What's The Least Amount Spending $$ (meals Included) You've Ever Taken??

[greyhoundmama]

Well, our vacation package is now paid in full and I'm scrimping and saving for the next several weeks. We'll be taking a cooler to be housed in the bathtub at the ASMo resort and will be taking breakfast items, fruit, snacks, drinks, etc. We're planning on a character breakfast (price is INCLUDED in our package so no $$ for that), dinner at the Rose and Crown for Illuminations, and dinner at Hollywood and Vine for Fantasmic. Other than that, we're planning on counter service in the parks or the AS food courts for lunch/dinner combos and maybe one other sit down dinner (probably at Cheesecake Factory while we're at Quest). My family consists of myself, and my three children (6 y/o DD, 9 y/o DD, and 10 y/o DS). Our vacation is from 6/21 - 6/25 (five days) and I'm going to try and make it on $100/day. I doubt we'll be buying any souveniers - well maybe one small thing for each of them - they're really not interested in stuff like that. So what's the least amount of $$ you've survived on not including hotel, transportation, tickets??

 

[Cindy B]

Ok, here comes the budget queen.

Not including tickets, transport cost (we drove from PA), hotel cost, all ala carte, its less than package by several hundred $$$.

Our grand total for meals per day avg about $25-30 per day for four people for a 5 day stay.


We did breakfast in room, bought kids lunchables, (out of grocery budget ) put them in coolers, so that was there lunch. Brought a ton of snacks and 2 12 packs of soda/ice tea, and muffins poptarts, fruit snacks, etc.

Since we timed a snack at 10 am, lunch at 1230, another small snack at 3 pm, and a drink break, we would do dinner in the room. We even brought lunchmeat and peanut butter/jelly bread with us. So sometimes the kids had sandwiches, and we would get a wrap from the food court. Or since we were at All stars we would go to McDonalds, take out.

With all the healthy snacks we took, yogurt, pudding, raisins, fruit, fruit snacks (ok they are sugary...but portable), sometimes our food budget for the entire day was sometimes lesss than $25, more like $15.

We even had food left over for the drive home. And the cost of all the road food was about $40.

 

[vmkids]

Well we took lots of food for the hotel and then we took snacks like cheese crackers and cookies in those 6 pack wraps like Autin crackers. I also packed snacks of candy and surprises in back pack. We also froze gatorade and took it. I have to tell you we spend 0 at the parks. and still felt like we had done Disney. We saw all the characters we wanted to in the parks. (MY kids are 13,12 and 10) so no character meals and we ate the free breakfast at HIFS. By the time we got home at night from parks we heated up a sub we had brought and kept frozen or a dinty moore microwave meal. that was all we wanted. We brought home tons of oreos and chips and such because we just didn't eat that much. One place I would recommend is Jungle Jacks by Goodys. This place had the BIGGEST hamburger I have ever ate. Family of five and we ate for $30.00. There cheese sandwiches for kids were on texas toast and a ton of cheddar cheese! All three of my kids ate different things and loved all of it.

 

[phins_jazy]

I've got a question. We aren't going until March but we're planning on packing a lot of food with us and put it in the fridge at the hotel. How were you able to keep the meat cold on the plane so it didn't spoil by the time you got to the hotel and also about the dinty moore microwave meals, did they make the metal detector go off? I've got a backpack cooler that I'm going to be taking as a carryon and I guess we could freeze everything and take it that way. It will be about 6-8 hours from the time we leave our house until we walk into the hotel room. Think everything will be ok?

 

[vmkids]

Can't help you with the airplane since we drove. We used a cooler and started with frozen bologna and subs and such! Somebody else may jump in on airplane information!

 

[Luv2Travel]

a couple of years ago was our least expensive trip. A friend put us up in her DVC for free for four nights. I got free park tickets from internet reward sites (back in the "good ole days"), and I also had a few resteraunt gift certificates that I had gotten the same way. We didn't do any character meals and barely even ate at the parks. I let each of my 3 children buy one souvenier each. We took food for most meals and ate at OKW since it had a full kitchen. Total for 5 days and 4 nights: $197!

Haven't been able to beat that budget since! Now we are spoiled with character meals, Illumination cruises, Downtown Disney shopping, etc..