How Much Did You Spend On Food On Your DisneyWorld Trip?

Food is a tough one to give approximations for because everyone does their meals and dining different. I will tell you our approximations but we do things usually in a particular way.

Breakfast: Free - We bring breakfast with us. We bring granola bars or cereal cups and eat at the bus stop waiting for the bus.
Lunch: At Quick Serve stops - $30
Dinner: Table Service Restaurants - $75-$100

However, some of these approximations are based on what we spent when we used the Dining Plan, if we had paid out of pocket. This will be our first time going without the plan so we're expecting things to be a little less than our expectations. We plan on splitting some lunch meals and eating less expensive dinner meals.

Hi twopair! Welcome to our happy little Disney family!

Our travel part is 2 adults also. We typically pay cash for dining as we have not found the dining plan to save us a significant amount of money--especially because we don't like to eat the way that the dining plan dictates that we must. Our usual dinning for the day goes something like this:

Breakfast: some combination of nuts and granola bars from the room

Water throughout the day: Most of the time we get a car and stop at Publix for water, so we mostly carry our own. We drink an average of 3 bottles per person per day. At $2.50/bottle in the parks, that's $15

Lunch: Usually counter service around 11:00. I'd say that we average $10 each for lunch. I'm a big fan of the chicken waffle sandwich at Sleepy Hollow in Magic Kingdom - $7.19. We also like Columbia Harbor House where a counter service entree could be $12-13

Afternoon snack: From Dole Whips to Mickey Bars to CreamCheese filled pretzels, save some budget for snack! We average around $5/day/person

Dinner: For a table service buffet, be prepared for $50/person. For a more extravagant meal, the sky's the limit. If you do Counter service, you'll be looking at lunch prices--maybe slightly more. I'll say $15/person. Since we do table service roughly every other night, I'd probably budget $35 per person for dinner/ night.

So I would say in total, I'd expect to spend around $115/day for two people and not feel super deprived.

That being said, I've also done trips where I was responsible for only my food and I've stayed within a budget of $30/day for myself. To do that, I packed my own snacks and ate counter service only while being conscious of trying to order the least expensive menu items that I actually liked.

As Tink said, food cost is a tough call. You can eat fairly inexpensive at Disney, or go all out and splurge .

When you check-in at your resort , they will give you a dining guide that will list all of Disney's restaurants along with costs: $, $$, $$$, $$$$. There are also very reasonable restaurants and eateries at Downtown Disney (new Disney Springs) & off site. Will you have a car?

Check out the Parks restaurants and you'll see that there is a varied selection of foods and prices.

Enjoy

Cooler - No! Personally I suggest bringing only one backpack for the two of you with your essentials (sunscreen, money, bandaids, dollar store rain ponchos and a Brita soft water bottle). We stop for ice and fill up our water bottle at water fountains. The Brita and ice cold water makes the water taste just fine.

Delivered Groceries - No, though I would use it if I was either a.) bringing a family or b.) staying longer than 5-6 days. It's not worth the cost and you usually have to buy things in bulk. I just throw a box of granola bars and some cereal cups in our checked luggage.

Agree..Hard one to work out but look for combo meals that are big enough to split between the two of you...

Food is a tough one. Other than the travel, it's what we budget the most for. I am currently on a mission to eat at every single restaurant on property. Prices are on most of the restaurant menus. The first time we went I was scouring menus to get a good budget idea... alicemouse was right on the money, so to speak as far as averages go!

Are y'all going to fly down or drive? You mentioned a cooler.... We usually have a cooler in the car on the ride down along with a snack bag. There is also the option of free cups of water in the parks from the counter service restaurants. We've also taken in frozen bottles so that we have a cold one later in the afternoon, along with the flavor packs to put in them. Hydration is important, it won't be blazing hot like summertime but still, the parks are big and there is lots to see and do.

You can eat your way around most parks using the walk up counter services, Epcot especially. Doing this for two, full day could be $100. The resturants at Disney and the resorts are a fifth theme park. If you are foodies there is no better place on earth. Some resturants could easily be $80 per person, and that depends on the libations you choose. If not foodies, the counter services at all the parks are fantastic. Highly recommend doing that around world showcase in Epcot.

Hi and welcome!!
I agree with a lot of the above. There are two of us also. We try to eat breakfast in the room very cheaply and pick up coffee in the parks since we are coffee fiends! lol We almost always eat at the counter service rests. just because we don't eat huge meals and the sit-down rests. are expensive. If we do eat at a sit-down rest., it is a special occasion or we managed to get an adr before our trip. We pick up free water also like JMed does. That eliminates water bottles for us. Usually after staying 6-7 days, we have a food bill of around 400-500. Our DD and her DH just had a trip in May and they are in their 20s. They took cereal bars for breakfast, some snacks in their suitcases, (they flew), and carried their camelbak hydration pack. Shared meals and actually didn't spend too much. Don't have their total but she said it wasn't bad for Disney. Good luck!

We always do the Dining Plan, simply for the convenience. It would most definitely be cheaper to pay for our meals out of pocket, but we just consider the dining plan as part of the vacation package and eating is "free" once we get there. If I had to budget for meals, based on the way we eat, I'd probably budget around $300- $350/day for 2 adults. Breakfast is hit or miss for us. Sometimes we eat it. Sometimes we don't. Lunch is always counter service in the parks. But dinner....aah, dinner. We ALWAYS do Signature Dining for dinner, and it ALWAYS includes adult beverages. By using the Dining Plan, I don't have "sticker shock" when our dinner bill comes because it's already paid for (except for those adult beverages).

I like to look at the menus of the places we might go to ahead of time and kind of set a budget that way. I usually will have 3 or 4 in each park..... aside from our ADR's .....that way we can choose from depending on what we are in the mood for. We also bring our water bottles and some snacks from home to save a little that way.

Of course when we do the dining plan, we always go for the most expensive! But still bring our own drinks in.... except Epcot!

Scrappy and I are party of 2 also, but we usually have a table service breakfast & dinner. We either skip lunch or have a snack of some sort, maybe even split something like a nutella waffle w/fruit.

Breakfast:
Lobster Hash Highlight Item - Two Poached Eggs, Lobster hash, Asparagus, and Hollandaise Sauce $18.99
Vanilla-laced French Toast - Brioche Bread dipped in Vanilla-flavored Batter $11.99
Coffee $ 2.79x2 = $5.58

Breakfast total - $36.56

Lunch - Nutella and Fresh Fruit Waffle Sandwich $6.69

water throughout the day = 4 x2.75 = $11.00

Dinner - in park -
Scrappy - Angus Chuck Cheeseburger - served on a flour-dusted kaiser roll with lettuce, tomato, and onion. Choose from the following toppings: Cheddar, American cheese, Bacon, Grilled Mushrooms or Grilled Onions $15.99

Me - Chicken Strawberry Salad Highlight Item - fresh garden greens, grilled chicken breast, cucumbers, fresh strawberries, gorgonzola cheese, tossed in a white zinfandel vinaigrette dressing $15.49

Iced tea X2 = $5.98 (2.99 @)

Dessert - The Plaza Restaurant Sundae - ice cream (your choice of chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, mint chocolate chip, cookies and cream, no sugar added raspberry sorbet, no sugar added butter pecan or non-fat chocolate-vanilla swirl) with hot fudge, strawberry sauce, crushed pineapple, topped with whipped cream, chopped nuts and a cherry $5.49

Total for the day - $97.20 this is a very cheap day, not our typical.

Change that up for dinner and if we did BOG, dinner alone would be over $110.00 and none of this includes tips.
If we did California Grill for dinner, that would probably be over $250 just for dinner, including alcoholic drinks. No tip yet either.

Now we have TIW, so we get 20% off at most places and usually always leave an 18%-20% tips. More if service is exceptional.

If you really want to try to figure out want you are going to want to budget for food, your best bet would be to check out the menu's on http://allears.net/dining/menu/ and start adding up what you might want to eat.

Hope this can put some things into perspective.

ummmmm where is this Lobster Hash you speak of?

That breakfast is from The Grand Floridian Cafe. It has very quickly become one of if not our favorite breakfast spots.

Hahaha! This is exactly what Ken and I love at the Grand Floridian Cafe for breakfast.

Ken and I are very similar to MrHub and scrappy when it comes to food at WDW. We love a nice sit down breakfast and dinner and will snack throughout the parks. Great dining is part of the vacation for us. We easily spend a minimum of $150/day on food for the 2 of us, but if eating at a Signature restaurant for dinner, it could be upwards of $300 for the day. You can spend a lot or a little - just depends on your preference.

To save money, I like to bring my own light breakfast food (granola bars and cereal), do table service for lunch since it's less expensive at many restaurants, and do counter service in the evening. If you're okay with having your main meal in the afternoon, this will help with the budget. I can't gives you a cost estimate; although I try to be somewhat frugal, I don't budget for food or count up what I've spent.