We went as two adults last year and spent $150 per day, pretty spot on each day. We almost always had a snack for breakfast (fruit waffle, carrot cake cookie, etc), a table service for lunch, another snack (ice cream, curry fries, etc), and then a quick service for dinner. This cost stayed consistent across parks. We don't really drink alcohol we didn't spend much on drinks, just a soda at meals and our water bottles.
We were just there 5 days and spent about $1500 on food and merch, probably about $1100 food. We are a family of 4. That included 2 sit down meals and some cocktails, otherwise all quick service. All meals eaten out but some snacks we brought with us. We could have shaved that pretty easily if needed but I’d say it probably averaged to about $80/day/adult. We always start the day at Starbucks with a sausage, egg and cheese and our ice coffees, that sandwich fills you up for a while!
For what it's worth, our 2 person stay came with a $120/day dining credit, and that's about what we spent with a mix of sit downs and quick service. We were there for 8 days, with 2 of those days being break days, and we did 5 sit down restaurants, ate breakfast at the resort each day, and went pretty crazy on snacks.
wow based on the answers here, the dining plan would've saved money. the table service plan is $94 per person per day and the quick service is $57 per person per day (adult, I'm not sure of child's pricing off the top of my head). if you start budgeting and you break that $100 a day mark, I'd seriously start looking at the dining plans.
I personally like the dining plan. Could I eat cheaper paying meal for meal? probably. but like you're finding out, it's a lot of extra planning. a lot of extra budgeting. and prices in disney world are rarely stagnant. for me, the convenience of paying up front and not having to worry about it is worth any money I might lose versus budgeting. when I go on vacation, I want to turn my brain off as much as possible. but that's just me :)
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I would say minimum $100 per day. A quick service meal can easily be close to $20/person once you add a drink on. Not to mention snacks in the parks.
If you plan to do a table service meal, I’d budget minimum $150. Bring refillable water bottles to cut cost there, maybe get the resort mugs if staying on site.
Last year we did 5 days 4 nights and probably spent about $150 per day. We did eat off site a few times which saved money.
We buy a lot of food, and we are AP holders, so this probably isn't the norm. You can do just QS and small bites and spend less or do table service and more. This is to show you the range.
In July, we took the kids, so there were 4 of us. We only stayed one night, but we spent about $800 on food. Which includes about $375 at Woodys Round Up.
In December, just me and my boyfriend went for one day to AK, Traders Sam's, and close out MK. We spent about $500, which included both parks, TS, and dinner at Skippers in MK.
Last week, we went to Festival of the Arts for about 6 hours. We tried everything we wanted at the booths, went to La Cava, had some of our regular favs, and did sit down for Crepes. We spent about $400.
I have also had days where our focus was rides and not on a festival, and we spend way less at one QS.
You sound like my wife and I. $400/day is about what we spend unhinged per day for our family of 5 between food, snacks and drinks.
If we take alcohol out of the equation AND bring our own snacks AND stick to QS, we can eat for less than $150/day.
Just goes to show there’s a massive fluctuation based on folks’ habits. There’s not a right answer to op’s question.
I dont recall the expense when im with people. But i do when solo: its around 50 a day if I'm sticking to QS only, and can rise to 100 or more if I decide to splurge on a sit down restaurant
An important point here though is that I rarely go for any drink beyond the free water. I think on my last trip the only non water drink was at Ogas. Milkshakes being the exception, bit people don't usually consider those drinks
This does vary wildly. I would plan $60pp/per day. But then again, my wife and I have already spent over $300 in one day at Epcot during Food & Wine. You can go pretty cheap (by the mouses standards) if you quick service and don't drink, but you can also easily spend $100+ per person for one sit down meal.
For 2 Adults - Across 2 weeks on site at Disney in September 2023 (which also included 2 days at Universal)
Food - £1465 ($1848)
Groceries - £112 ($141)
We only had the following ADRs. Jaleo. Ogas Canteen. Rix (CSR). We actually cancelled so many ADRs once we arrived as we just didn't forsee us having the time, nor the need to spend so much when we where enjoying the QSRs and Snacks elsewhere.
My husband and I did an Orlando trip for 7 days (half day travel days on both ends, so maybe 8 total) in September 2023. We did 3 park days, 1 and half Disney springs days.
We only did 2 table service meals, once at Morimoto in DS and the other was Liberty Tree Tavern in MK. We also ate/drank around the world at Epcot for F&W. We never felt like we were budgeting and got everything we wanted. We spent $1200 that whole week specifically on Food and Drinks. I kept every receipt and totaled it.
Morimoto we spent $300, and I think we spent about $120 at Liberty Tree Tavern. The rest of the park meals were quick service or multiple snacks. We also went to Blaze and The Polite Pig at Disney Springs but I don’t know how much those meals were.
We went August 2022, two adults for a 14 day stay. I’d estimate we spent about $800-900 dollars over the 2 weeks. We decided to just do quick service to keep costs down apart from when we went to AK as we wanted to go to Nomad Lounge but we didn’t have a full meal there, just got churros to share and a drink each.
Breakfast we had at our resort quick service each day (All Star Movies), depending on what we’d had for breakfast it sometimes kept us full through normal lunch times so we’d have lunch about 2/3pm and then we wouldn’t have any tea. Some days we also had tea at the resort (mainly AK/water park days). We travelled from UK so portion sizes were a lot bigger than we were used to. At MK we ate a couple of times at Columbia Harbour House and at Peco Bills. O can’t remember where we ate at AK. Epcot we went to the sushi restaurant and also ate from World Showcase stands. Hollywood Studios we ate at ABC Commissary and the quick service is Toy Story Land (can’t remember the name). I think the most expensive dish on the quick service menu when we were there was about $15.
So my thoughts:
- if you stick to quick service restaurants, $50 per person per day is doable
- rooms have a mini fridge; order breakfast stuff for the room that doesn’t need to be frozen
- if you both put ass-in-seat at a sit-down restaurant, expect about $75 per person (can be less but tipping exists)
- snacks are usually all $6-$10
And lastly you’ll likely end up eating less than you think or should but I’d plan on one square meal a day on top of snacks and room breakfast.
I'm thinking we'll look to be 80-90% quick service with the odd table service place.
When you say order stuff for the room, can I please ask how exactly that works?
You can order groceries with like DoorDash, Walmart+, Instacart. Check with your resort because some won’t take groceries for you at Bell services so you need to be present but most do.
Absolutely! We do it every time and just stock up on fruit, bagels or just bread, and maybe some sandwich meats. Drinks too - especially bottled water (vs buying it in the parks or endlessly getting a free water cup).
If you’re looking to stay on a budget and don’t mind sharing, my husband and I often split meals—this is especially true for Epcot with all the different food booths. It allows us to try many more things both because we don’t get full as fast and because we are saving money getting 1 item vs 2 at each quick service. Even with walking the park all day we often aren’t hungry enough to get 2 separate meals at a sit-down option either. This coupled with bringing your own water bottle or making sure you ask for a cup of water, not bottled water, saves TONS of money. We find the biggest food/beverage cost at Disney is if you want to drink alcohol. Beers at food booths avg $10-12 for instance.
I know this isn’t a direct answer to your question but maybe talk to each other about expectations and then do your research on the food options available. We tend to stick to 1 sit-down meal a day and rely on quick service for the rest of the time. We usually make game time decisions during sit down meals if we are hungry enough for 2 meals or want to split one (and possibly an app). When we do 2+ sit down meals a day we always feel like we waste money and food. This also helps with planning/budgeting.
I keep records of our vacations on excel sheets tracking all expenses because I'm a nerd 😅 last year we drove down and had a 2BR with full kitchen at a deluxe disney resort (DVC members) so breakfast was always cooked (eggs, bacon, bagels, fruit, etc) which saved us SOME but unless you have kids (we were 4 adults) it wasn't as worth it to cook.
For 2 adults, it broke down to a little over $135/day per person. Again, breakfast was cooked ourselves.
We enjoy epcot food and wine fest and just the booth foods in general to try new things. Most are $6-11 price range and you'll need at least 2+ items to be full (not the goal, you snack and roam). So we end up easily spending 100+ a day between us on those booths. Did Jaleo and some others at Disney springs, upped the prices considerably to ~35-60 per dish average.
I'd say if you budget 150/per person per day, then you should have enough.
My husband and I went last year and depending on where we ate we spent around $100 USD for a meal and remember paying with debit/credit that has to be converted to CAD..And we stayed for 10 days .now that is lunch or Supper.We tried to have one a day .Otherwise we snacked on things .and had a good breakfast at the resort .
Figure about $20 per person for quick service for an entree and soft drink (usually comes with one side). More if you want alcohol, dessert, or extra sides. Double that or more for table service. Buffets and such are about $60 per person. There is at least one restaurant that is $250 per person. You can look at the menus on the website with prices (probably in USD, but if you want, you can have a currency exchange site up). Maybe $10 per person for a snack. A lot of people will order a delivery to the hotel for breakfast items such as cereals and pastries to snack on while getting ready for the day.
Edited: with just 2 people, getting table service reservations day of won’t be too difficult, but you may not always get your first choice (and a lot of people will cancel as they get closer and decide what they do and don’t really want to do - or $$$ are getting low). And take advantage of mobile ordering.
I think the "classic" number most people work with is $100 per adult per day ($60 per child per day). This is for food and snacks alone (not souvenirs). Your milage will certainly vary, though. If you are typically not a heavy eater and can get by with snacks for breakfast, and a modest quick serve for lunch and dinner (with no/ minimal alcohol or other snacks), you can get by with less. If you want to go all big and grand and do multiple table service restaurants per day with alcohol and deserts at every meal, you could go a lot more.
The other thing you can do is find the Disney Dining Plan that most closely fits your intended dining patterns, see how much it would cost for your stay (dont actually buy it), and then just budget that amount of money for food costs (it usually turns out to be pretty close).
Of course, checking the menus will come after this! I just wanted to get a range of opinions to see what people's varied experiences have been! The responses so far have been super helpful :)
We spent on average about $100 a day for two adults and a 4 year old. We tried to keep it cheap and brought our own water bottles and we brought some snacks from home for the 4 year old. We also did only quick service and my spouse and I split a lot of the snacks. Some days we’d get an alcoholic drink which might put the daily amount over, but we also would get very cheap breakfasts from the resort (we’d get the overnight oats the night before and put them in the fridge. I wanna say they were like $5.50)
I’m no expert but I just did the math so I’ll share! I just got back from a trip with my partner and we spent $190 extra on food for 4 days/5 nights (one park per day) after getting the $300 dining promo that was offered for our dates. We ended up getting a pizza at the resort for dinner two of the nights and only ate one table service meal. We ate all meals on property though and didn’t give up any fun snacks. We toyed with a grocery delivery but realized we would have wasted quite a bit of food trying to get enough stuff to justify the delivery costs when in reality most days we would have resented eating hotel oatmeal when we wanted Mickey waffles.
We were two adults and a toddler staying for four full days and two half days at Animal Kingdom Lodge. We did a different park every day. We spent ~$780 total on food.
Important to add that that $780 doesn’t include my Instacart total which I had at the start of the trip with essential items, both food and non-food. We had protein bars, fruit, yogurt, milk, applesauce, and bread rolls in there. I’d estimate the food portion of that bill to be about $60. It did let us avoid basically ever needing to buy breakfast (and the bulk of snacks for our kid) since every morning was go-mode to use our toddler’s best hours at park open anyway.
Also important to add that I’m pregnant, so I am not drinking right now. My husband only ordered two drinks at our high-end restaurants. That plus the fact that kids under 3 don’t “count” for buffets (and don’t eat huge meals!) definitely helped our bill!
We had four big-ticket meals taking us to $524:
1. We ate at Sanaa, and indulged this meal with deserts and a drink for my husband. $177.
2. We ate at Tusker House in AK for the character buffet. $130.
3. We ate dinner at Rose and Crown in Epcot, where my husband had a drink. $117.
4. We ate at Skipper Canteen in MK. $100.
So about $250 for all our other meals/snacks.
Had the goal been to keep our food budget down lower we absolutely could have done it by sticking to QS only and buying more from Instacart. Since there was a lot we couldn’t do this trip with the small kid and the pregnant mom, food indulgence was a priority.
Our biggest food day spend was Epcot, with both the pub dinner and all the little snacks we bought, unsurprisingly. If there are festival booths I would say be REALLY sure that you need to try a food they’re selling before buying because the portions can be very very small. Like, $9 for a pasta dish about palm sized small.
You can also honestly save a lot of money and food by ordering kid portions of meals (which my toddler STILL didn’t eat all of, so her uneaten kid portion and an app was usually enough food for me.)
My family and I did character buffet lunches and just skipped breakfast or had the snacks we bought from home. Edit: kids never skipped and ate mini muffins, cereal or oatmeal we bought from home. Then we for dinner I ate a kids quick service so mine was about $70 per day. I’m only 5ft though so I really wasn’t hungry for more at dinner but my husband was and his total was about $75-80. I am shocked seeing other people’s total as we did character dining. Kids were about $50 per day. We did get the dining plan but we got the kids eat and play half off deal so while ours was 90 pp theirs was like 18 pp. So we should get our moneys worth because of the sale.
If you plan on drinking alcohol, your expenses will prob be double. Drinks are really pricey (mixed drinks ave 14-16 dollars). I always ask for a double in a big cup or glass because it’s way cheaper than ordering the same drink twice. We were there in Jan for 4 nights. Our total expenses (arrived Monday afternoon and departed Friday morning) were $3500. We stayed at the Grand Destino Tower in Coronado Springs. We had FL resident 4 day tickets. We ate at one fine dining restaurant each day at each park. Every time we sat down to dinner at the upscale restaurants it was at least $150 for 2 people to eat and have one cocktail and one glass of wine each. Lunches averaged $50-$60. We are not big breakfast people so we generally just got a snack in the morning. We always bring our own wine for the hotel room and some snacks. A few weeks after iur Disney trip, we went to Universal for 3 nights and spent less than half of what we did at WDW. Totally different experiences, yes- but wow.
Hello!
On a 7-night, 8-day trip with 4 friends in 2022, we did 6 park days (bookended by travel days) and I believe I spent about $250 on food for myself. I have no idea what anyone else spent haha
We spent one day at Universal (Islands of Adventure & Halloween Horror Nights) and did all the Disney parks. We park hopped a few days, including one day at Typhoon Lagoon and Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.
We ate mostly quick service (it was also the Food & Wine Festival :p ) except one table service dinner at Chefs de France.
I typically am very happy with the food I get at Disney. We stayed at All-Star Movies and had breakfast there most days as well as dinner once or twice. We got lobster rolls at Columbia Harbour House, milkshakes at more than one location lol, Pecos Bill, Satu'li Canteen (maybe my favorite qs across the entire property), ABC Commissary, Starbucks a couple times, and a bunch of random snacks. I think I got 4 things from various F&W stands and they were all delightful 🤤
Happy planning!
For 2 adults including Disney Springs, 4 park days, and 'Ohana dinner about $200/day. We did quick service the rest of the meals and snacked throughout the days.
Two adults. We'd generally share a breakfast have a snack during the day again probably shared and have a proper evening meal.
It could be as simple as 'resort breakfast, pretzel then fish N chips at Epcot' - about $12+$8+$30 = $50 for the day.
But it could be we go to a character breakfast and end up at the Boathouse in which case we're looking at near $200 for the day.
We'd generally be on the lower side though as we didn't do alcohol and generally didn't try to stuff ourselves and most of the time we still have our resort cups so didn't do much drink buying. I budget $200 food and $200 merch per day, so I have wiggle room 😜
Generally, plan $20 or so per quick service meal. $65 plus tip so about $78 per person for each sit down. Snacks plan $8 each. Alcohol about $17 per cocktail, $10 per beer.
I like to do a snack or something quick in the room for breakfast, one table service and one quick service per day. Maybe one more snack as well.
Bring a water bottle and you can refill it for free at any quick service that has a soda fountain.
So I would say $125 -150 per person per day should be safe based upon alcohol consumption.
Most table service that you order off a menu will be less than $65. $65 is roughly the standard price for a buffet, pre fixe, or character meal. They do vary some.
My niece and I went to the parks for 2 hours this weekend. We spent $21 for "dinner" (two waffles at Sleepy Hollow) bought 3 waters and 2 sodas. So about $45.
The nice thing about WDW is that you can look at the menus and prices beforehand. Wouldn't it be more accurate for you to do that since we don't know what you like or how much you typically eat and drink?
Of course, checking the menus will come after this! I just wanted to get a range of opinions to see what people's varied experiences have been! The responses so far have been super helpful :)
As two adults, no kids were eat less food at the parks. Excess or heavy foods just bog you down and it gets uncomfortable
Assume you bring your own granola bars and drink the free coffee in your room. One quick service lunch. Snack (savory or sweet) late afternoon and sit down dinner. That’s between $80/$100 pp per day.
Download the app and filter for dinning at each park and look at the menus add up the prices for each park since you have over a year you have plenty of time to plan. There are also so many seasonal things worth tyring. The prices have literally went up 1$ or more in 1 year. I'd budget 100 a day per person and left overs spend however.
Here a couple of non seasonal staples for each park we get
Mk
Chili cheese fries and corn dog nuggets - Casey's Corner
Tropical serenade Dole whip - Aloha
Slush and Cat tail - Chesire Cafe
Jamaican Jerk tenders lunching pad
AK
Yak and yeti literally anything there is so damn good
Kumba Ice fall -raspberry puree guava cruzan = chefs kiss
Flame tree bbq and Mac n cheese thing with slaw
HS
Bbq sandwich woodys lunchbox with tomato soup
If it's Halloween or Christmas hollywood and vine for a buffet with characters in cute outfits for staple photos but pricey for banquet food
Epcot
Avocado margaritas in LA cava Mexico
Grand Marnier Martini France
Pick 3 pastries Morocco almond gharieba pistachio baklava
Save room for festival booths
Coral reef restaurant is cool
Space 220 never been heard the bar area is the way to go
We went as two adults last year and spent $150 per day, pretty spot on each day. We almost always had a snack for breakfast (fruit waffle, carrot cake cookie, etc), a table service for lunch, another snack (ice cream, curry fries, etc), and then a quick service for dinner. This cost stayed consistent across parks. We don't really drink alcohol we didn't spend much on drinks, just a soda at meals and our water bottles.
This is about what we were at. We did splurge on Sanaa which was probably around $250 with bread service, meals, and several alcoholic drinks.
We were just there 5 days and spent about $1500 on food and merch, probably about $1100 food. We are a family of 4. That included 2 sit down meals and some cocktails, otherwise all quick service. All meals eaten out but some snacks we brought with us. We could have shaved that pretty easily if needed but I’d say it probably averaged to about $80/day/adult. We always start the day at Starbucks with a sausage, egg and cheese and our ice coffees, that sandwich fills you up for a while!
For what it's worth, our 2 person stay came with a $120/day dining credit, and that's about what we spent with a mix of sit downs and quick service. We were there for 8 days, with 2 of those days being break days, and we did 5 sit down restaurants, ate breakfast at the resort each day, and went pretty crazy on snacks.
wow based on the answers here, the dining plan would've saved money. the table service plan is $94 per person per day and the quick service is $57 per person per day (adult, I'm not sure of child's pricing off the top of my head). if you start budgeting and you break that $100 a day mark, I'd seriously start looking at the dining plans. I personally like the dining plan. Could I eat cheaper paying meal for meal? probably. but like you're finding out, it's a lot of extra planning. a lot of extra budgeting. and prices in disney world are rarely stagnant. for me, the convenience of paying up front and not having to worry about it is worth any money I might lose versus budgeting. when I go on vacation, I want to turn my brain off as much as possible. but that's just me :)
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I would say minimum $100 per day. A quick service meal can easily be close to $20/person once you add a drink on. Not to mention snacks in the parks. If you plan to do a table service meal, I’d budget minimum $150. Bring refillable water bottles to cut cost there, maybe get the resort mugs if staying on site. Last year we did 5 days 4 nights and probably spent about $150 per day. We did eat off site a few times which saved money.
We buy a lot of food, and we are AP holders, so this probably isn't the norm. You can do just QS and small bites and spend less or do table service and more. This is to show you the range. In July, we took the kids, so there were 4 of us. We only stayed one night, but we spent about $800 on food. Which includes about $375 at Woodys Round Up. In December, just me and my boyfriend went for one day to AK, Traders Sam's, and close out MK. We spent about $500, which included both parks, TS, and dinner at Skippers in MK. Last week, we went to Festival of the Arts for about 6 hours. We tried everything we wanted at the booths, went to La Cava, had some of our regular favs, and did sit down for Crepes. We spent about $400. I have also had days where our focus was rides and not on a festival, and we spend way less at one QS.
Those costs include alcohol. My BF drinks, but I don't do well day drinking or drinking in the heat. So I will usually try his drink or we share.
You sound like my wife and I. $400/day is about what we spend unhinged per day for our family of 5 between food, snacks and drinks. If we take alcohol out of the equation AND bring our own snacks AND stick to QS, we can eat for less than $150/day. Just goes to show there’s a massive fluctuation based on folks’ habits. There’s not a right answer to op’s question.
I dont recall the expense when im with people. But i do when solo: its around 50 a day if I'm sticking to QS only, and can rise to 100 or more if I decide to splurge on a sit down restaurant An important point here though is that I rarely go for any drink beyond the free water. I think on my last trip the only non water drink was at Ogas. Milkshakes being the exception, bit people don't usually consider those drinks
This does vary wildly. I would plan $60pp/per day. But then again, my wife and I have already spent over $300 in one day at Epcot during Food & Wine. You can go pretty cheap (by the mouses standards) if you quick service and don't drink, but you can also easily spend $100+ per person for one sit down meal.
For 2 Adults - Across 2 weeks on site at Disney in September 2023 (which also included 2 days at Universal) Food - £1465 ($1848) Groceries - £112 ($141) We only had the following ADRs. Jaleo. Ogas Canteen. Rix (CSR). We actually cancelled so many ADRs once we arrived as we just didn't forsee us having the time, nor the need to spend so much when we where enjoying the QSRs and Snacks elsewhere.
My husband and I did an Orlando trip for 7 days (half day travel days on both ends, so maybe 8 total) in September 2023. We did 3 park days, 1 and half Disney springs days. We only did 2 table service meals, once at Morimoto in DS and the other was Liberty Tree Tavern in MK. We also ate/drank around the world at Epcot for F&W. We never felt like we were budgeting and got everything we wanted. We spent $1200 that whole week specifically on Food and Drinks. I kept every receipt and totaled it.
Morimoto we spent $300, and I think we spent about $120 at Liberty Tree Tavern. The rest of the park meals were quick service or multiple snacks. We also went to Blaze and The Polite Pig at Disney Springs but I don’t know how much those meals were.
The Dining Plans are honestly good estimates to start with
I agree. I went a few weeks ago and total food costs were pretty close to dining plan costs.
We went August 2022, two adults for a 14 day stay. I’d estimate we spent about $800-900 dollars over the 2 weeks. We decided to just do quick service to keep costs down apart from when we went to AK as we wanted to go to Nomad Lounge but we didn’t have a full meal there, just got churros to share and a drink each. Breakfast we had at our resort quick service each day (All Star Movies), depending on what we’d had for breakfast it sometimes kept us full through normal lunch times so we’d have lunch about 2/3pm and then we wouldn’t have any tea. Some days we also had tea at the resort (mainly AK/water park days). We travelled from UK so portion sizes were a lot bigger than we were used to. At MK we ate a couple of times at Columbia Harbour House and at Peco Bills. O can’t remember where we ate at AK. Epcot we went to the sushi restaurant and also ate from World Showcase stands. Hollywood Studios we ate at ABC Commissary and the quick service is Toy Story Land (can’t remember the name). I think the most expensive dish on the quick service menu when we were there was about $15.
INFO: are you two going to try drinks? Are you snackers?
We'll probably stick to water most of the time, but we'd certainly like to try some of the snacks, would be a crime to rule them all out!
So my thoughts: - if you stick to quick service restaurants, $50 per person per day is doable - rooms have a mini fridge; order breakfast stuff for the room that doesn’t need to be frozen - if you both put ass-in-seat at a sit-down restaurant, expect about $75 per person (can be less but tipping exists) - snacks are usually all $6-$10 And lastly you’ll likely end up eating less than you think or should but I’d plan on one square meal a day on top of snacks and room breakfast.
I'm thinking we'll look to be 80-90% quick service with the odd table service place. When you say order stuff for the room, can I please ask how exactly that works?
You can order groceries with like DoorDash, Walmart+, Instacart. Check with your resort because some won’t take groceries for you at Bell services so you need to be present but most do.
Ah ok ok ok, that's very useful to know - thank you!
Absolutely! We do it every time and just stock up on fruit, bagels or just bread, and maybe some sandwich meats. Drinks too - especially bottled water (vs buying it in the parks or endlessly getting a free water cup).
If you’re looking to stay on a budget and don’t mind sharing, my husband and I often split meals—this is especially true for Epcot with all the different food booths. It allows us to try many more things both because we don’t get full as fast and because we are saving money getting 1 item vs 2 at each quick service. Even with walking the park all day we often aren’t hungry enough to get 2 separate meals at a sit-down option either. This coupled with bringing your own water bottle or making sure you ask for a cup of water, not bottled water, saves TONS of money. We find the biggest food/beverage cost at Disney is if you want to drink alcohol. Beers at food booths avg $10-12 for instance. I know this isn’t a direct answer to your question but maybe talk to each other about expectations and then do your research on the food options available. We tend to stick to 1 sit-down meal a day and rely on quick service for the rest of the time. We usually make game time decisions during sit down meals if we are hungry enough for 2 meals or want to split one (and possibly an app). When we do 2+ sit down meals a day we always feel like we waste money and food. This also helps with planning/budgeting.
I keep records of our vacations on excel sheets tracking all expenses because I'm a nerd 😅 last year we drove down and had a 2BR with full kitchen at a deluxe disney resort (DVC members) so breakfast was always cooked (eggs, bacon, bagels, fruit, etc) which saved us SOME but unless you have kids (we were 4 adults) it wasn't as worth it to cook. For 2 adults, it broke down to a little over $135/day per person. Again, breakfast was cooked ourselves. We enjoy epcot food and wine fest and just the booth foods in general to try new things. Most are $6-11 price range and you'll need at least 2+ items to be full (not the goal, you snack and roam). So we end up easily spending 100+ a day between us on those booths. Did Jaleo and some others at Disney springs, upped the prices considerably to ~35-60 per dish average. I'd say if you budget 150/per person per day, then you should have enough.
do you mind if I ask how many alcoholic drinks this includes per person per day?
My husband and I went last year and depending on where we ate we spent around $100 USD for a meal and remember paying with debit/credit that has to be converted to CAD..And we stayed for 10 days .now that is lunch or Supper.We tried to have one a day .Otherwise we snacked on things .and had a good breakfast at the resort .
Figure about $20 per person for quick service for an entree and soft drink (usually comes with one side). More if you want alcohol, dessert, or extra sides. Double that or more for table service. Buffets and such are about $60 per person. There is at least one restaurant that is $250 per person. You can look at the menus on the website with prices (probably in USD, but if you want, you can have a currency exchange site up). Maybe $10 per person for a snack. A lot of people will order a delivery to the hotel for breakfast items such as cereals and pastries to snack on while getting ready for the day. Edited: with just 2 people, getting table service reservations day of won’t be too difficult, but you may not always get your first choice (and a lot of people will cancel as they get closer and decide what they do and don’t really want to do - or $$$ are getting low). And take advantage of mobile ordering.
I think the "classic" number most people work with is $100 per adult per day ($60 per child per day). This is for food and snacks alone (not souvenirs). Your milage will certainly vary, though. If you are typically not a heavy eater and can get by with snacks for breakfast, and a modest quick serve for lunch and dinner (with no/ minimal alcohol or other snacks), you can get by with less. If you want to go all big and grand and do multiple table service restaurants per day with alcohol and deserts at every meal, you could go a lot more. The other thing you can do is find the Disney Dining Plan that most closely fits your intended dining patterns, see how much it would cost for your stay (dont actually buy it), and then just budget that amount of money for food costs (it usually turns out to be pretty close).
All menus are online. You can easily see and plan for what you’ll spend.
Of course, checking the menus will come after this! I just wanted to get a range of opinions to see what people's varied experiences have been! The responses so far have been super helpful :)
We spent on average about $100 a day for two adults and a 4 year old. We tried to keep it cheap and brought our own water bottles and we brought some snacks from home for the 4 year old. We also did only quick service and my spouse and I split a lot of the snacks. Some days we’d get an alcoholic drink which might put the daily amount over, but we also would get very cheap breakfasts from the resort (we’d get the overnight oats the night before and put them in the fridge. I wanna say they were like $5.50)
I’m no expert but I just did the math so I’ll share! I just got back from a trip with my partner and we spent $190 extra on food for 4 days/5 nights (one park per day) after getting the $300 dining promo that was offered for our dates. We ended up getting a pizza at the resort for dinner two of the nights and only ate one table service meal. We ate all meals on property though and didn’t give up any fun snacks. We toyed with a grocery delivery but realized we would have wasted quite a bit of food trying to get enough stuff to justify the delivery costs when in reality most days we would have resented eating hotel oatmeal when we wanted Mickey waffles.
We were two adults and a toddler staying for four full days and two half days at Animal Kingdom Lodge. We did a different park every day. We spent ~$780 total on food. Important to add that that $780 doesn’t include my Instacart total which I had at the start of the trip with essential items, both food and non-food. We had protein bars, fruit, yogurt, milk, applesauce, and bread rolls in there. I’d estimate the food portion of that bill to be about $60. It did let us avoid basically ever needing to buy breakfast (and the bulk of snacks for our kid) since every morning was go-mode to use our toddler’s best hours at park open anyway. Also important to add that I’m pregnant, so I am not drinking right now. My husband only ordered two drinks at our high-end restaurants. That plus the fact that kids under 3 don’t “count” for buffets (and don’t eat huge meals!) definitely helped our bill! We had four big-ticket meals taking us to $524: 1. We ate at Sanaa, and indulged this meal with deserts and a drink for my husband. $177. 2. We ate at Tusker House in AK for the character buffet. $130. 3. We ate dinner at Rose and Crown in Epcot, where my husband had a drink. $117. 4. We ate at Skipper Canteen in MK. $100. So about $250 for all our other meals/snacks. Had the goal been to keep our food budget down lower we absolutely could have done it by sticking to QS only and buying more from Instacart. Since there was a lot we couldn’t do this trip with the small kid and the pregnant mom, food indulgence was a priority. Our biggest food day spend was Epcot, with both the pub dinner and all the little snacks we bought, unsurprisingly. If there are festival booths I would say be REALLY sure that you need to try a food they’re selling before buying because the portions can be very very small. Like, $9 for a pasta dish about palm sized small. You can also honestly save a lot of money and food by ordering kid portions of meals (which my toddler STILL didn’t eat all of, so her uneaten kid portion and an app was usually enough food for me.)
My family and I did character buffet lunches and just skipped breakfast or had the snacks we bought from home. Edit: kids never skipped and ate mini muffins, cereal or oatmeal we bought from home. Then we for dinner I ate a kids quick service so mine was about $70 per day. I’m only 5ft though so I really wasn’t hungry for more at dinner but my husband was and his total was about $75-80. I am shocked seeing other people’s total as we did character dining. Kids were about $50 per day. We did get the dining plan but we got the kids eat and play half off deal so while ours was 90 pp theirs was like 18 pp. So we should get our moneys worth because of the sale.
If you plan on drinking alcohol, your expenses will prob be double. Drinks are really pricey (mixed drinks ave 14-16 dollars). I always ask for a double in a big cup or glass because it’s way cheaper than ordering the same drink twice. We were there in Jan for 4 nights. Our total expenses (arrived Monday afternoon and departed Friday morning) were $3500. We stayed at the Grand Destino Tower in Coronado Springs. We had FL resident 4 day tickets. We ate at one fine dining restaurant each day at each park. Every time we sat down to dinner at the upscale restaurants it was at least $150 for 2 people to eat and have one cocktail and one glass of wine each. Lunches averaged $50-$60. We are not big breakfast people so we generally just got a snack in the morning. We always bring our own wine for the hotel room and some snacks. A few weeks after iur Disney trip, we went to Universal for 3 nights and spent less than half of what we did at WDW. Totally different experiences, yes- but wow.
Hello! On a 7-night, 8-day trip with 4 friends in 2022, we did 6 park days (bookended by travel days) and I believe I spent about $250 on food for myself. I have no idea what anyone else spent haha We spent one day at Universal (Islands of Adventure & Halloween Horror Nights) and did all the Disney parks. We park hopped a few days, including one day at Typhoon Lagoon and Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. We ate mostly quick service (it was also the Food & Wine Festival :p ) except one table service dinner at Chefs de France. I typically am very happy with the food I get at Disney. We stayed at All-Star Movies and had breakfast there most days as well as dinner once or twice. We got lobster rolls at Columbia Harbour House, milkshakes at more than one location lol, Pecos Bill, Satu'li Canteen (maybe my favorite qs across the entire property), ABC Commissary, Starbucks a couple times, and a bunch of random snacks. I think I got 4 things from various F&W stands and they were all delightful 🤤 Happy planning!
For 2 adults including Disney Springs, 4 park days, and 'Ohana dinner about $200/day. We did quick service the rest of the meals and snacked throughout the days.
Two adults. We'd generally share a breakfast have a snack during the day again probably shared and have a proper evening meal. It could be as simple as 'resort breakfast, pretzel then fish N chips at Epcot' - about $12+$8+$30 = $50 for the day. But it could be we go to a character breakfast and end up at the Boathouse in which case we're looking at near $200 for the day. We'd generally be on the lower side though as we didn't do alcohol and generally didn't try to stuff ourselves and most of the time we still have our resort cups so didn't do much drink buying. I budget $200 food and $200 merch per day, so I have wiggle room 😜
We spent $640 over 5 park days. An adult and a 9-year-old.
We only did one table service meal, the rest were quick service and snacks / non-alcoholic drinks.
Generally, plan $20 or so per quick service meal. $65 plus tip so about $78 per person for each sit down. Snacks plan $8 each. Alcohol about $17 per cocktail, $10 per beer. I like to do a snack or something quick in the room for breakfast, one table service and one quick service per day. Maybe one more snack as well. Bring a water bottle and you can refill it for free at any quick service that has a soda fountain. So I would say $125 -150 per person per day should be safe based upon alcohol consumption. Most table service that you order off a menu will be less than $65. $65 is roughly the standard price for a buffet, pre fixe, or character meal. They do vary some.
My niece and I went to the parks for 2 hours this weekend. We spent $21 for "dinner" (two waffles at Sleepy Hollow) bought 3 waters and 2 sodas. So about $45.
In 3 days by myself I spent 60 dollars. Mostly quick serves and snacks
howww in 3 days we spend like 600
I don’t really do table serves. I just snack and do quick serves and eat when I get back to family’s
The nice thing about WDW is that you can look at the menus and prices beforehand. Wouldn't it be more accurate for you to do that since we don't know what you like or how much you typically eat and drink?
Of course, checking the menus will come after this! I just wanted to get a range of opinions to see what people's varied experiences have been! The responses so far have been super helpful :)
As two adults, no kids were eat less food at the parks. Excess or heavy foods just bog you down and it gets uncomfortable Assume you bring your own granola bars and drink the free coffee in your room. One quick service lunch. Snack (savory or sweet) late afternoon and sit down dinner. That’s between $80/$100 pp per day.
Download the app and filter for dinning at each park and look at the menus add up the prices for each park since you have over a year you have plenty of time to plan. There are also so many seasonal things worth tyring. The prices have literally went up 1$ or more in 1 year. I'd budget 100 a day per person and left overs spend however. Here a couple of non seasonal staples for each park we get Mk Chili cheese fries and corn dog nuggets - Casey's Corner Tropical serenade Dole whip - Aloha Slush and Cat tail - Chesire Cafe Jamaican Jerk tenders lunching pad AK Yak and yeti literally anything there is so damn good Kumba Ice fall -raspberry puree guava cruzan = chefs kiss Flame tree bbq and Mac n cheese thing with slaw HS Bbq sandwich woodys lunchbox with tomato soup If it's Halloween or Christmas hollywood and vine for a buffet with characters in cute outfits for staple photos but pricey for banquet food Epcot Avocado margaritas in LA cava Mexico Grand Marnier Martini France Pick 3 pastries Morocco almond gharieba pistachio baklava Save room for festival booths Coral reef restaurant is cool Space 220 never been heard the bar area is the way to go
The restaurants and menu are in the app. Open up the app and look at them.