When it comes to planning your trip to Walt Disney World, one of the things you HAVE to budget for is where to eat. The tickets to the park and the hotel are expensive and are important to budget, but a lot of people forget about budgeting for food. You can easily spent over $100 a day on food for a family of 4 or more if you don’t plan ahead of time.
Save Money and Pack Snacks
One of the biggest tips you can follow is to pack snacks. Paying for snacks for everyone multiple times a day will add up. When you are walking around a park all day, you’re going to be burning a lot of calories and get hungry. Make sure to pack a few things to eat that won’t melt, doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and is small enough to pack enough for everyone.
Trust me you are going to want to sit down for lunch or dinner and have an enjoyable character meal or fun themed restraunt.
Spend your money doing that. Not, buying popcorn for $10 a bucket or a soft pretzal for $7-$10 each.
These are the items I like to pack in my bag for the park:
- Individual bagged chips or pretzals
- Granola bars
- Apples (don’t slice them or they’ll get mushy and brown)
- Trail mix
- Smart Pop
And if you aren’t able to get the individual bags that is totally fine, prepare them yourself! Buy sandwich bags and bag them up so no one argues over who got more or less.
Buy Your Meals From Quick Service Locations
Yes, everyone wants to eat at Cinderalla’s castle or Beast’s Castle when they go to Magic Kingdon, but they are expensive to go to.
If this is your one and only time you are planning a trip to Walt Disney World, than I would say splurge and pick one of them.
If you are planning to go more than once in your lifetime, I would say skip the character meals right now. Not all the characters are available right now because of Covid restrictions and the atmosphere isn’t the same without them.
One of my favorite quick service places to eat at at MK is Cosmic’s Ray Starlight Cafe. Their food tastes great and you can get unlimited toppings from their topping bar.
I recommend splitting meals too. For example, at Cosmic’s Ray they have an adult chicken strip meal (4 strips) and fries for $9.99 or a kids meal (2 strips) and fries for $7.99. If you have two kids, you should buy the adult meal and split it and pay $9.99 verses paying $15.98 for two kids meals.
A lot of times adults can split an adult meal too or even purchase kid meals for everyone.
Don’t Buy Bottle Water At The Park
Whatever you do, DON’T buy a bottle of water from the park. You can go to any quick service counter and ask for a cup of ice water for FREE!
Or you can bring your own bottle waters to the park with you and ask for a cup of ice at the quick service counters. A bottle of water cost $3.50 or more. I can buy a whole case of 40 count of water at Costco.
Eat Breakfast and Drink Coffee At Your Hotel
For most of your trip I recommend that you pack non perishable items for breakfast and make coffee at your hotel. That will save you hundreds on your trip by eliminating this meal time all together at the park.
Fresh coffee at most quick service places at MK start at $3.50, breakfast sandwiches are around $6.99 and up, and donuts are $5.50 and up. That can add up quick for our family of 5.
So, we opt to bring instant oatmeal packets, dry cereal, or bagels to have in the room. That way you are also not starting your day in the park full and groggy from eating greasy, heavy foods. You want to eat light because it is a lot of walking and it is hot in Florida.
There is a Starbucks at the Main Street Café right when you go into Magic Kingdom. If you do have a gift card, you can use it there and you can still pay through the Starbucks app. So, I would recommend bringing gift cards loaded onto your account before coming to the park.
Eat on Disney World’s Dining Plans
One of the best ways to save money so you and your family can enjoy all kinds of foods to eat are the dining plans. Currently, these aren’t available. Hopefully, they will bring them back soon.
You pay ahead of time, so when you are on your trip you do not have to worry about paying for you food. Unless, you go over what is lotted for your plan.
Keep an eye out for Disney to announce for these to come back.
Conclusion….
These are just some ideas on how to save some money while going to one of the most expensive places for most. I want to enjoy a trip like this with my family without completely breaking the bank.
Check out my article on how to save up to 25% on resorts with a Disney+ membership.
We were able to upgrade to an even better resort with this huge savings! Have to book now because they are only giving so many offers out to each resort.