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walt and mickey statue in front of Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney world's magic kingdom
Disney can be a pricey trip but we have money saving ideas for your snacking needs. Photo Credit: Nasreen Stump

These Snack Packing Skills Can Save You $50/Day at Disney

//  by Nasreen Stump//  1 Comment

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Whether it’s your first time at Disney or your 50th, you can save money on snacks. Read on for our best tips on how to save money on snacks at Disney Parks – and some free planning printables so you can save time as well as money.

Save a ton of money with these Disney snacking tips and free planning printables. Get all the advice on what to bring into the Disney parks that will help you stay on budget. #Disney #Disneyland #DisneyWorld #DisneyTips | TravelingMom | Packing List
Photo Credits: (top left) Lukas from Pexels, (top right) Margouillat Photos from Getty Images Pro, (bottom left) Alexandr_1958 from Getty Images Pro, (bottom right) Happy_Lark from Getty Images Pro

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Disney Snack Packing Tips & Tricks

Disney Snack Packing Skills You NEED to Save Money at Disney

Disney vacations can be the trip of a lifetime. However,  if you’d like to afford it more than once in your lifetime, there are tips and tricks to save money while visiting Mickey Mouse. If you’ve already searched for discount tickets and specials, the next big way to save is on food. (If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, we recommend Get Away Today for discount theme park tickets.)

Our family of six saves by planning ahead and bringing our own food for snacks and breakfast. Snacks for everyone add up; we estimate we save roughly $50 a day by bringing our own snacks.

When we head to Walt Disney World, there is a battle plan in place. We eat breakfast before we leave the room. This saves us time, money, and – let’s be realistic – my kids aren’t fit for public spaces until they’ve been fed. Grumpiness runs in the family.

We also are a family of grazers. At any given point during the day, someone is hungry and needs a snack. Add in some food allergies, and finding snacks during the day can become a process.

On the flip side, part of the Disney experience is eating the food! We still eat some meals in Disney restaurants, choosing sit-down ones for lunch some days so we get a break. Then we eat dinners at quick service locations as we split up for evening rides and bedtime. Check out this list of the best snacks at Magic Kingdom so you can plan those splurges.

Once upon a time, the snack-planning process was harder because we had to bring the food with us. Enter Amazon Prime. It is now even easier to save money when packing snacks at Disney. Next time we head there I’ll be sending my snack list straight to my Disney resort via Amazon Prime one day delivery.

looking for Disney MagicBand tips, TravelingMom has you covered.
Photo: Jill Robbins

Plan Ahead.

Advance planning is the best friend to a Disney vacation budget. Once we know we’re going to Disney, we start discussing meal options. Full disclosure: Dining reservations make me twitchy. With six in our family, I feel like it puts more pressure on us to stay on a schedule and make dining reservations ahead of time. We usually reserve one or two meals for our entire vacation and do walk up or packed food the rest of the time. Also, I highly recommend Yak & Yeti in Animal Kingdom. It is one stop we always work in.

If we hit a free Disney dining deal on our visit, we might consider changing our views. If you’re curious about the dining plans we break all three of them down here.

I like to sketch out our trip on paper by day and slot in meals and snacks so I know how many Disney snacks to buy and pack. Click HERE for a free Disney snack planning worksheet! 

free disney meal planning printable
Plan what you will eat each day with our Disney snack planning schedule. Photo Credit: Nasreen Stump

Amazon Prime Now Delivers to Disney!

Oh glorious day! Amazon Prime now delivers to Disney area resorts and Orlando Florida residents. (That means Universal too!)  Get a 30 day free Amazon Prime trial here before your vacation. With same day delivery available on orders over $20, Disney food shopping just got WAY easier. Now you may be saying, why so much strategy if I can just Prime everything to my resort? Well, things don’t always deliver on time and I promised to save you money. I am thrilled to have this option for perishable items but will probably continue to hoard and coupon for nonperishables.

Snack Ideas for Disney.

When you’re thinking about snacks to pack for Disney, consider snacks that are easy to eat, that aren’t messy, that are non-perishable and that your kids will actually eat.

Think about how you are going to pack the snacks and consider whether you’ll have access to a fridge in your hotel room. If you have access to a fridge, plan to bring some ice packs to freeze and a soft sided small cooler to put your food in to bring into the parks.

Click HERE for a free Disney Snack Shopping List! 

free Disney snack planning printable
Get a FREE download of our Disney snack planning printable with Disney snack ideas here! Photo Credit: Nasreen Stump

Pick Things Your Kids Will Actually Eat.

Now is not the time to convince them they like tiny boxes of raisins (although 3 out of 4 of ours do). You won’t save any money if your kids won’t eat what you brought. Our kids love fruit snacks and Go Go Squeez so we make sure we had plenty of those. Set yourself up for success so you don’t end up with a Magic Kingdom meltdown.

Attend to Those with Allergies.

Allergy friendly dining at Disney is fantastic, with a few minor hiccups. If you are eating somewhere with table service, you’re going to have a great experience. They’ll ask you about all of your allergies and your meal will come with everyone else’s.
However, this isn’t always the case at quick service locations. At our resort hotels dining area, it routinely takes me 30 minutes to fill out an allergy form, find someone, hand it in and receive my meal. On two separate occasions, the meal was incorrect and had to be remade. Every single time my family was done eating before I got my food. I started digging into my snacks at some meals instead of waiting for any special menu items.

Don’t Forget about Drinks.

Pack reusable water bottles. Not only are they good for water, but you can bring powdered straws of Propel, Gatorade or other flavored drinks to make. Juice boxes and Capri Suns are also great choices. You’ll do a lot of walking at Disney so it’s important to bring drinks that interest the kids to keep everyone hydrated.
Don’t forget you can get a free cup of ice water at any quick service restaurant at Walt Disney World or Disneyland. It’s one of our popular free tips for Disney!
breakfast cereal with berries
Breakfast is the biggest way to save money at Disney. By packing cereal, oatmeal and coffee you can eliminate an entire meal from your daily budget!

Breakfast Items Will Give You the Most Bang for Your Buck.

If you can eliminate an entire meal from your daily budget, then you get a savings gold star! Great Disney breakfast choices for hotel rooms are oatmeal packets, Pop-Tarts, cereal and fresh fruit. If your room has a coffee maker, you can use it to heat water for oatmeal. Just make sure you pack a few plastic bowls and spoons.
Keep in mind that some of the value resorts won’t have coffee makers or microwaves in the rooms. I recommend bringing a few reusable coffee mugs. The Value Resorts have microwaves in the dining area and you can get hot water from the dispenser for oatmeal. You can also bring packets of coffee if you want to make your own. I am usually a coffee snob but I will admit that Cafe Bustelo makes a pretty darn decent instant coffee pack.

Pick Some Treats You Don’t Normally Buy for a Fun Surprise.

Part of my strategy to keep the kids from buying snacks at Disney is to bring a few snacks that I don’t normally buy. Fun-size packs of cereal and Pop Tarts distract the kids from the ice cream and cotton candy swirling around them. There are so many Disney themed foods now that it was easy to find princess granola bars and Disney gummy fruit snacks to surprise them with.
Disney prices increases in 2020 will affect all visitors.
Photo: Sarah Gilliland

Download These Apps to Save on Your Snack Shopping.

Grocery shopping apps like Ibotta, Checkout 51, and Saving Star offer rebates on specific items and usually include a good number of nonperishable snack items. Also, download the shopping apps for your local grocery stores to watch for deals.

If you shop online, make sure you have Ebates so you can earn cash back. Dosh is another one to download that includes cash back for favorites like Sam’s Club. (That’s one of our 15+ ideas for saving for a family vacation.)

Split Up Your List.

After you’ve made a list of snacks take a look at it. What can you buy now? What is perishable and needs to be bought or ordered when you’re on site? Split the list and start looking for deals on the nonperishable items. Set a calendar reminder or Google Task to order the other items so you don’t forget.

grocery carts
Save money at Disney by heading to the grocery store before your trip for snacks to pack for Disney.

Start a Snack Gathering Bin.

Before our Disney trip, I grab a laundry basket roughly the size of the box I plan to pack our snacks in. We shop at Aldi regularly so I just add an extra box of Nilla Wafers or an extra bag of pretzels every week for a quick and painless snack stockpile. I also poke through our pantry for anything extra I can throw in there.
Also, I know that the Dollar Store commonly comes up in Disney snack packing lists. DO the math before you buy. The prices often are higher per ounce or unit than the regular grocery store.

Find a Way to Get Your Snacks to Disney Cheap.

We tend to either drive or fly Southwest to Disney, which makes our Disney snack packing strategy easy. Southwest allows two pieces of checked luggage per person. One of our pieces is always a box of snacks and Pull-Ups or diapers for my youngest. Spoiler Alert- diapers at the parks cost about twice what they do in the store!
If your plans include flying on an airline that charges luggage fees, you may want to scale back a bit and try to fit your items into a carryon or a suitcase you already planned to check. Again, the math. Sometimes paying $25 for a checked bag full of snacks still will save you money in the long run.
If your Disney plans include a road trip to Disney, then you’re in luck. Pack a tote of snacks or make a quick stop at the grocery store once you get to Orlando. There are Walmart Super Centers, Super Targets and an Aldi within a 25 minute drive of the Disney theme parks and Disney resorts. Do yourself a favor and schedule curbside pickup ahead of time to save time.

Buy Big, then Split into Snack Sizes for Disney.

Sometimes you can catch a great deal on individually portioned snacks (Sam’s Club and Pepsi partner for a deal about twice a year). Usually though? The smaller the pack, the more expensive per ounce. We buy regular size boxes of favorite snacks and break them down into individual servings using plasticware containers or snack size bags. Then we pack them smart so they don’t crush into crumbs.
snacks at disney save money at Disney
Consolidate snacks into larger plastic containers to save room. Photo Credit: Nasreen Stump

Use Plastic Containers for Packing Snacks. 

Part of my snack packing strategy involves large plastic cereal containers. These hard plastic containers ensure our crunchy snacks don’t turn into dust. After the snacks are eaten, I pack our dirty laundry into them so they fit into the suitcases for our flight home. Additional bonus? You can fit so much more by consolidating items into plastic and discarding boxes (particularly in the granola bar category).
snacks at disney save money at disney
Once at Disney we set up “the snack drawer” with some handy IKEA organizers. This allows us to save money at Disney and stay organized! Photo Credit: Nasreen Stump

Set up a Snack Command Central.

To the sound of my husband’s teasing, I packed my Ikea fabric drawer organizers. They unzip to lay flat and make the perfect snack holders. I designat a snack drawer and a breakfast drawer and put my gluten free snacks in a separate holder. Setting up a snack command central and dividing up snack types will make it easier to pack a day’s worth of snacks every morning.
Phone your phone in your backpack to unplug at Disney.
Use a backpack to carry the snacks at Disney. Photo: Pixabay

How Can You Make It To-Go?

If you are packing food for a large family, you may want to consider renting a locker at the park. However, there is something to be said for the convenience of always having everything with you. Remember coolers and dry ice along with large strollers are banned at Disney. We’ve always found a backpack and small soft-sided lunch bags with ice packs do the trick.

Planning our snacks for Disney allowed us to save at least $50 a day (those $5 snacks and drinks add up). I put our savings towards the purchase of Memory Maker, which pleased the grandparents in a big way!

What are your kids’ favorite snacks? How do you save money while in the parks?

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