Saving Money on Food | The Memorable Journey ~ The Affordable Mouse

Happy New Year!

Nancy Disney Travel Guide, Disney Vacation Planning, Saving Money on Accommodations, Saving Money on Food December 31, 2009January 7, 2010affordable disney family vacations, best way to plan a disney vacation, best way to see disney world, Complete Walt Disney World 2010 0 Comment

Happy New Year from The Affordable Mouse! I hope that your holiday season has been a special time for you and your families, filled with joy and wonderful memories. And now a New Year is upon us…..where DOES the time go? It seems that the older I get, the faster the time goes. Which is why creating those memories become more and more important to us as time goes on, don’t you think?

I hope that 2010 has a vacation to Walt Disney World planned for you! And I hope that I can help you make it as memorable….and affordable…as possible. 🙂

With that in mind, I want to continue this series of blog posts on some of the most popular…and helpful….Disney guidebooks that are available. January begins prime vacation planning time (got to have something happy to look forward to after Christmas!), so hopefully these posts will be well-timed for you.

Please keep in mind that each book as it’s merits, and while I like them all….for different reasons….one may be better for you than another, depending on your experiences, needs, and circumstances. Which is why I present a variety 🙂

Last time I discussed a special favorite of mine, the Ultimate Disney World Savings Guide. As an e-book, it is different from the others I review, and is therefore not as well known. But it has some great benefits, and if you really want some additional perspective on how to have an affordable Disney family vacation, you may want to give it a look.

Today I want to highlight another favorite of mine, the Complete Walt Disney World 2010. This latest edition to this popular series is really, in my opinion, one of the most useful books out there.

As a matter of fact, there are a lot of things I like about this book. To start, the color pictures are extremely helpful in giving lots of detail about the parks, rides, and attractions: this can be a great tool to help prepare for what to expect…especially for little ones.

I also really like the size, as it is small enough to be easily transported with you to the parks, which is a great benefit. Some books have a wealth of information, but are the size of a phonebook….which is just not helpful when you want to find something quickly. And let’s face it, if you are new to Disney World, the chances are very good that you are going to have questions…and isn’t it nice to be able to refer to a well-organized guidebook to find your answers while in the park? Not only is the Complete Walt Disney World 2010 small enough to be able to do this easily, with each park color-coded, you can find what you want almost immediately. I really like that! 🙂

There are also some great tips and ratings on the rides and attractions, which is very helpful for doing your planning. Of special note are the suggested touring plans as well as descriptions, wait times, and a kid’s “Fear Factor” for each ride. Any parent traveling with children to Walt Disney World for the first time should be prepared for the Fear Factor on each ride: nothing ruins the magic more than a terrified child.

These are just a few of the things that I really like about the Complete Walt Disney World 2010. If you would like to see what some others have to say about this guidebook, click here for reviews on the 2009 version. I feel pretty confident that the latest edition will be just as good if not better. 🙂

I hope you found this helpful! Until next time, I hope your New Year is filled with much joy, great memories, and peace.

Have a magical day!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year at Disney World: Creating Dining Magic

Nancy Christmas Holidays, Saving Money on Food November 16, 2009November 22, 2009 0 Comment

Continuing our series on visiting Walt Disney World during the Holidays, my plan today is to talk about meals. Presumably, if you are visiting during the 2009 Christmas holiday season, you already have made travel and hotel arrangements. =)

When making your dining plans….and you MUST make dining plans….you need to realize that, if you are visiting during the week between Christmas and New Years, you will be at Walt Disney World during the busiest time of the year. Period. Lots more people than you have ever, ever seen.

Now if your plans to visit Disney are to go before Dec. 24, there will be less people. In fact, historically from the week after Thanksgiving until the week or so before Christmas, crowds are usually lighter, and so it can be a delightful way to experience all that the holidays have to offer at Disney World. But you should realize that many, many Disney veterans travel during these weeks, and these folks typically know better than to not have dining plans in advance.

So either way, make your dining plans in advance, and if they include any table service meals, make those Advanced Dining Reservations (ADRs) before you get to Disney World. And if you are going during Christmas week….Make. Them. Now.

I can’t stress this enough. People have been making Advanced Dining Reservations for Christmas week since the end of September (90 days in advance). The popular times and restaurants fill quickly, especially on the big days of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, and New Years Day. So if table service is something you want to do, don’t delay on this.

What if you can’t get ADRs for any of the restaurants you want? Consider some of the lovely, and lesser-known restaurants at the hotels: many are wonderful, and it is a great way to see some of the fantastic Holiday decorations at the resorts. They are a little off-the-beaten path, but it can be nice sometimes, during all the hustle and bustle, to have a little peace and quiet. 🙂

Also consider eating meals…all meals outside of your room…at “off” times. Try having your main, table service meal for lunch instead of dinner. Eat early…lunch at 11, dinner at 5…or late…lunch at 2, dinner at 8. You may find crowds, especially for counter meals, to be a little lighter during these times.

Of course, typical advice about eating some meals in, especially if you have access to a kitchen, can be helpful. Many folks with these types of amenities in their accommodations actually do the entire turkey and fixings, which can be very nice and a great way to create some special memories.

Affordable Disney family vacations can occur during the Christmas holidays too, and if you plan well, your trip can have an extra dose of holiday magic. Stay tuned for more Affordable Mouse Holiday Tips in the near future!

Have a magical day!

Some New Ideas for Eating Cheap at Disney World

Nancy Saving Money on Food October 28, 2009November 22, 2009 0 Comment

On our recent trip to Walt Disney World, one thing I was especially aware of was our efforts to keep food costs down. In a previous post, I discussed how we integrated the Disney Dining Plan with the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. Food can easily be one of the most expensive items in a Disney vacation budget, so it is always nice to discover ways to keep that cost manageable, and not have to give up the magic of a Disney vacation.

With that in mind, I came across an interesting article this past week from Fox News.com: How to Eat Cheaply on a Trip. Following are some of my favorite highlights:

Many of us grab our kids’ hands and race to the rides. Or, if you’re Melissa d’Arabian, who visited the parks last year with her husband and four kids, you grab the coupons you packed and race to the grocery store.

“I had planned out easy meals to make,” says d’Arabian, season five winner of “The Next Food Network Star” and host of the network’s “Ten Dollar Dinners with Melissa d’Arabian.”

Her money-saving vacation strategy had several parts. Aside from basing her family in a condo where she could prepare at least some of their food – “I never leave a place where I have access to inexpensive food without feeding everyone,” she says – her vacation groceries yielded meals denser in calories than what she’d ordinarily serve back home.

“At home I try to get the most water-filled ingredients possible [like] fresh vegetables,” she says, but when traveling, food needs to be dense, portable, and high on long-term energy, and it’s easy enough to hydrate inexpensively with water throughout the day.

High on d’Arabian’s list of vacation snacks is trail mix she mixes herself, almond butter “dense with protein and calories,” and her favorite go-to snack, whole-grain, high-protein pasta with fiber and flax seeds rich in beneficial Omega 3 fatty acids.

She notes that while whole-grain pasta is often twice the price of white-flour pasta, “you’re getting a lot of value” on the nutrition side as well as a snack that fills you up. As for when to deploy the snacks, that also differs from her home game.

“The whole trick to [your family] enjoying the vacation is making sure that you’re in preventative mode all the time, d’Arabian says,” which may mean that prior to heading out to a restaurant “you step outside your normal mode of ‘no snacks an hour before dinner.’” Bending your usual rules not only helps to avoid public meltdowns, but it can be a lot cheaper than the alternative. “It’s not a money-saving strategy to order everything [on the menu] and see if something hits,” she says.

You can read the rest of the article for more great affordable disney family vacation ideas.

Have a magical day!

Four Days of Eating Around the World

Nancy Food and Wine Festival, Saving Money on Food October 22, 2009November 22, 2009 4 Comments

Well we are back from Walt Disney World and Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival, and boy did we have a blast! I will say that, experienced Disney vacationers that we are, as Food and Wine newbies, we found the Festival awesome….and just a little overwhelming! But it was all good, and we are looking forward to returning again!

With only 4 days, we had to plan our strategy carefully…or rather I did, lol! My main thing, before we got to Disney World, was to be able to take advantage, as much as possible, of the many offerings of the Festival…and still have time to visit our favorite attractions too. We were successful for the most part, despite having a little monkey-wrench thrown into things….the monkey-wrench being central Florida experiencing record heat (think mid-August).

Once I realized that we were going to be doing the parks in “summer mode”…well it did kind of put a different spin on things.

“Summer mode” at Disney World, for us, means being at the parks first thing, eat an early (11-11:30) lunch, hit maybe a couple of the cooler attractions after lunch…when the heat really starts to build…and be on our way back to the resort for an afternoon at the pool. Back to the parks then in the evening.

But since we were on the Disney Dining Plan, we had already made dinner reservations for each night, and so our plan was to experience the Food and Wine Festival primarily for lunch on a couple of days. Now, being in “summer mode”, the challenge was how to do this and actually enjoy ourselves.

The solution meant that at 11 a.m. on the dot, we were at World Showcase, waiting for our chosen food kiosks to open. Why? Well, do you know how HOT World Showcase can get when the heat index is close to 100? Yeah. That’s why. =)

So our Food and Wine strategy then became: how to sample from each kiosk, while staying as cool as possible. And…how to also do it somewhat affordably, and not completely stuff ourselves in the process.

Here is how we did it.

For our first luncheon excursion, DH, college-age DD, and yours truly decided to each visit a different kiosk. DD was to use the snack credits from our Dining Plan, while I and DH each used a Food and Wine card that we pre-loaded with $25 each. We figured that was plenty to start. We split up and hit 3 different food vendors, each of us choosing one item from the menu, and then we met (in the nearest shady spot), sampled from each other, “rated” our favorites, and then moved on to do another 3. In about 30-40 minutes we were half way around World Showcase, full (but not too much), and pretty much done for that day. We hopped on the boat to go across World Showcase lagoon (seriously NOT walking the rest of the way around at this point), and headed back to the resort.

On our second day of Festival lunches, we repeated the process going in the other direction, and within another 30 minutes we had succeeded in completing our circuit around the world, having truly sampled something from every food kiosk. It was so much fun, and we had a wonderful time sampling things we probably would have never tried otherwise.

Best of all, we completed day 2 with the remainder of our snack credits and 2 original Festival cards, without having added additional dollars to either card. So we did truly eat our way around the World and managed to not break the bank in the process.

What did we NOT do? We did not do any of the additional paid programs, and I have to say that it was just too overwhelming to have even considered anything beyond the basics this year. We did attend a great free program outside Italy, about making pasta and a simple Italian meal. It was fascinating, and we learned alot.

We also truthfully did not do alot of drinking. It was just too hot to even think about it during the day…we just wanted water…and the two evenings that we were there, the lines were very long, and we were frankly quite full from dinner. I will say that the beer and wine tastings looked pretty awesome, and I would love to explore those more another time.

What would I do differently? Well our strategy actually worked well, and I am pleased that we did not eat ourselves sick, nor did we spend as much money as one probably could spend. I think the main thing I would do next time, would be to either not do the Dining Plan, or plan one evening where we did not have a table service dinner, and do some samplings in the evening as well.

And of course, hope for cooler weather. 🙂

With that in mind, I am, of course, already dreaming of our next visit!

Have a magical day!

Affordable Disney Family Vacations: Fancy McDonald’s Adds Atmosphere to Cheap Meals

Nancy Saving Money on Food August 21, 2009November 22, 2009 0 Comment

Always looking for great ways to save some money on a Disney vacation, I was fascinated to come across this article today describing renovations to the McDonald’s near the All-Star Resorts. Very nice decor indeed! Who knew that a McDonald’s could provide ambiance along with a Big Mac?

Remodeled McDonald’s near Disney World’s All-Star Resort hotels resembles Contemporary Resort cafe

There are so many ideas like this that can help you achieve an affordable Disney family vacation! If you have plans to stay in one of the All-Star resorts (or even if you are not), why not make a visit to this McDonald’s: cheap meals with a 5-star atmosphere!