Fussy Eaters in your family? – How to eat cheaper at Walt Disney World

There is a huge variety of food at Walt Disney World to choose from, from Counter Service restaurants and Pizza outlets to upmarket restaurants. The prices at Walt Disney World parks were not too bad and are reasonably priced for a theme park. Although it can be a challenge finding healthy food.

Due to the heat and humidity, it’s not ideal to pre-purchase ‘cold food’ and keep it on you during the day for eating. So we mostly bought our food in the parks themselves.

Theme Park food in general is expensive and not very healthy either. Healthy food actually costs a lot more than fast food at Walt Disney World. I guess as it’s a captured market and it’s a way for the theme park to add to their profits, you pay more for good food. 

The good news is that Florida in general is hot and humid. You will (generally) eat less food there because of the heat. You will however want to drink more and you will need the electrolytes.

There were also fruit carts scattered around the Disney Parks. I can’t report that they were ‘great value’ for cost, but they were a healthy option. We generally took our own snacks to the parks.

Budget

We generally paid $30 USD for each meal (the same for breakfast, lunch and tea that fed all three of us) and so a good budget for 3 people is about $100 USD per day. My daughter was 10 years old on our visit. We tended to eat at the Disney resort and had counter service restaurant meals in the parks.

The best idea is always have a big breakfast (buffet if you can) at your resort as brunch before you leave the hotel, so that you are less inclined to require lunch and then only need to worry about tea time. However, this strategy does mean you will need to stay late in the park to get through all the rides.

Snacks

At Walt Disney World, you are not meant to bring in your own lunches and bags are checked, but if it’s only a few “snacks”, you will be ok, just don’t bring in huge hampers of food or glass bottles.

We always take snacks like muesli bars and cracker biscuits with us to the theme parks that we bring from home in Australia. Sometimes when you are hungry and in line this is a lifesaver. I am also partial to Mentos lollies/sweets (which the peppermint ones that double for motion sickness) for the sugar boost which is sometimes also needed when visiting hot and humid energy zapping theme parks. 

You are much better off bringing your own snacks from your own local supermarket at home, then buying snacks when you get to Walt Disney World. There are no local supermarkets at WDW or Disney Springs. There are no Subway restaurants near the parks. You will either need a car or use UBER eats to get more healthy food from a supermarket.

Counter Restaurants

One thing we found, as we didn’t pre-book any food restaurants - we were restricted to the Counter Restaurants. Because we did not pre-book - you can’t even ‘look’ inside these restaurants (I am talking ‘Be Our Guest here’ and the ‘Sci-Fi Dine-In Restaurant’. The Counter Restaurants are fine but they mostly only sell hamburgers and hotdogs.  For each Disney park chapter in this e-Book, I’ve listed the Counter Restaurants where we ate and which were fine for our Fussy eater (10 year old daughter). These were chosen due to good reviews and none disappointed us. The Counter restaurants where we ate often had salad bars that you could go up to and top up your plate with more salad so were good value.

Eating and Drinking at the Resorts

There are a few Disney resorts that have ‘Make your own Salad’ and ‘Make your own Pasta’ meals which is ideal for fussy eaters. The Make your own salad bar was located at Disney All Stars Movies resort. There was also some others scattered in the other resorts - check the My Disney Experience App for Restaurant menus and you can check whether the resort is offering this service.  It’s a good idea as you can put everything you want in the sandwich and leave out what you don’t want. Cooked cold meats are stored in the refrigerators and you can just add them to your sandwich.

In the Disney resorts, ‘healthier’ certainly cost more. At the resorts a cup of sliced fresh fruit was $6 USD and one banana $2 USD. As there are free toasters to use at the resort restaurant, we bought a $3 USD loaf of bread at the gift shop in Disney’s All Stars Movies Gift shop and used that instead of the $1 USD per slice bread in the restaurant. The Gift Shops at the Disney All Stars parks also sold 2 L milk for $4 USD. Inside the restaurant, they were selling 250 mL milk for $5. So to put on my breakfast cereal, we used the 2L milk we carried in a portable container to the restaurant. Buying milk and bread in bulk from the All Stars gift shop was far more economical then buying from the restaurant and we saved a lot of money this way. We kept these items in the hotel fridge.

Disney Springs

Disney Springs is just outside the Disney parks and we were regulars at the ‘Earl of Sandwich’ outlet there. You can sign up to the Earl of Sandwich email site a few days before you leave home and you will get a free sandwich offer and other discounts that are emailed to you every few days. Earl of Sandwich is located in numerous places around America, so signing up for regular emails helps keep costs down when travelling to other areas of the U.S. There is the added advantage of free Wi-Fi in Earl of Sandwich outlets too. Make sure you sign up to email alerts only a day or so before you go to WDW though as the first discount is sometimes the best and has a short use by date. One tip with Earl of Sandwich  though, if you don’t like your sandwich being smothered in sauce, ask for ‘light sauce’ or ‘none’, otherwise you will find your sandwich being smothered in thick sauces. There is a huge variety of hot and cold sandwiches and wraps to choose from in Earl of Sandwich, and if you have fussy eaters in your party - this is the place to eat.  Most sandwiches are under $6 US. There are also refillable drink offers at Earl of Sandwich.

From Earl of Sandwich

Free Water

All Walt Disney World parks offer free water at any of its counter restaurants, hot water in winter and cold iced water in summer. So make sure you bring refillable water bottles for cold water and coffee ‘keep cups’ for hot water from home. I actually tried to find a hot water keep cup at Walt Disney World and they were scarce indeed. Starbucks at Disney Springs sold ‘Keep cups’ for $20 USD. So bring your own ‘Keep cups’ from home!

Strangely, there were no kettles in the All Star Hotel rooms. Hot and cold water however is free at Disney Resorts and parks. So we recommend bringing from home your own reusable ‘keep cup’ for hot water and refillable water bottles for the cold water. I am happy to say that Orlando water is perfectly fine to drink despite reports to the contrary on how bad it tastes. We brought our own tea bags and coffee from home, so we just needed the water. And of course, we had the milk as mentioned previously, which we kept in the hotel room fridge.

I do wonder if the origins of the free water being provided are because on Disneyland’s opening day back in 1955. People got terribly dehydrated due to the very hot weather and the park was ill equipped to cope with the large numbers of people. A plumber's strike around opening day meant Walt Disney was forced to choose between functioning toilets or water fountains. Walt Disney chose functioning toilets as a priority - and I wonder if this event shaped the ‘free cup of water’ policy in the Disney parks ever since.

The Disney Resorts sell $20 USD refillable cups that last for 14 days with ‘unlimited’ refills. I believe you are allowed 3 drinks per hour (it is all electronically computed). We didn’t think it was great value though as the cups are huge (hassle to carry around), and also really only worth it if you are spending a lot of time at the Resort to refill. We really only ever ate breakfast at the resort and then it was off to the parks as soon as possible. If staying 19 days, at Day 15 you will need to purchase another refill cup for $20 (even if you don’t use the full 14 days).

Food Allergies and Special diets

Whether you have a gluten intolerance or an allergy to peanuts - Walt Disney World has you covered. Most of the Table Service restaurants can cater for your needs (just make sure you tell them this upon booking and also at arrival). The Counter Restaurants have less choice (other than the aforementioned hamburgers and hot dogs).

Special mention to Mr Kamal’s Kiosk at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Please note that this Kiosk seems to change names every few years. But it sells things like Vegetarian, Hummus dips, Falafels etc.

Disney Dining
 

Guests of any of the Disney Resort hotels can choose one of the Vacation Packages that includes one of the Disney dining plans. We didn’t think this was great value unless your family really are big eaters. On average, our family of three (2 Adults, 1 child, 10 years old) were spending roughly $30 USD per meal, whether it was breakfast, lunch or tea. We would share the bits of the meal someone didn’t eat so it worked out well for us. Eating was just really a refuelling and rest stop for us as our main priority were the rides and experiencing as much of the park as possible. 

Disney Dining plans (the cheapest) start at $52 per Adult and $22 per Child per day. Age 10 is considered an adult price). I can see the advantage prepaying for all your meals- but if you don’t spend the entire amount allocated per day - then you lose that money. We saved approximately $50 per day by NOT having the Disney dining plan.  The money is better off in your pocket. With the Florida heat you will also naturally eat ‘less’.

One fantastic thing about the My Disney Experience App is that it actually has the menu options for each food restaurant, so you can see before you go on holiday what sorts of foods and prices they have. And you can therefore work out beforehand whether the Disney Dining plan will save you money or not. Not all food places are covered by the Disney Dining Plan either.

Counter Restaurants inside the Disney Parks we recommend for fussy eaters

Magic Kingdom

Cosmic Ray's Starlight Café -This restaurant had a window seat view of the castle, and a free salad topping bar. Could not fault it- includes a show and the prices were reasonable. The Chicken burger was actually very good and we came back here twice as we couldn’t find anywhere else comparable for Counter Restaurant food choice. A lot of the counter service restaurants in Magic Kingdom only sold hotdogs and hamburgers.

The view from the Starlight Cafe

Another view of the castle from this cafe

The Starlight Cafe

The Condiments bar at the The Starlight Cafe

The Queue at the Starlight Cafe

Disney’s Hollywood Studios
We can recommend ‘ABC Commissary’ as a ‘walk up’ restaurant to eat reasonably priced food which also includes a salad topping bar. I ate a Chicken Club sandwich for just over $10 USD here and it tasted good. The recommendation I was given for this park was Sci-Fi Dine-In Theatre Restaurant, but you couldn’t just ‘look inside’ the restaurant, and you needed to pre-book to get a seat. So make sure you pre-book if you want to eat there! The Trolley Car Café was also ‘recommended’ as a great, cheap, healthy place to eat (it’s a Starbucks establishment) - you have to ask for the food menu. But their choice of food options was very bleak. 

Food from the ABC Commissary

EPCOT

EPCOT is a food lover’s paradise - and you won’t have any trouble finding food here for any fussy eater. In fact, I wish I had more days here to spend trying all the different food types. The healthier food seemed to be at Living with the Land, but there were also some bargain foods that we found at the French Pavilion.

We ate at the Land Pavilion ‘Sunshine Seasons’ and the France Pavilion. The Sunshine Seasons had huge turkey and salad sandwiches that were less than $10 USD. There was quite a range of healthy options, maybe because it was in the ‘Land Pavilion’ which was promoting healthy food.

Food from the Sunshine Seasons

The France Pavilion was great value at under $10 USD for ham and cheese croissants etc. and was a great bargain place to eat. The lines were long but moved quickly and there was exceptional customer service. 

Food from the France Pavilion

Animal Kingdom

We only ate at Mr Kamals where we got Hummus with Vegetables which included Pita bread, fries, carrot and celery sticks, hummus, falafels (a lot spicier then I thought they should be) for $19 USD in total. This fed all three of us! It was also quite hot and humid the day we were there so we were less hungry. Make sure you keep your fluids up though as most of this park is outside in the elements.

Mr Kamals

I hope you enjoyed reading about good places to eat with fussy eaters. If you would like to comment on other places at Walt Disney World to eat please do so in Comments as I would love to hear about your experiences. Please follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/themeparktravelguide

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Until next week,
KJ 

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How to save money staying at Walt Disney World
Disney's Hollywood Studios - what to see and do before Star Wars Land opens 
My top 6 theme park rides in Orlando and why
The rides and attractions at EPCOT
EPCOT World Pavilions Part 1
World of Pandora at Disney's Animal Kingdom
Tips and Advice from WDW Castmember Part 1

Tips and Advice from WDW Castmember Part 2

A foodies guide to WDW
Disney Springs - Where to eat and what to do

Pandora and Animal Kingdom

What’s inside the Disneyland Castles Part 2
How to plan a Disney Wedding 
Planning Tips for Someone without a Car
Interview with an Annual Passholder -WDW

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