what's a good amount to budget for our Disney trip?

[sweetea]

Here are just the quick basics.

- It'll be me, DH, DD4, and DS who will be going on 5 months at the time.
- We'll be driving down from PA, leaving home May 22. Check-in isn't until May 24 and check-out will be May 31. We are Wyndham members so our hotel is already paid for with our points.
- We will stay overnight somewhere on the way down.
- DS obviously won't be eating regular food, so he's taken care of and DD is extremely picky so will most likely share food with us as usual (I swear I don't remember the last time I purchased her her own meal at a restaurant and whatnot).
- As far as gas, I already used one of those fuel cost calculators for our minivan and it will be approx. $240 round-trip.
- We're buying our tickets in advance from Undercover Tourist, so that'll be taken care of.

Anything I'm missing? I know for a fact we won't do many souvenirs. MAYBE $150 - $200 AT MOST. Anything else that I'm budgeting for would just be food...and we don't do sit down restaurants like that at all. Maybe once or twice we will. We're very.....well.....CHEAP (lol) but I also want to be realistic.

TIA!

[NC_WDW_Daddy]

Bring your own water bottles to save on drinks throughout the day. Remember, you cna get a free cold water at any stand that sells fountain drinks. If you don't like the taste of the water, carry some crystal lite packs to flavor the drinks.

[tracybrok]

I'm wondering what a good budget is for us too. We've gone several times before but I always seem to blow my budget!

We have five of us, my husband and I and our three kids ages 10, 7, and 3. We have the deluxe dining plan (our 7 y/o has diabetes so we thought it might save us a bit of $) and I already have a gift card for for each of the kids ($75 for the older kids, $50 for the younger one) so I think that should be okay for souvien"ears". We're staying for 7 days but I know the gratuity is not included in the meal plan anymore and frankly, I think 18% is way too much to tip, especially at a buffet. Any suggestions? I want my budget to stay on track this time!!

[LordQx4]

If you are sticking with Counter Service meals, you may want to check out AllEars.net for some menus, it may help decide what to eat and where and give a good idea of how much you will be spending on each meal. I am driving down from NJ in June and have already picked out where we are eating in which parks to save us money.

AllEars®.Net

[uratoon]

I am most definately the wrong one to ask on this subject!! Our 2007 trip was supposed to only cost around 7,000 and we ended up blowing 12,000 for 1 vacation!! (in my defense, it was our BIG trip and we ended up staying in a deluxe with all the extras and we stayed for 17 days.)

On our other trips we pre-pay for hotel and food, so all we have to consider is gas $, hotel on our drive down and back and souvies. We use the fuel calculator and it estimated us for 250 each way (gas guzzler Tahoe 4X4), hotel $50 +tax X 2, and souvies we always estimate $100 per day for the adults and $25 for kids, snacks (who can resist popcorn and mickey bars?) $25-30 a day.