What Our Florida Family Holiday Actually Cost: An Honest Budget Breakdown for a Family of 5

Now that we’re home from Florida, I wanted to share a realistic breakdown of what the trip cost us as a family of five.

Not because there’s one right way to do it, but because I know how helpful real numbers can be when you’re trying to budget for a big family holiday.

Before we went, I found it easy enough to get a rough idea of flights, hotels and park tickets, but the bit that is much harder to judge is the day-to-day cost of actually being there. Food, snacks, shopping, parking, groceries, treats, the odd pharmacy run, and all the little extras that creep in over the course of a longer trip.

So I wanted to share what our Florida holiday cost, how we budgeted for it, and what helped us enjoy ourselves without losing the run of ourselves completely.

This was a huge trip for us

I think it is important to say from the outset that this was not a casual holiday for us.

This was very much a once-in-a-lifetime kind of trip for our family. Or at the very least, a very rare kind of trip.

It was something we had been consistently saving towards for a long time, and because I do not have any plans to go back to Florida anytime soon, we planned the itinerary we really wanted to do while we were there to make the most of it. We also went for a longer trip (almost 3 weeks), which obviously meant setting aside a bigger budget not just for the big-ticket costs, but for the day-to-day reality of being in Orlando for nearly three weeks as a family of five.

That meant budgeting for groceries, restaurant meals, snacks, shopping, treats, drinks, parking and spending money without feeling like we were constantly saying no or worrying about every dollar spent.

I wanted us to enjoy ourselves, but not lose the run of ourselves.

We managed to come home €25 under the budget I had set for our day-to-day spending, which I was relieved about! Because, let me tell you, when you’re over there it would be more than a little easy to absolutely lose the run of yourself.

I had also built in a contingency fund, just in case we lost the run of ourselves while we were away, but thankfully we did not need to touch it. That contingency fund has since gone on a new set of tyres for the car when we got home. The glamour truly never ends.

Our major pre-booked costs

These were the main costs we had booked and paid for separately before or alongside the trip:

• Flights from Shannon to Orlando for 5: €3,000
• Car hire: €1,150
• Accommodation at Vistana Resort plus parking for 19 days: €4,820
• Kennedy Space Centre tickets: €172
• Orlando Magic basketball game: €110
• Disney tickets for 2 days: €1,600
• Universal tickets for 14 days across 4 parks: €2,487

That brought our main pre-booked trip costs to €13,339.

And this is exactly why I think it helps to be honest about trips like this. Florida is incredible, but it is not cheap, especially as a family of five.

A note on timing and accommodation

It is probably worth saying too that we travelled at a particularly expensive time of year.

We went before and during Spring Break, mainly because of work commitments and school holidays, so I definitely think there is scope to do parts of a trip like this more cheaply depending on your dates. Accommodation especially could look quite different if you had more flexibility around when you travel.

We stayed in Vistana, which we had stayed in many times before, so there was a nostalgia element there too. We really wanted to go back.

But beyond that, for a trip this length, apartment-style accommodation just suited us so much better than a hotel would have. We wanted:

• a kitchen
• a washer/dryer
• a proper dining space
• and multiple rooms

For nearly three weeks with three children, a standard hotel setup just would not have worked for us personally. That is not to say it would not suit someone else, or a smaller family, but for us, having that space and functionality made a huge difference.

How we booked things

A few booking details might be helpful if you are planning something similar.

We used AttractionTickets.com for some of our tickets and got great value there, particularly for Kennedy Space Centre and the Orlando Magic basketball game.

For Universal, I booked our two-week tickets through AttractionTickets.com too.

Disney was slightly different. Because we were only doing two Disney days, I booked directly through the Disney US site using a VPN. On the Ireland and UK site, it was only possible to buy 7-day or 14-day tickets, which did not make sense for us at all. So that workaround suited us much better.

It is one of those little planning details that made a genuine difference, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

What we spent day to day

For our day-to-day spending, I had budgeted roughly €300 per day.

Some days we spent less than that and other days we spent more, but overall it balanced out very closely. Over 19 days, we came in at just under €6,000 in spending money. If we had been going for two weeks I would have budgeted approximately €4200.

That day-to-day total included all the real-life spending that happens when you are away that long with kids:

• groceries
• restaurant meals
• snacks and treats
• shopping
• parking
• petrol
• drinks
• pharmacy bits
• the random extras that always pop up

Rather than itemise every single purchase, I think it is more useful to share the rough category split so people can get a feel for where the money actually went.

Rough day-to-day spending categories

Based on our spend, it looked roughly like this:

• Shopping and clothes: around €2,300
• Restaurants and meals out: around €1,800
• Groceries and self-catering: around €1,300
• Drinks, snacks and treats: around €500
• Parking and petrol: around €220
• Pharmacy / practical bits / miscellaneous: around €110–€150

That is not an exact published accounting spreadsheet, but it is a realistic reflection of how our spending broke down and gives a much better idea of the real shape of a trip like this.

The shopping and clothes total surprised me as we had no big plans for shopping.  But when we were in the likes of TJMaxx, the outlets, Walmart, Target we found great value in coats, jackets and sports gear, and clothes for the kids that we would have been buying at home anyway coming into the Summer. We also found great value in shoes and runners. Food was another big one, especially when you are feeding five people and adding tips in restaurants. Then all the so-called little bits like parking, ice creams, coffees, pharmacy stops and drinks really do mount up over nearly three weeks. But we spent less money on food than I thought as we did make our own lunches some days and didn’t spend much during rest days where we just chilled by the pool.

That is probably the biggest takeaway for me. It is not always one huge spend that gets you, it is the constant drip of smaller spends across the holiday.

What restaurants cost us

One thing I know people always want a realistic idea of is food.

When we ate out as a family of five in fairly middle-of-the-road restaurants, we were generally spending around $120 to $150 including tip for mains and drinks.

That was in places like:

• Cheesecake Factory
• Ford Restaurant
• PF Chang’s
• Bahama Breeze
• LongHorn
• IHOP

We were not doing extravagant meals every night, but we also were not trying to order the absolute cheapest thing possible either. It felt like a realistic middle ground for a family holiday.

One thing that did help was the portion sizes. They are huge. We rarely had desserts in restaurants because nobody had room for them, and to be honest my kids are not really sit-around-the-table-for-dessert kids anyway. If they wanted something sweet, we were much more likely to grab ice pops back at the apartment.

What helped us stay on budget

There are a few things that genuinely made a big difference for us.

1. I wrote down everything we spent

And I mean everything.

If somebody had a Cinnabon, I wrote it down.
If we paid for parking, I wrote it down.
When we grabbed drinks, snacks, Walgreens bits, lunch, whatever it was, it went on the budget.

That might sound a bit much, but it helped massively. We always knew where we stood, and it meant there were no nasty surprises at the end of the trip.

It also meant that towards the end, if the boys wanted souvenirs or there were particular things they had their eye on, we knew whether there was room in the budget to say yes.

2. We balanced restaurant days with eating at home

We definitely did not eat out for every meal.

That would have sent the budget absolutely flying.

We mixed restaurant meals with groceries, easy breakfasts, simple lunches and meals back at the apartment, and that made a huge difference overall.

3. We made sandwiches and brought food into the parks

This is one of my biggest tips for families.

Park food is expensive, and when you multiply everything by five, it adds up frighteningly quickly. Bringing sandwiches, snacks and drinks on some days takes so much pressure off the budget without taking away from the day.

4. We kept treats sensible

We still had treats and we still enjoyed ourselves. But it was not a free-for-all all day every day.

That made a big difference too. It is very easy to spend far more than you realise on random snacks, drinks and sweet treats when you are hot, tired and surrounded by temptation.

5. We had the gift shop conversation early

This one is worth doing before you even step foot in a park.

Because in Florida, there is a gift shop at the end of absolutely everything.

We were really clear with the boys that we could look, enjoy it, and take it all in, but that did not mean we were buying something every single time. We said we would leave purchases until later in the trip, or see if we could find better value in Walmart or Target instead.

That made life so much easier because expectations were set from the start.

How I paid for things while we were there

This might be useful for anyone planning a trip too, because how you pay for things can make a difference.

I brought my Revolut card, which is great Monday to Friday, but the exchange rate is not as good at the weekends, so that is worth knowing.

I also had my debit card, and I actually ended up using both depending on what we were paying for.

In restaurants, I used my Revolut card a lot because in the States they still often take your card away for a few minutes and then come back with it once they have added the tip. I personally was not very comfortable with my main card being out of my sight like that, so I preferred using Revolut in those situations from a safety point of view.

For shopping, things like Tommy Hilfiger, Adidas, Walmart and the outlets, I used my debit card more because it gave me a better rate than my credit card for those purchases.

I also brought $150 in cash in total, and by the last few days I was almost in a panic trying to use it up, which probably tells you everything you need to know. So from my experience, cash is definitely not a must-have for a trip like this. Handy to have a little, maybe, but I would not be rushing to bring loads.

It is a small detail, but one worth thinking about before you go, because over the course of a big trip, exchange rates and card fees can make a difference too.

The overall reality

If I am being completely honest, Florida is expensive. It’s not like back in the day when you’d visit and there was great value in terms of the exchange rate, eating out etc.

There is just no real way around that, especially with a family of five and especially when you are there for a longer trip and want to actually enjoy it.

But I also think there is a big difference between spending intentionally and just completely losing the run of yourself.

For us, setting a budget did not take away from the holiday at all. If anything, it made it more enjoyable because I was not carrying that low-level financial panic around in the background.

We could enjoy the meals out, say yes to the odd treat, buy a few bits we wanted and still come home knowing we had stayed within the budget we had set.

And that made the whole thing feel better.

Final thoughts

I am so glad we did this trip.

It was a huge experience for our family and one we will remember forever. But it is definitely not something we will be doing often, which is exactly why we planned it the way we did and why I wanted to be so intentional with the budget.

If you are planning a Florida holiday, I hope this gives you a more realistic picture of what it can actually cost. Not just in terms of flights and park tickets, but in the day-to-day reality of being there as a family and still wanting to enjoy yourselves. I honestly wish I had this kind of insight and detail in the early stages of planning this trip so I could have been able to set clearer targets when we were saving,

And just a reminder that you absolutely can have an amazing time without saying yes to everything.

Coming home to the rain is bad enough without a completely drained bank balance on top of it!