Hi Clare,
Welcome to the Disney Parks Moms Panel! Food can be the quintessential dilemma when visiting the Walt Disney World Resort. The good news is that there are several options!
When I have estimated the cost of meals, desserts, snacks and drinks for my family and then compared that to the cost of one of the
Disney Dining Plans, a dining plan always turns out to be a better deal for my family. But, we eat three meals per day and we snack. On our first visits, we used the Disney Dining Plan - it provides one quick-service and one table-service meal entitlement along with two snacks per night of stay and a resort refillable mug.
With this plan, we brought cereal bars to eat for breakfast, used our quick-service meal entitlements for lunch and table-service meal entitlements for dinner. With the Disney Deluxe Dining Plan, we get three meal entitlements per night of stay, so we eat a table-service meal for breakfast. For breakfast, your resort hotel should have a quick service option. You could also use your resort refillable mugs to grab drinks to go with whatever snack you might have in the room!
Clare, there are grocery stores in the area, but, you could also try a grocery delivery service like Garden Grocer. To get a sense of the food prices, I always check menus of the restaurants we plan to visit if those menus are available online. If available, you can find the menu online on the home page of the restaurant. Towards the right-hand side of the page should be a link that says "View Menu." Coral Reef Restaurant is one of our favorites in Epcot. The
dinner and
lunch menus are available online.
Magic, memories and Minnie Mouse hugs,
Donyell