Trying to budget for Florida, with 3 young children, £3.5k enough for 17 days?

RedfordML

Thinking of a rough budget, we fully expect to go over! We have 14 days in a Disney hotel and then transfer onto Universal hotel for 3 days. We have a£1k dining voucher we can use at most hotels and Disney's sites and food and retail outlets. 

We will take advantage of the free refills etc, take rolls from breakfast, for lunch etc but at the same time, its a once in a lifetime but wondered if our budget of 3.5k spending was realistic? 

Thanks if you can offer any advice if you've just been or any money saving tips we could take advantage off? 

phatbear

We have recently returned from the city that the mouse built and we did 14days there and ignoring park entry, park parking, some outlet shopping, flights and air bnb and hotel we only spent £1200, so close to £100 a day for the pair of us.

Think the real question is do you think you can keep within that budget food/drinks/souvenirs can be bonkers expensive, for example i bought a star wars pin/badge and it was $18+tax. 3 t shirts for the kids will set you back $60+tax.

Green_hopeful

A long time ago we did Disney. The food portions in American restaurants were enormous and we would order one meal and three plates and share it between us. Saved quite a bit not having to pay for three meals most of which we couldn’t eat. 

strawb_shortcake

I remember seeing this article awhile back which may help with costs, the headline sounds horrific but 70% of the costs were tickets and fast passes.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11186605/amp/UK-family-hit-bill-1-THOUSAND-just-one-day-Universal-Studios-Orlando.html

It was a long time ago that I did Disney, we typically used to go to a Ponderosa for an all you can eat breakfast. We'd start the day with a good breakfast and we more often than not found we didn't want a full lunch so would have a light snack before eating out again for dinner. 

If its anything like the UK then it's usually drinks that are the most expensive part of a day our excluding entry tickets. I'd imagine there are free water refill stations 

tightauldgit

I always find these questions to be 'how long is a piece of a string?' because it really depends what you do. I haven't been to the states for about 5 years now but it was crazy expensive for a lot of things the last time I was there and I only imagine it's got worse. On the other hand, the US also does have a lot of really good deals sometimes on things like fast food at times. Rather crazily (and not saying this is the way to go for the entire holiday) it can sometimes be cheaper to eat in McDs or Burger King than buy bread, ham and cheese from the supermarket and make rolls.

Of course it also depends on how you intend to live - are you going to take taxis everywhere, eat every meal in a restauraunt, tip 25% everywhere you go, and load up with souvenirs and shopping every day? Presumably not if you're here on this site.

 



 

eskbanker

RedfordML said:

Thinking of a rough budget, we fully expect to go over! We have 14 days in a Disney hotel and then transfer onto Universal hotel for 3 days. We have a£1k dining voucher we can use at most hotels and Disney's sites and food and retail outlets. 

We will take advantage of the free refills etc, take rolls from breakfast, for lunch etc but at the same time, its a once in a lifetime but wondered if our budget of 3.5k spending was realistic? 

Thanks if you can offer any advice if you've just been or any money saving tips we could take advantage off? 

Although this forum has plenty to offer regarding fairly generic money saving guidance, there is another one specifically geared to Brits planning Florida theme park holidays, which has a wealth of very specific advice about how to get the best out of them, so worth a look at this if you haven't already:

https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/index.php

phatbear

tightauldgit said:

I always find these questions to be 'how long is a piece of a string?' because it really depends what you do. I haven't been to the states for about 5 years now but it was crazy expensive for a lot of things the last time I was there and I only imagine it's got worse. On the other hand, the US also does have a lot of really good deals sometimes on things like fast food at times. Rather crazily (and not saying this is the way to go for the entire holiday) it can sometimes be cheaper to eat in McDs or Burger King than buy bread, ham and cheese from the supermarket and make rolls.

Of course it also depends on how you intend to live - are you going to take taxis everywhere, eat every meal in a restauraunt, tip 25% everywhere you go, and load up with souvenirs and shopping every day? Presumably not if you're here on this site.

 



 

The one thing we found most surprising, cost wise, was day to day food for the air bnb for example a box with 18 packs of normal sized crisps in walmart was $12+tax most basics were often double UK prices, apart from from things like un prepared fruit and veg and some bakery items.

in the parks we were paying $5 for a bottle of water/pop so that soon mounts up especially if its hot. The food in the parks def werent sharing size and an average main, without sides was $12-$15 each.