Eating at Walt Disney World can be expensive, but there are ways to save money on Disney dining. Here are my top 10 tips:
1. Bring your own breakfast foods and eat in the room. They sell milk in the hotel food court if you would like to do cereal.
2. Split meals. A lot of the meals at the counter service restaurants are large enough to feed 2 people if you aren’t super hungry.
Cosmic Rays (MK), Flame Tree BBQ (AK) and Sunshine Seasons (EP) all have large servings.
3. Get a free cup of ice water at any restaurant in Disney that serves fountain soda.
4. Order a coke with your meal with no ice. Then get a cup of ice. You will be able to share one drink between two people. (This is not for restaurants that offer free refills.)
5. Order an adult combo for your kids to split instead of ordering 2 kids meals.
6. Order a double cheeseburger and an extra bun. Then you can split it into 2 burgers.
7. Chose to buy things a la carte to save money. Such as buying just a hamburger and soda instead of the combo.
8. Try timing your meals differently – instead of a “breakfast/lunch/dinner” day, do a late breakfast (“brunch”) or an early dinner.
9. Bring your own snacks and water to the park.
10. If you are going to eat at a sit down restaurant, try to do it for lunch. Prices are cheaper then.
11. Look into the different dining plans Disney offers.
Does anyone else have more tips to add?
Learn more about Walt Disney World Dining and get suggestions for where to eat, how to use the Disney Dining Plan and more.
We love the cabins at Fort Wilderness and saving on food is a huge peek! They have full kitchens so we cook most meals there, usually a big breakfast and then throw a meal in the crock pot so it’s ready when we get back for dinner. We pack snacks to tide us over during the day.
Also, popcorn is a fairly inexpensive and filling snack in the park!
what do they charge for the extra bun
I dont like to share but i agree sometimes its great idea! ( and i wonder why i am over weight!) haha
We bring our own sodas (20 oz) with caps because some counter service places will give you a free cup of ice sometimes they are small but sometimes they are the large cup
Don’t forget to check out the deals available at Restaurant.com http://wdwnotjustforkids.com/money/disney-discount-restaurant-com/
Also, if you’re not on the No dine challenge, see what Opentable points could do for you. http://wdwnotjustforkids.com/money/dine-out-in-your-hometown-get-free-food-in-orlando/
I love the double cheeseburger idea. Most of the time the bun doesn’t get eaten so we’re going to try this with extra veggies. Thanks for your great tips!
This will be our first time on a Disney dining plan! We only did quick service because i didnt want to be making reservations all the time and we like to park hop sometimes 3 parks in a day! so it be to hard for us to eat sit down ALL the time! but last year i did drive to walmart and get bagels but i think we might use are snack credits for breakfast this time :)
Something my daughter (19) and I do is sometimes order kids meals for ourselves. The food court kids breakfast is cheaper than the adult meal and plenty filling.
there is a burger joint just off of Main St that has free fixin’s for the burgers – lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles – this makes nice refreshing and FREE salad!
I did not know that you could bring your own drinks and snacks. This will be great when we go next year with my sister-in-law. We will have 5 kids all between the ages of 8 and 1. I can’t wait!
Since we’re now local we’ve had to switch up the way we do the parks. Just can’t spend the same way we did when we were on vacation — even though we got it pretty low then. But now I’m trying to spend almost nil when we go to the parks.
Loved the tip about the water. Also, if you get those little individual drink mix packets you can add some flavor to your water. But we always seem to get thirsty when we’re standing in line. So we bring water bottles (even old soda bottles rinsed out will do) and always have water in our backpacks/fanny packs.
We also bring sandwiches. We’ll usually stop by one of the CS condiment stands to get some ketchup/mayo/relish/something to put on it to make it a bit more palatable.
We also carry snackies in our backpacks/fanny packs. Anything with chocolate or sticky doesn’t fare well in the Fla heat but peanuts, chips, jerky, cheerios, all of that does pretty good and is pretty easy to grab a handful of while standing in line.
I always bring groceries for an in-room breakfast and my fav in-room meal is oatmeal! I usually bring a box of instant oatmeal, some plastic spoons and dried fruit(like cranberries and raisins). We use the coffee maker to dispense the hot water into the rooms coffee mugs(or bring your own Bowls) -add a fresh banana on the side and Voila!-you have a healthy, cheap breakfast that is full of carbs to keep you going on your theme-park adventure!
Jennie, Thank you and well said. The #1 thing for me is I to Keep coupon policies handy. It gives me confidence knowing that I following the rules. And if needed when a cashier questions a coupon.
If your family is sharing meals bring your own “desserts”,( snack cakes, candy, fruit, pudding cups, fruit cups) to have right after dinner at the table That way if someone is still a little hungry a treat should do the trick. Choose something that would not be considered a snack in your family.
we ALWAYS bring food with us to Disneyland too! We usually just buy dinner – but the rest of the day we eat what we bring – we noticed that bringing something with protien really helped keep us from feeling hungry – we would bring string cheese, hard boiled eggs, peanuts, protien bars, once we even brought just a package of lunchmeat & ate it as we walked (is that super weird?) anyway – we had that as well as LOTS of frest fruit, raisins, granola bars, and of course LOTS of water bottles – we also brought some of the kids favorite candy which we dont eat very often so it was a very special treat & that made it so nobody bugged us for a $7 ice cream either =)
I love these tips. Some of these I would have never thought of on my own!
Those are all great tips! Thanks!
I’ve heard differing reports on the cost of the “extra bun” when splitting a double cheeseburger. Has anyone had recent Disney experience with that?
These are great tips for eating out anywhere!
Avoid buffets especially if you have light eaters. They are very, very costly. The only time we do them anymore is if it is used as 2 meals like brunch.
Another tip..is get water like you stated before BUT take Crystal Light packets and/or Propel packets & just stir in the glass.
We bring a soft sided cooler in with us with drinks in it. Since we usually have a stroller with us we put the cooler in the compartment under the stroller. We also bring our own snacks in with us such as granola bars, little bags of chips or whatever else I think would be good. We have even brought sandwiches in with us for lunch.
Something we do to save is I do surveys throughout the year and trade in the points for Restaurant Gift Cards. So we will eat a few meals off WDW property too.
We like to use our snack credits at the bakery on the days we are at MK at night. We can get yummo items for breakfast the next morning as well as milk, juice and fresh fruit if desired. We generally try to take those items to keep in the room and use the snack credits on the “good stuff”, ha!
Kristin, is this what you did? great tips!!
These tips are great and practical for day to day dining too. Splitting a double burger idea is brilliant, thanks for the tips! Now if I can only get my husband to not think I’m a cheaparse for doing that. :p
Thanks for more great tips on saving money on food at the parks. Tip #11 is one that I find to be very helpful as the Dining Plan saves a lot as we do like to do a sit down meal a day.