Orlando on a Budget

DINING OUT

After the parks, your biggest expense is likely to be meals. And, while eating out in America (and especially Orlando) is often great value, it is easy for the costs to pile up quite considerably on a daily basis, not just with the main meal-times but also with drinks, snacks and souvenirs.

PRO SPOT: When touring the parks – especially in the heat of summer – it is absolutely vital to drink lots of water at regular intervals. But you don’t want to be paying $2.50 a bottle at the parks. Instead, buy one of the cheap Disney water bottles from a supermarket like Wal-Mart, Target or Publix (only around $5 each), fill them with ice from your hotel or holiday home before you leave, and then top them up at the water fountains around the parks. Alternatively, you can buy water much cheaper at the supermarkets, freeze it overnight, and take a few bottles with you. However, you cannot take large amounts of food and drink into the parks.

As a rough ready reckoner, our Brit’s Guide lists the basic costs for a counter-service meal and kids meals at all the parks, as well as detailing the cost of a 3-course meal at one of the main full-service restaurants. In many cases, even a ‘cheap’ burger and chips type meal, with a drink, can be $10, while we have found recently that with 2 adults and three children (ages 7-12), we were paying around $40 for a basic lunch and $60 or more for counter service dinner in the parks. Multiply that over 10 or 14 days and you start to get an idea of the overall cost involved.

Therefore you need to take advantage of the various meal deals that are available throughout Orlando. First and foremost of these are the all-you-can-eat buffets, which are fairly widespread (even Disney offer several good-value buffets, at Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom, Hollywood & Vine in Disney-MGM Studios, the Biergarten in Epcot, Boma at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, Whispering Canyon Café at Wilderness Lodge and Trail’s End at Fort Wilderness) and which give you the chance to fill up the whole family for a more budget-orientated price. CiCi’s Pizza buffet (with several locations, including one on Palm Parkway near the Downtown Disney entrance to Walt Disney World) offers a somewhat more health-conscious approach, providing things like vegetable pizzas, soup and salad bar at some locations. The dessert choice is tempting, too!

Other more standard choices include the likes of Ponderosa Steakhouse and Sizzler, two chain restaurants with multiple locations throughout central Florida. These provide breakfast, lunch and dinner, and, while the food is largely pretty ordinary, there is plenty of it and it is pretty consistent. Other buffets worth looking out for are Golden Corral, Black Angus and Shoney’s, where you may pay a dollar or two more but the extra quality is undeniable.

PRO SPOT:Best buffet in town? It’s hard to say who offers the best deals, as there is quite a bit of variation from restaurant to restaurant, while even some in the same chain group can vary in quality (and in price – you will find the International Drive outlets of places like Ponderosa a $ or two more expensive than those elsewhere). But one restaurant we are always happy to recommend, for price AND a more health-conscious approach, is the outlet of Sweet Tomatoes on Kirkman Road (near Universal) at its junction with I-Drive. As well as one of the biggest salad buffets in town, Sweet Tomatoes features great soups, pastas and breads, all made fresh daily and all quite delicious. Their desserts, featuring fresh muffins and soft-serve yoghurt, are also extremely tempting. It is VERY easy to fill up here at a decent price, and make sure everyone has had something healthy for a change (not always easy in the parks). In summer 2007, their lunch buffet was $7.2 9 and dinner $8.99, while it was $4.99 for children 6-12, and $1.99 for 3-5s. Hours are 10:30am-9pm Mon-Thur, 11:30am-10pm Fri and Sat and 9am-9pm Sun.

If you budget for your main meal, or perhaps a big breakfast, at one of the above, you will definitely save money on eating mainly at the theme parks. It is tempting to eat or snack often at the parks – many of them do boast some outstanding dining choices – but you will quickly find the costs mounting if you do this every day. A 3-course lunch for four at somewhere like Hollywood Brown Derby (in Disney-MGM Studios) can easily be $84 and you probably don’t want to be doing that every day.

The food courts at some of the shopping centres also offer better value for money than many of the standard restaurants, and you will probably find it easier to please all the family. The huge food court at the Florida Mall (central Florida’s largest shopping centre) offers no less than 24 counter outlets from which to choose. Similarly, the choice at the superb Mall at Millenia is wide-ranging and surprisingly health conscious, with 11 good-value outlets. Lovers of a good English breakfast should seek out Best of British Soccer World, which has moved slightly north of their former Mercado location on International Drive to just across from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Both the Orlando Premium Outlets and the Lake Buena Vista Factory Stores also boasts decent food courts where you can also save a few dollars.

PRO SPOT: If you are looking for the best fish and chips in town – and let’s not get into a debate over whether or not you should be looking for typical British food this far from home! – we rate the Orlando George & Dragon pub on International Drive hard to beat. Located just south of the Wet ’n Wild water park, this British-run establishment specializes in typical pub grub, and a (huge) plate of cod and chips (proper chips, too, not the ubiquitous fries) costs around $11, which isn’t cheap, but a similar dish at the Rose & Crown ‘pub’ in Epcot will be $16. Best of British Soccer World also has scrummy Fish and Chips (along with Karaoke Wed-Sat!).There are also other derivative pub-style venues through the Orlando are (and especially in Kissimmee), and others to watch out for are The Stage Door on Highway 192 and The Cricketers Arms at Festival Bay on International Drive.

This being America, you should also be aware that food portions – whether for starters (Americans call them appetizers), main courses (‘entrees’) or desserts – are almost invariably large, and it is perfectly possible for one main course to be enough for two. Just tell your waiter or waitress in advance you want to split, and it will often be served up on two plates for you (but be sure to keep the tip as if you’d both had a main course – this is something most Americans would do, and your server will feel ‘short-changed’ otherwise as they are still doing the work for two plates).

Another local feature you should watch for are Early Bird specials. As a general rule, Americans stick rigidly to the main mealtimes, hence 12-1pm and 6-7pm are the busiest possible times to head for a restaurant. Conversely, some restaurants offer special deals if you eat outside of those times. These ‘early bird’ specials, where main menu prices are reduced, are notable at restaurants like the Steak & Ale chain (set 3-course meal at a reduced price 4-6pm), Barneys Steak & Seafood (4-6pm nightly), which is a great individual restaurant at 1615 E Colonial Drive (Highway 50), Kobe Japanese Steakhouse (with 6 Orlando locations; Sun-Thurs 5pm-6pm), At the Boston Lobster Feast, kids under 4 eat free off the children’s menu. Then, at the excellent seafood restaurant McCormick and Schmick’s at Mall at Millenia, visit for their Happy Hour between 4 and 6pm, and you can order all their appetizers as bar snacks for just $1.95.

PRO SPOT: Visit our favourite ‘local’, the Orlando Ale House on Winter Garden/Vineland Rd, just north of Downtown Disney, for their fabulous food, great prices and extensive array of beers. Of particular interest are their various specials on pitchers of beer and by-the-glass specials on the likes of Fosters. Sports enthusiasts take note: there are dozens of television sets, showing all sports, all the time.

You should also hunt down any number of Coupon booklets you will find distributed in racks in all the main tourist areas (outside shops, in hotels and even at some petrol stations and restaurants) which feature a range of money-saving deals, from a free appetizer to two-for-one entrees and ‘kids eat free’ deals. You can even pick up some vouchers in advance on a number of websites. For downloadable coupons try www.destinationcoupons.com/Florida/Orlando/dining.asp and www.orlandosaving.com/restaurants.htm.

Another useful site which, as local residents, we find extremely useful, is www.valpak.com. This free service, which provides money-off coupons for a whole variety of services, from healthcare to tyres to restaurants, requires you to enter a local zip code to find the various deals on offer, so try one of the following zip codes when you log on to their site: for the International Drive area, use 32819, for the Disney/Lake Buena Vista area, use 32821 and for Kissimmee, use 34746.

PRO SPOT: The Orlando Sentinel is the local newspaper for Orlando and offers a wealth of info online for visitors, including some great deals if you know where to look on their associated websites. Check out www.go2orlando.com and click on their Coupons link, and you will find special offers for a variety of accommodations and transport services. Then, the Sentinel’s Lifestyle section, Orlando City Beat, has a great facility on its Eats section which lists a great variety of cheap dining options. Just look up www.orlandocitybeat.com/dining/ and click on the Cheap Eats link.

Then there are some diners where great value can be found in particular menu items. Panera Bread is a counter-service chain which specialises in soup and sandwiches, and their daily fresh soups (which come with a big chunk of French bread) are often a meal in themselves for around $3.39, while one of their sandwiches is often enough for two at $5.99. The Olive Garden chain features unlimited salad and breadsticks with their meals, which often means you can fill up a hungry tribe without going over the odds with the bill. For budget-priced Italian, the prices at Fazoli’s are hard to beat. You will be hard-pushed to spend more than $5 on a meal there, and the fare is extremely respectable for fast-food style.

Finally, the ‘Kids Eat Free’ deals are fairly common at many of the hotels, primarily in a bid to get hotel guests to eat there rather than elsewhere, but many are happy for non-hotel guests to eat there as well. The Howard Johnson and Holiday Inn chains are notable for this feature (although not all hotels participate, unfortunately, as many are franchised, while some operate only on a seasonal basis and not necessarily at peak periods). However, some national restaurant chains also participate, and it is worth checking out the following to see if they also take part in the programme (sadly, not all do):

• Beef O'Brady's
• Ponderosa Steakhouses
• Boston Market
• Buffalo's Southwest Cafe
• Chick-Fil-A
• Chili's
• CiCi's Pizza
• Denny's
• D'Amico & Sons
• Fazoli's
• Golden Corral
• IHOP (International House of Pancakes)
• Kettle Restaurant
• Lone Star Steakhouse
• Pizza Hut
• Roadhouse Grill
• Ryans
• Shoney's
• Tony Roma's

Very often, the best thing to do is to keep an eye out when you first arrive, especially at nearby hotels. Many will advertise ‘kids eat free’ on billboards outside and it is then easy to check if these apply to hotel guests only or if you can take advantage of them.

Alternatively, check out the excellent value Kids Eat Free card which guarantees free meals for children at a huge selection of restaurants.  The card is just £10 and is valid for unlimited meals over a 14 day

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