Originally Posted By Questyning We'll be there the 16th through the 20th of November. (Myself, two other adults, and a 5yo and 2yo). We're driving about 8 hours, and are trying to keep our expenses down as much as possible. Anyone have any good snack ideas for traveling or easy hotelroom meal ideas? And as far as eating in the park for one meal each day does anyone have any suggestions on where to economize that? We'll be doing Blue Bayou (two of the adults only) one day for lunch to splurge! Thanks for all your input!
Originally Posted By mickeynewe I have to admit that we actually love to eat in the park (its the atmosphere). However, we do get snack foods for the hotel at Target which is down on Harbor Blvd. for those late night munchies. When going with other family members they typically don't like to eat at the park. They eat cereal/milk in their rooms for breakfast. They make sandwiches for lunch and bring them along, and they will usually eat dinner with us out. The only reason I don't like doing this is because its what I do every day at home....so, I want to enjoy ont having to do this on my vacation as well. For eating in the park, we really enjoy The Riverbelle for a great pancake breakfast. We usually just snack for lunch or grab lunch at the Blue Bayou or Ariel's Grotto. For dinner we like to eat at either the Pizza Port in Tomorrowland or in New Orleans square. The Pizza Port is very reasonable and I am usually full off a kid's meal. If you don't want to spend the money on Blue Bayou for an actual meal, just go in and order dessert. That is what we do sometimes just because we love the atmosphere and I LOVE their chocolate mousse! The days that we do eat a full meal for lunch at Ariel's or Blue Bayou, we typically will eat a really light dinner (we're not big eaters...even my hubby) and grab a salad over in New Orleans Square or share one meal over at the Plaza Inn with additional salads. We expect to pay $75.00-100.00 a day in meals at the park while we are on vacation for 3 people.
Originally Posted By ImNotAllThereMyself My DH adn I get around this by bringing our own food for snacks and 2 out of 3 meals of the day. Usually we eat breaky at the hotel. 1 meal, while at breaky we pilfer a few extra pieces of fruit, apples adn oranges mostly, bananas work if you don't mind soft spots. we nibble on these throughout the day while we are in lines and we carry a waterpack, so we don't want to buy drinks everytime we pass a stand. We also bring meat and cheese. we did lunchables for this once, but the packaging weighed alot. so we do cheese bites/shapes or string cheese, and sliced lunch meat or the cooked chicken breasts pieces. We keep these in a small cooler in the lockers, sometimes with a pudding cup or other sweet. then we might eat 1 meal per day that is sit down at a restaurant. Sometimes this is lunch as kabobs from Bengal BBQ or a nice dinner from New Orleans SQ. this way we know that we have eaten relatively healthy all day, and we feel we can "afford" to splurge on a nice dinner and desert. This is really good to for saving money, not all the food at DL is fabulous alot of it is just sustinance, so if you plan ahead and bring fruit and stuff, then you are not tempted by the smell of MCD's fries. That is the way we see it. we did it one year with some friends that we ate two meals adn snacks and other stufff in the restaurants and we ended up blowing all our spending money on food. I would rather have a sweatshirt or an ornament than eat at hotdogs and hamburgers. That is the way I see it. Love Cheshire
Originally Posted By AmyK-PrincessMom ImNotAllThere- You sound like me! I try to do the healthy thing for Breakfast & Lunch so I can "spend" my calories on dinner (& Mickey Krispie Treats)! For my upcoming trip, I plan to split meals with my daughter a lot. Restaurant meals are SO big lately! Since we don't want to doggiebag on vacation we will share a meal & both wind up full. It saves $ & is less wastefull.
Originally Posted By Pixie Glitter The kids' meals are often enough for an adult, especially at Redd Rockets and Plaza Inn. Or the adult's fried chicken dinner at Plaza Inn can easily feed two hungry adults. Whitewater Snacks in the Grand Californian has some very tasty lower-priced meals.
Originally Posted By velo I'm not sure where your staying, but eating at Mimi's (next to HoJo's and Fairfield Marriot) saved me a bunch of money. Fed 1 adult and 4 kids for approx $40 at dinnertime. I love eating in the park, but when I'm on a budget I make the kids leave and eat there. They actually like the larger portions and "rest" they get from the park. we learned to take ART to and from and it was great.
Originally Posted By Questyning Thanks for all your GREAT suggestions! Splitting meals is something I just didn't think about and it's good to know it'll be easy (especially since neither of my boys are big eaters!)
Originally Posted By quincytoo <---loves the kids meals...they are big enough for me and I like to eat. As Pixie mentioned both Redd Rocketts (their spagetti and meatballs rock) and Plaza Inn are good as well as the chicken Tenders meal at White Water Snacks. OMG I am so craving that and I have not even had breakfast yet....
Originally Posted By quincytoo We also go to Costco up the road form the park and buy flats of 1/2 litre bottles of water,juice or pop, trail mix, cereal bars, cookies, snack food basically. The snacks and drinks at Disneyland are way over -priced. That said, we do enjoy our churros and Disneyland snacks too... We also hit the In N Out there too....YUMMY.... and the Character Warehouse. What you save there in Disney merc. could buy a nice brunch at Goofy's Kitchen for a small family.
Originally Posted By Questyning Oooooh...Q2, I can't believe I nearly forgot about CHURROS! And Dole Whips, and corndogs you can only get at the park and, and, and... Oh now I'm HUNGRY! :c)
Originally Posted By quincytoo ^^^^^LOL Your hungry and I am JEALOUS...I am so ready to go back to the park.....Hate living in Canada with the high airline costs....I can fly out of seattle right now to LAX for $99. But on the island I am from it is 400. more??? How outrageous is that??? Anyhey You have fun and I will wait and read your trip report
Originally Posted By raer White Water Sancks is one of our families favorite spots to eat. They are open 7 am to 7pm & have premade meals as well as a grill. It is low priced, lots of food (you could probably order a few items & share)& very quiet. If you sit outide on the DCA side you can watch the people & if it's the right time you can hear the Miner 49ers.
Originally Posted By 6ksmom we stayed at HoJo's and along with taking cereal, breads, and bagles, I also took a toaster (which I got teased about but everyone loved) and after we got there we bought milk, fruit, spreads, and drinks at Costco or the grocery store. With 9 adults, it saved us a ton of $$! We did have 3 rooms with fridges to put the drinks, etc in though. I did make and take cookies and goodies (fruit snacks, pretzels, cheez-its, breadsticks/cheese, peanuts, mini chocolate bars) to help with the munchies and sweet-tooth. Gotta have those "trip treats" when driving. The maids probably thought we were a mini-diner.
Originally Posted By Disneyfool2 Wait a minute Quincytoo, did you say there is an In N Out close by DL? I LOVE that place. We do not have them here in Oregon. Please let me know where it is. Thanks
Originally Posted By quincytoo OMG Disneyfool I get lost in paperbags....But here goes....The In N Out is located close to the Costco on Harbour BLVD by Orangethrope.... It is across the street and down abit (same side as Disneyland) from the Character Warehouse. We stay at CCI so we turn right out of the CCI and do a u-turn at Harbour and Katella....(we can't do those in Canada so it is a thrill) and go straight down Harbour (on the Howard Johnson side of the street) about 1- 20 mins. Disney Character Warehouse is on the right hand side of the road, Costco is on the left hand side and In N Out is on the same side as Costco but a little close to Disneyland..... LOL Suzieq is my Travel goddess and if she is reading this she could give much better directions then I...
Originally Posted By quincytoo uhhh that should be 15-20 min drive....I am usually vague but even that is too much, even for me....
Originally Posted By SuzieQ LOL! I've never been to that In N Out, because we have one right down the street here at home. Let me call Lisann22 to the board.
Originally Posted By luvtalaughtoo We have used a couple of different ways to save money while doing meals while on trips to DL… One option is to buy a small Styrofoam cooler (if the hotel room does not have a fridge) and keep (hotel) ice in it to keep sandwich meats, mayo, mustard etc. for lunches when we come back to the hotel to take an afternoon break before heading back to the park. Another option we have used is to walk across the street to one of many restaurants including McDonalds and Denny’s just to name two. But of course it’s always fun to spurge a little and enjoy a couple of meals in the park.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Here ya go: In n Out Burger 1180 S. Harbor Blvd. Fullerton, California 92832 Sunday through Thursday 10:30 a.m.-1:00 a.m. Friday and Saturday 10:30 a.m.-1:30 a.m. Just go North on Harbor from Disneyland, it's on the left hand side about 3.5 miles from Disneyland.
Originally Posted By dlkozy In case it hasn't been mentioned, don't forget to bring those individual packages of Crystal Light-when you get tired of just plain bottled water. They don't take up much room and really perk up that bottle of water.
