ML please school me on spending money

[Deleted]

We are going to disney on monday.  We are doing three park days two days are more  or less travel days.  There are four of us.  (well five but Leo is nursing so all his food comes from there.)

We purchased the meal plan that is two meals and a snack for the five days.

So Everything... is paid for.  With the exception of souveniers and some snacks.  DH isn't a drinker, I am nursing so no alchohol will be imbibed.  Dh insists we have a 1,000 budget for spending.  I find this ridiculous.  Esp since all meals are paid for. I can see maybe 500 for incidentals. I mean we are only there for four nights. 

What say ye ML?

[milosh]

I think $1000 is reasonable. If you spend less then you spend less.

[Deleted]

Well I know I can certainly spend that much but it seems like a lot to me.

[cleo29]

Last time we went, we did dining plan too, and I think we kept our extra spending to under $500. If you want to set more just to be safe, that's fine. You can also set a limit for your kids now on how many souvenirs can get (i.e. one big item at $X amount and two smaller items) You can also cash money into Disney Dollars and let them choose how to spend it if they are old enough. It's just kind of neat to get money with Mickey on it.

[adamantium]

We spent $300 on drinks and souvenirs for a 5 night trip. We had the same meal plan you do and had a hard time using all the snacks. The last 2 days we ate a ton of dole whips and DS went to pick out cookies and stuff for the flight home. I had packed things for breakfast as I wanted to be able to eat and get to the parks. I also took bobble water bottles to fill at the park water fountains, it helped take the chlorine taste out so that our snacks weren't spent on water (the resort water even filtered was nasty). I think we planned 1k as well but didn't need it, we even built a couple of light sabers at star tours.

[Deleted]

cleo29 thanks for the info. Like I said we have 1k set aside but the cheapy in me is thinking OMFG that is ridiculous

[VillainV]

For the travel days, are you driving or flying? If you're flying, then you want to budget money for airport meals, which are expensive. If you're driving, then $1000 might be a good number if it includes gas and meals on the road.

I think it's better to have TOO much money saved up instead of not having enough. I agree about setting a spending limit on souvenirs -- it's easy to go nuts at Disney, and I image it's worse with kids (I have a hard enough time myself sometimes!).

[sunshineluv]

I have heard of people buying disney brnad things at walmart or whereever and packing them as surprises for their kids so they don't have to spend the mark up at the park gift shops. I would still let my child pick out a thing or two at the part, but $1K worth when all food is covered, seems like you could spend a LOT less than that.

[Deleted]

to answer some questions we are flying. We fly from Boston on Monday. We won't get to the hotel until about 1. We have two meals that day and a snack so I figure that day we won't spend much on much.

T, W, Th are park days and we told the kids they can get souveniers but we don't want to cart a ton of stuff home. We aren't going to be buying the pics and everything we will have it put on the website and decide at home which ones we want.

Friday we fly out at 530 so we will do our two meals and snacks for breakfast and lunch and a snack before we fly and stop to get something on our way home. The way I see it is I think we can spend $100 a day on incidentals and souveniers and still not have to say no much.

I am okay with having the extra budgeted it just seemed high and my darling hubby is always saying he need 25-50% more than is necessary for anything lol

[Deleted]

Also we did give each kid a gc from the disney store for $50 each to get some souveniers. Plus my parents gave them money. I think they will be good to go