Let me start with some budget talk with a little bit of a packing tip included:
So far, every trip we have taken, we have packed three lightweight bowl, a small bottle of dish soap, a dishrag and a box or two (depending on length of trip) of cereal.
To save space, this trip, I opted to leave the bowls and dish soap at home and do donuts and pop tarts instead of cereal. This turned out to be a budget buster. The breakfast of donuts an pop tarts did not fill my kids enough and they got hungry much earlier in the day than I had hoped. Also, we all got tired of this breakfast which resulted in my buying breakfast on our last day - big budget buster.
| amount | category | note |
| 19.92 | food | McDonald's lunch at airport |
| 20.9 | food | breakfast at hotel |
| 10.64 | food | tandoori chicken dinner |
| 4.93 | food | kids meal cheese pizza |
| 14.68 | food | surf burger and soda |
| 4.25 | food | mac n cheese |
| 3 | food | Cheetos |
| 14.24 | food | ice cream |
| 14.97 | food | pizza |
| 2 | Misc | tip - hotel |
| 5.12 | food | chocolate milk |
| 12.92 | food | 3 sodas slice of pizza and side salad at airport |
| $247 | lodging | hotel |
| $26.00 | travel | airport parking |
| 400.21 | TOTAL | |
| My husband and I have an arrangement where we pay for hotel out of our general household account and I pay for meals and extras out of my par-time paycheck. Therefore, I have broken out our food and souvenir expenses. Oh, that's right, we don't buy souvenirs. | ||
| amount | category | note |
| 19.92 | food | McDonald's lunch at airport |
| 20.9 | food | breakfast at hotel |
| 10.64 | food | tandoori chicken dinner |
| 4.93 | food | kids meal cheese pizza |
| 14.68 | food | surf burger and soda |
| 4.25 | food | mac n cheese |
| 3 | food | Cheetos |
| 14.24 | food | ice cream |
| 14.97 | food | pizza |
| 2 | Misc | tip - hotel |
| 5.12 | food | chocolate milk |
| 12.92 | food | 3 sodas slice of pizza and side salad at airport |
| 127.57 | TOTAL | |
With hotel and parking, our three day average expense in Disney was $133.40. We spent an average of $42.50 on for and incidentals... oh, that's right, we have no incidentals.
If we were to subtract our airport meals and only count meals in Disney, our three day food budget was $92.73 and our average was $30 per day. This was my goal so I figure that we did OK even with the paid for breakfast.
Now, for total truth in advertising, I probably should one day track the cost of the food we bring to Disney but since I usually con my husband into buying that, I have never felt the need to track it. But figure donuts, pop tarts, cereal (usually) granola bars, fruit rolls ups, etc.we do probably bring at least $20 in food with us.
Packing:
I start by putting up a table in an out of the way corner of the family room so that I can organize for my trip. When we travel carry on only, I try to keep it to a small suitcase, a rolling cooler and three small bags with our in flight entertainment. Even though we are allowed one more carry on, I have discovered that the fewer bags you have the easier it is to keep up with them.
What you can't see is that in the bottom of this bigger cooler is a small cooler which hangs on the back of the stroller when we are in the parks and is just big enough for our lunches. We brought the big cooler because having never stayed in All Star Sports before, we were not sure that they had refrigerators yet. We knew that Disney planned on putting them into all of the resorts eventually. In hindsight, we could have just called the hotel before leaving. If we had known about the fridge, I probably would have put our dry food in a small suitcase and used the small cooler for our lunch meat.
If you are worried about food poising, I pack the lunch meat in a cooler - in this case, the top of the large cooler - and after getting through TSA security, I ask one of the restaurants to fill my small zip lock bag with ice. I then put that one into a larger bag so that I don't have any leaks and I place it with my perishables.
We ended up bringing back the box of cookies, unopened, but managed to pack just the right amount of lunch food.
I am sure I have mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Use bagels for the sandwiches, they survive the trip much better than bread does. Also, pringles for your chips make much more sense. They are packed more densely in the can and don't get broken into a million pieces in the bags.
We always bring granola bars but avoid the ones with chocolate coating because they get melted and messy in the park. Also, my daughter is addicted to fruit roll up type snacks but we have discovered that the 'fruit roll ups' are almost impossible to unroll once they get warm but 'fruit by the foot' stays nice and easy to eat.
enough about packing and budget for now. You absolutely must check in tomorrow to read about our mad dash to the airport and plane.
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