Spending money

[Stokieuk]

For the 3 of us, we tend to budget $100 a day for daytime food, parking, small purchases etc.

Evening meals and larger shops go on card and we sort when we get home.

[babbymint]

We are not a shopping fest family (2 adults and 13,14 last time we went in 2019). We got through just over £2000 for 24 days (included 6 days free DDP).
We self-catered dinner for maybe 7 days, then ate out in a variety of restaurants from Kobe, Bubbas, Hard Rock, Chillis, Dennys, Cicis etc, so quite different in costs. Occasionally did breakfast out but mostly self catered this.
Taking out our free dining days, it equates to around $85 a day, and that includes our spends, which wasn't a huge amount but some souvenirs, quite a few trainers, a couple of handbags etc.

[Egon]

Originally Posted by dangallimore

I asked about spending, last time we went (2011) we had about $150 dollars a day... I asked if that would be sufficient these days and was pretty much laughed at!

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Ignore them people! unfortunately I see subliminal bragging on this forum and ignore it 99% of the time.

Personally I think you could still do Florida on $150. So what if you have a couple of fast food meals throughout your stay? After a long day in the parks, the last thing I want to do is sit down in a restaurant. I found a great little pizza shop in old town which we stop by some evenings. So instead of paying $100+ on an evening meal, we may only spend $20 on a pizza. Don’t let anybody laugh at your budget!

[derenstar]

We’ve budgeted £2k (~$2800) for 2A 2C for our upcoming trip. This will be for food, tips and a bit of souvenir shopping. We have separate pots for parking and proper shopping (clothes, shoes etc). This will be top end if we proceed with an onsite stay (dependent on FP+ coming back). If not, we will stay and eat (mostly) off site, so would expect to spend less.

Our last trip in 2019, we had free dining and spent a grand total of $258 during our 10 days at Disney according to our Revolut account. We spent $472 when we moved to Universal for 4 days on food, tips and a bit of merch.

The last time we were offsite was in 2015 and DH thinks we spent around £1000 in 2 weeks but I genuinely can’t remember.

[Mandij39]

We always stay offsite and never eat at Theme Parks or expensive restaurants. We tend to eat at Cheap buffet restaurants and buy food & drink at Walmart for Breakfast/Snacks. Last few trips I've had £1000 for a weeks holiday and still come home with money. Most of the money is spent on car parking at the Theme parks and clothes/souvenir shopping. DD has her own spending money to waste on Handbags, make up and clothes/trainers, so that doesn't eat into our budget.

[Robyn89]

As others have said, this is incredibly subjective and some like to brag a little.

For those that laughed at someone for doing Florida on a budget of $150 - well, I’d rather do Florida on a budget than not at all - so if that means you get to go more often, I’m all for it!

We had the dining plan last time we went and stayed on site - so found that we didn’t spend a huge amount as we’re not really big shoppers. We had a couple of things we really wanted to purchase (spirit jersey for me, some Jock Lindsay Hangar Bar T-shirts for OH) but other than that, cash was really only used for a few extra alcoholic drinks and tips.

If we get to go this year we’re on site, without the dining plan and with the addition of an almost 2 year old 😍. We’ve factored in about £200 per day for food, drinks and souvenirs. I expect some days we won’t go near that... then days where we go to Topolino’s Terrace for breakfast, we’ll probably come close to going over.

It’s very much a learning curve for us on this trip to see how expensive, or otherwise, an on-site stay is without the dining plan.

[MarkUK]

We tend to work on the basis of $150 a day (approx $2100 for a 14 day stay and never had a problem. 2 adults, 2 children. We eat out about 50 percent of the holiday order pizzas to the villa, the odd KFC, and even have a few BBQs. Some days we won’t spend it all, other days we will go over. We don’t particularly eat at expensive eateries; Cheesecake Factory, Mannys, Cicis and Olive Garden and the like. Also we are not late eaters so often take advantage of the early bird menus from 4-6pm.

[jenna288]

We could defintely do alot less than what we do. I include experiences / dinner shows / character dining in the category of 'spending money' but then really that's prebooked/paid before we go but that defintely comes out of our spending money budget. We try and balance our days out by if we have an 'expensive' day, we'll plan a pool day and we spend next to nothing! The 4 of us can eat at mcdonalds or dairy queen for less than $30. We buy cans of pop and snacks from walmart to keep in the villa / condo and take a rucksack with icepacks to the parks. I can second bringing food from the UK because I find walmart expensive and quite often it's much cheaper to eat out but defintely good for certain things. To work it all out, I go through my 'itinerary' and just tot up what we will spend approx on each day.

[gjdjud]

I budget $200 a day for 2 adults and 2 kids. We often spend less sometimes spend more but it evens out to my budget. I don’t think we’ve ever spent more than our budget and often come back with money left over.

[LouH]

2 adults and 5 kids
We are taking £7000 ish which includes £1250 which is their own spending money (Xmas and bdays) plus parking, fuel and food costs
We are going for 35 days this time and have a villa so will be eating in a lot more but 95% of the time we take packed lunches into the parks too