As much as my DW and I both like to cook, we equate vacations with eating out. That said, we tend to do a combination. Our first visit to WDW as DVC members is next week, but in the past we have stayed at BWI and in a studio at VB as well as at the Disney Institute. We paid extra to have a refrigerator at BWI so I include our experience there in this description. Most days, we eat much the same breakfast as we have at home: bagel or toast with coffee and juice. We do try to include at least two restaurant breakfasts during a week-long stay. Sometimes this is a character meal, sometimes not. Next week, we will definitely do the Spoodles buffet at least once and possibly twice. Lunch will be fast food at one of the parks or quick-to-fix lunch/leftovers in the room. In fact, the availability of the refrigerator and microwave are real attractions for us, since we usually have leftovers from some of our dinners and we add a few snack-type foods, beer, pop, water, and the breakfast foods when we make our grocery stop. Dinner at a variety of restaurants around the world is an important part of our vacation experience. We usually make PSs for every other night. Next week, we will do the Biergarten, Artist Point, and the Yachtman's Steakhouse. These are "full" meals for us: appetizer(s), entrees, dessert(s). I enjoy a glass or two of wine and maybe an after dinner drink as well. Because of the quantity of food if you order an appetizer and dessert for each person (at the sit down restaurants, that is, no chance for leftovers at the Biergarten buffet), we expect that we might have some leftovers which we will take back to the room. We usually plan meal times for these meals so that they are our primary evening destination; thus we are not wandering a park after dinner carrying our leftovers. On nights when we don't have a PS, we might do counter service at one of the parks or hit a food cart at Epcot or along the BW, take a chance on getting into one of the sitdown restaurants at a park or DD, drive offsite to one of the non-Disney eateries, or even raid the refrigerator if there's something from a previous meal really calling out to one or the other of us (in our house, leftovers are community property; if you don't want to share your leftovers, you'd better eat them sooner rather than later
). Once in a while, we even make a same-day PS for a restaurant we want to try or for a restaurant we visited on a prior trip and want to eat at again. We do try to do different restaurants than those we've already done during a particular trip (although I must admit that during a trip to London two years ago we found a small Italian restaurant in the neighborhood near our hotel which was so good that we went back our last night before returning home; not only that, but we again ate there twice during our trip this past March). As the number of restaurants we've tried around WDW has increased, our list of places we would definitely try again continues to grow. So many restaurants, so few nights.
Our children are grown, so we no longer have to worry about their care and feeding during vacations, but when they were younger, we did pretty much the same thing for breakfast as we do now (including one character breakfast each trip to WDW). The budget was tighter then, so we usually had only one "serious" dinner each trip, always planned for our last night at WDW. Any other restaurant meals were usually done at lunchtime rather than dinner, since prices are usually less expensive and menu selections are frequently just as good. If you do any WDW buffets, you usually save some money at lunch compared to dinner without sacrificing too much in the selections. Then dinner can be fast food or fix it yourself in the room.
Ralph