Eating cheaply in Disneyland Florida-is it possible?

[rollonthesummer]

We have been investigating food costs and it seems that people online are estimating £150 per day for a family on food in Disney which is going to be over £2000 for a fortnight just on food!! Surely this doesn't have to be the case?! We're in a hotel for a week and then a villa.

Do the hotels in Disneyland give you breakfast?

How much is a burger/chips/drink type meal per person?

Any cheapy tips would be very much appreciated.

at the magic kingdom i think i paid about $12 for a hot dog and a drink

dont know about the disney hotels but id just suggest getting a good breakfast off site if its not included
tbh the heat put me off eating so thats all i ate all day

Food is ridiculously overpriced in Disney, but when you're off site, breakfast in villa before you go in, and take drinks & snacks to have while you're queuing, then it's easy to eat out cheaply once you're out again. It'll help off-set the silly Disney prices.

No breakfast included at the Disney on-site hotels, but I imagine the off site ones include it. I would stop at a Walmart and do a shop there so you can self cater as much as possible.

Eating out in Florida can be very cheap and delicious.... Eating out at Disney is a bloody fortune. Having said that even counter service meals are huge over there so can be shared if you don't have massive appetites.

Check out the dibb. There will be so many threads on their forums about eating out on a budget and little tips about where you get the best value.

We had a dining plan and still had 67 credits left at the end. Portions are enormous. We stayed ina. Disney hotel but if in a villa have a large breakfast, grab a snack for lunch in the parks and then eat offsite in the evening.
Look on the dibb for lots of eating cheap,y recommendations.portions are enormous everywhere so pizza etc you don't order one each, ypu get a couple and share. There are macdonalds etc as well outside the park or you could BBQ at the villa.

Generally hotels in the US are room only. The breakfasts in our hotel were ridiculously huge and quite expensive. There was a Starbucks in out hotel so I ended up buying coffee and croissants there as it was cheaper than the hotel breakfasts.

Eating out in Disney/Universal is not cheap. Once you are away from the theme parks it is much, much cheaper. If you can get to Walmart and buy food and water there it is even cheaper still.

We found that the Disney parks wouldn't let anyone in with cool boxes so if you are taking in food in hot weather it won't be very nice. We also spent a lot on buying water. We always took our own, but it was so hot that we bought ice cold water to cool down. The water fountains just weren't cold enough.

We particularly enjoyed eating out at Sweet Tomatoes and Pei Wei. Anywhere that is self service saves you £££ on tips and service charges because they expect between 18% and 23% of the bill in tips if you go for somewhere with table service.

Also, they add tax on to everything, so the price displayed is not what you pay.

we are just back- none of us are keen on food in Disney.

So we bought pizzas from Walmart, cooked them in our apartment before we went out and ate cold pizza for lunch. Along with fruit and salad.
(so take some food storage containers)
We also took bagels and bought cooked chicken.

Then just buy drinks at Disney! And much better quality.

"So we bought pizzas from Walmart, cooked them in our apartment before we went out and ate cold pizza for lunch. Along with fruit and salad.
(so take some food storage containers)
We also took bagels and bought cooked chicken."

I wouldn't have wanted to do that in 36 degree heat though. They wouldn't let people in with cool boxes when we were there in July.

We took food in with us, just in containers with cool cubes.

This site shows up to date menus and prices, I've selected one quick service place as an example www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/dining/diningdetail.cfm?restaurant.id=265

A fast food meal looks to be around $10 including chips and a drink a further $3. I think there would be taxes on top, but the beauty of self service is that you don't need to pay a further 20% on tips.

When you're at the villa, it should be reasonably easy. Just self cater for breakfast, use the fast food restaurants at lunch and then either cook your own meal at home or places like CiCis and Golden Nugget offer super cheap buffets. Can't verify the quality as we tended to eat at the Olive Garden which is more mid range but not super pricey.

The water at the fountains tasted a bit off to me, we brought in bottles and then just bit the bullet and bought more when we needed to.