Prolly enough pizza for five.
A sheet pizza with toppings is easily that much with tax. 
Not me. I said $40 for 2 snacks for 4 people. Thatās 8 snacks total at $5 each.
Our trip this year came to right about $6000 for 10 full days, 10 nights at Disney and Universal for our family of 4, including flights, after using a little under $3000 worth of credit card rewards points. (We got tons of points just by signing up for the Chase Sapphire, Barclays, and other travel cards)
We did 3 days at Universal (staying at Hard Rock Hotel for 2 nights for 3 days worth of express passes, and 1 night at Cabana Bay to save money).
We then did 7 days at Disney, including 6 days in the main parks and 1 day at Blizzard Beach. We stayed at Pop, with the free dining package, which we upgraded to the standard plan.
We did our last night at an airport hotel before our early morning flight, both to save money and to be close to the airport.
Our other extras were the 2 EMM days at MK and HS.
We found so much food available on the dining plan that we easily stretched our 6 days of credits over 7 days. We did spend about $170 out of pocket, mostly on tips for the TS meals, and some other food.
The $6000 amount includes all travel related expenses - airport parking, Lyfts, souvenirs (just the interactive Harry Potter wands for the kids, nothing else), all meals at Universal (expensive!), etc. That said, without the credit card rewards, our trip would have been closer to $9000 (Our flights, Universal tickets, and some hotel nights were free with the points).
We certainly could have done the trip for less, but we felt we struck the right balance for us this year.
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We went there in 2012 famished. We didnāt like the deep dish pizza. Maybe we ordered the wrong stuff. We enjoyed Flippers more. Maybe someone else can speak of more recent experience at Giordanoās.
We have done Giordanoās three times. Always deep dish. Once in Chicago, twice in Orlando. Always loved it, but it is unique. Not your typical pizza.
So loaded and thick we each could only eat a single slice. Fork and knife kind of food!
A dole whip is $5.99 and I am afraid many snacks, even from carts are more than $5.
What do you usually get? These prices I believe are before tax?
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We order deep dish from Zacharyās in the SF Bay Area and love it. Maybe Zacharyās deep dish isnāt really Chicago style.
We are with you on that one.
How many days are you paying for at the campsite and the house?
The house is 10 days for $1000 total (including taxes, fees, and pool heat).
The campsite covers 7 nights, 8 days. I donāt know the exact amount I still owe, TBH. I donāt even know how to check that without callingā¦
We are going to parks a total of 6 days (5 with PH and 1 with party) but the two non-WDW days are interspersed. I could have been more tactical, but I only just recently hammered out my days.
Costcoās pizza is only $9.99 before tax. If you have a car, it is only 12 miles away from Disney Springs hotel. We donāt eat it anymore because the price has been the same forever but the quality has gone way downhill.
However, on the East Coast, Costco has sausage sandwiches for about $3.99. They are delicious! It comes loaded with cooked peppers and caramelized onions. We always try to have one when we are on the East Coast. Tastes terrible cold, though.
When we had to do vacation rentals and had to cook because we were so far from civilization, we do buy premade stuff like chicken alfredo and stuffed peppers to throw in the oven; and premade salads from Costco. Cooked rotisserie chicken and ribs work, too. Although, I have also done steaks and eggs. Thatās about what Iām willing to cook on vacation.
Credit card rewards certainly help with travel.
Iām starting to see that my $8,000 budget may need a little inflation.
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When we go as a full family, we drive from NY to FL. We bring a cooler and I bring a lot of pre-made, home cooked meals that Iāve frozen. Pulled pork. Chicken enchiladas. Seasoned ground beef. Then when we get to FL I will buy some Stoufferās mac and cheese, or produce to make tacos. With 4 adults and 4 teens we can bang out a full meal with very little efforts for the 3-4 lunches or dinners we eat at the house.
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Thank you for the references.
Way before the trip, I did rough calculations on whether or not we would buy a DP if we stayed on site. But we donāt eat that much and it takes away from our flexibility. So, we decided not to stay onsite and save money by using hotel points at a hotel with Disney perks.
For this upcoming trip, the hotel will provide all of us free breakfast. I donāt count stuff like drinks, salads, and fruit I buy at Costco at the beginning of the trip since we would buy these anyway if we were at home.
At Disney, Iām thinkingā¦
- We would each get a cold snack such as Dole Whip. ($8/person per day)
- Then, we may each get another snack but share. ($8/person per day) We may not need the 2nd snack when we eat lunch at GG, dinner at Story Book, and dinner at CG.
- Depending on how hungry we are around lunch or dinner, we may order 2-3 QS entrees. ($20/person per day)
- Our 3 TS meals (Candlelight Processional package at GG, Story Book Dining, and CG) will probably run us $1,000. I have the most wiggle room at CG.
So, I have to do a spreadsheet like @ryan suggested with the above numbers, but a very rough estimate with the above data gives me a whopping $210/person/day. And the above numbers are fairly conservative. Over 15 days, it will be like $2,500. I have to add in uber for a few days and tickets to Kennedy. But I will be very close or just over.
Iām not used to this level of planning!!
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When the kids were little and we did road trips, I used to make a couple meals of pasta with different sauces and we would just heat them in the hotel. We would have homemade lunchables for lunch.
Flying now makes that a bit more complicated. But we still fly with homemade lunchables for lunch on the plane. Just freeze the meat to use as ice. When we land, we almost always go to Costco for drinks, fruits, salads, and some snacks. We tend to buy a box of 12 crossaints and lunch meat each trip. Thatās enough for 3 meals of sandwiches, saving us 3 meals of eating out.
For this trip, we will bring instant bowl noodles with us for one dinner when we fly to WDW. DS will fly out 5 days later with frozen BBQ pork in his luggage. It will take him all day to get across the country, enough time for the pork to defrost. We will have noodles with the BBQ pork and salad for dinner that first night so that the kids can go to bed early and RD the next morning. Afterall, their bodies will still be on PST.
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I can see the financial wisdom of the vacation rental alongside the campsite to go to WDW.
Iām sure more bathrooms in a 4 bedroom house make the vacation rental decision so much easier, too! We have 3 bathrooms at home but usually only 1 in a hotel room and in 3 out of the 5 vacation rentals we had.
I didnāt have a strict budget when I started planning our upcoming trip, I just attempted to find as many deals as I could and stick mostly to the basics. I used this siteās dining calculator to help estimate my food costs. Weāre looking at about $6000 for 7 nights at AOA, with 5 day park tickets, airfare, and food/meals for 5 (three adults and two kids ages 10 and 12).
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Not even parking; we check in online; never actually go unless we want to partake in the chip and Dale marshmallow roast campfire sing-along. We stay in a 3 bedroom condo/townhome minutes from Disney for ~$100 a night that has its own private pool and laundry, as well as 2 larger community pools. The only negative is getting to magic kingdom, since not using Disney transportation, we have to park at TTC. All other parks, itās faster to drive than use Disney transportation.
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I donāt have a plan for what snacks we will get yet. Except for me. I will get Cronuts and Dole Whips. My kids will get cotton candy, Iām sure. And Mickey Bars. Even if itās $6 per snack, itās still $48 instead of $40. Thereās no hard line of what spending limit we have. Itās just an estimate.
Right now I have $935 of gift cards to use in the parks. I will probably add on to that. I really want my girls to do the pick a pearl in Japan and make earrings out of them. I wonāt let them wear them though. I will hold them āuntil the right time.ā Which will be their wedding days.
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We spent about $7k for 7 nights in April for 3 of us. Split stay between Pop with 1 night of the DxDDP and renting DVC points at AKL (no dining plan). Airfare was higher than I would have liked, so that hurt a bit. No rental car. A spreadsheet was very helpful in planning out all the expenses, and not having any nasty surprises. The categories Ryan gave you above are good ones, I also budgeted for a dog-sitter, airport parking, Uber/Lyft and Memory Maker, which together were more than $600. All the little things add up! Lyft was about $15 each trip, and we ended up using it at least once a day because we had several dining reservations in the resorts. And quite frankly, itās a lot faster than the buses and worth the expense. But thatās another $100-$200.
We budgeted $75 pp per day for food, which came out about right. Some days we spent a lot less than that (DS11 eats like a bird), other days we went way over (hello Hoop-de-doo!) but it evened out in the end. I didnāt find that most QS meals were shareable for us, and everything costs more than youād think it should. I think you are underestimating your food and transportation costs, but the hotel being on points (do you still have to pay the tax?) will help your budget a lot.
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