan, however, we order groceries so we ALWAYS have breakfast in the room. The last two years we've done 4-5 TS in the course of a week and still made out better than doing the dining plan. But I have an extremely picky daughter, so we'd waste a ton of money on her. If you all like to eat, no picky kids, and adults like to drink alcoholic beverages, I'd switch. Just my opinion (and I don't usually recommend the dining plan!)

 

[KELLY]

I really feel like people need to figure out if the RDP is worth it over the QSDP we go for 14 nights so the upgrade is 1300.00 plus probably another 500-600 in tips. So it is way more beneficial for us just to pay OP for the few meals we want to do. Honestly we put that money towards 3 meals probably, h20 nights, 1 desert part and one AH party. Works to be about the same or less.

 

[DisFam17]

I have calculated over and over again for my upcoming July trip, and I just can’t seem to feel confident that I know how much I should be spending on food! We are a family of 5...2 adults, and 3 kids, DD 17, DS 10, & DS 7. I have read and researched, but I just can’t find anything that has really helped me figure this out. I feel like I should just plan for the higher end of the spectrum. I am contemplating changing my reservation from the Fun and Sun room discount to the Free dining discount and upgrade to the regular dining plan from QS since we are staying at a mod. We like food, and trying new things and the idea that I can order whatever I want on the menu, including alcohol, without feeling guilty of the price is appealing while in vacation mode. The difference in price is pretty significant, but we have to eat, so I can’t figure out it the free DDP is worth it.
Currently my reservation is:
CBR Standard 5th sleeper 5 nights, 4 park day tickets, travel insurance $3282.38
To change to Free QSDP with upgrading to DDP, and I would have to add a park hopper for this deal, and the room would now be 5th sleeper with a water/pool view (only because this is what’s available) the total is $4577.88
HELP!

 

[DisFam17]

yes. This seems worth it to me for sure.

 

[crazylady]

We spent $820 in November ($700 at Disney and $120 for an off-site meal) for a family of 3 Disney adults (2 adults and 1 eleven year old). I don't know about my husband but I ate/drank everything I want (aka drinks every day). We did have breakfast stuff in the room. Dining plan would have been $1200.

My issue with the dining plan is that our plans always change. This year we only cancelled one of our TS meals but there have been trips where we cancel 3-4. We would feel to chained to our ADRs if we had the dining plan.

 

[Micharlotte]

With 5 people I would price out the deluxe resorts. It might sound crazy but the dining plan is the DDP at deluxe so no upcharge. I did a trip with 4 Disney adults last year and we could stay deluxe for $100 more than staying at CSR and upgrading.