We recently went on a family trip to Disney World in Florida with our two kids. Yes, we know Disney is expensive and they are currently not offering the dining plan so we had to get a little creative to help us save money while we were there.
I have read the forums, and I know that not everyone would agree with me, but I just think it’s silly to spend so much money on food. It’s worth it to me and I’m sure many others out there to put in the extra work to save money on your meals.
See our post on cooking while camping when you don’t have a kitchen to get ideas for your next camping trip.
Eat Breakfast in the Room
Most of the rooms at Disney have a coffee maker and a minifridge. We stayed in a preferred room at the Sports Resort. It’s a value resort, but our room had been updated to include a mini-fridge and coffee maker. We brought some food from home so that we could eat in the room.
This is a very debated topic. I have seen people bring prohibited items such as crockpots, toasters, microwaves and electric stove tops, and griddles. It is a fire hazard and the hotel can call security if you bring these items into the room and they find out about it. We might have broken the rules a bit. We brought in an electric stovetop to boil water for our oatmeal.
We made sure to unplug it after we used it, and we used it on a clean and cleared off countertop.
We brought cut-up fruit and peanut butter to put in our oatmeal. It was so nice to have a cheap breakfast to eat every morning.
Other Breakfast Ideas
You could use the microwaves and toasters that are offered inside the resort cafeteria to toast bagels or heat up oatmeal or grits. Bringing pop tarts and breakfast bars is also a good idea. These could be paired with fresh fruit like bananas, strawberries, or blueberries. You could also eat muffins or bagels like we did.
Eating breakfast in the room saved us around $70-100 per day, which was very worth it to me for our trip. I will definitely be doing this again when we return.
How we did Lunch
We didn’t want to use traditional sandwich meat, so we bought a honey ham (that was on sale) and cooked it the day before we left. My husband bagged up the meat in a ziplock bag that we kept in the fridge in the room. Every morning, I would make sandwiches with the ham, and we packed them in a small insulated cooler that we put in our bookbag to take inside the park.
Disney allows you to bring in food items as long as they aren’t inside of glass containers. You can pretty much bring in any snack that you can think of.
Note: It was December during our trip, so if you are going during the hot months…make sure your sandwiches stay cool.
I also brought ziplock sandwich bags and used those for both the sandwiches and fruit. I would pack a small bag with fruit to snack on during lunch. Instead of chips, I decided to bring a pringles can for each day. This kept the pringles from getting smashed in our bookbag and we reused the can after to put crackers in for snacks. The pringles can really was a great idea because it kept the snacks protected inside of our bookbag.
Saving Money on Drinks
If you stay in a Disney resort, you can get the refillable 16 oz mug. The mugs are $19.99 each, so we purchased two. You can refill it as many times as you would like in a two-week period. They are refillable at the resorts but not inside the parks.
They have a mug washing station at the drink station so you can switch between different drinks. We would start with coffee and then put Gatorade and vitamin water in ours.
Water Bottles
We brought our own water in a Nalgene bottle to drink every day. You can refill these for free at any of the water bottle refilling stations or by asking for a cup of iced water. Any of the restaurants at Disney will give you a cup of iced water for free. You could also refill at the water fountains, which are located outside of the bathrooms. (some people don’t prefer using fountains due to germs)
Disney Water Bottle Refilling Station Locations
We found several refilling stations around Disney World. They are clean, easy to use, and never touch your water bottle.
Magic Kingdom
- Cosmic Rays Starlight Cafe
Hollywood Studio
- Transportation Plaza (outside the bathrooms of the bus stop/skyliner station)
- StarWars Galaxys Edge Restrooms
- Smugglers Run Exit
- Slinky Dog Dash (standby queue)
Animal Kingdom
- Na’vi River Journey (standby queue)
- Expedition Everest (standby queue)
- Flight of Passage (standby queue)
- Jambo House Playground
Epcot
- Outside of Guest Relations
- Skyliner Bathrooms
- Odyssey Events Center
- Epcot Experience
- Starbucks Restrooms at World Showcase
Other Locations
- Sarasota Springs (main pool)
- Boardwalk Resort Tennis Courts
- Animal Kingdom Lodge (Kidani Village Bus Stop)
- Yacht Club Convention Center
Dinners at Disney
In order to get a table service meal at Disney, you need reservations. We only ate one table service meal during our trip, and it was to Chef Mickeys. The total for 4 people to eat was $250. I usually wouldn’t do this but we decided to have a character meal experience with my 9 year old since it was his first trip.
The other nights, we ate counter service. Eating counter service meals is much cheaper than a sit down meal. It averages around $15 per person. This is something we decided to do since we made our own breakfast and lunch.
Saving with Disney Rewards Visa
We have a Disney Rewards Visa card. Right now, they are offering a $150 statement credit when you spend $500 in the first 3 months. After that, you get 1% cash back on all card purchases. You can earn more with the premier card, but we don’t have that one (they charge a yearly fee).
We were able to save up $900 in rewards that we used on our trip for dinners and shopping while we were there.
Conclusion
There are so many things you can do to save money on your Disney trip, I hope you were able to use one of our tips! If you love to camp like we do, see our pop-up camper guide or how we remodeled our pop-up camper.
