Disney World is a an incredibly fun, fantasy-filled world. With a husband who grew up near Disneyland with sweet childhood memories, he’s always excited to plan a Disney trip. While it is such a fun experience every time with our kids, the food and drink options are definitely not the best in terms of quality and nutrition. As a mom and nutrition coach, keeping my family healthy while traveling is a priority for me. Over the years, I have gathered some useful tips to keep our family healthy while at Disney World or Land!
Find Better Hydration
If you’ve ever been to Disney World in the summer months, you have felt the heat and humidity! We were dripping in sweat most of the day, and that was in May! Regardless if you’re there in the summer or not, good hydration is a necessity. The parks have a few filtered water filling stations scattered throughout the parks. However, they are few and far between. Some taste good, but some not as great as others.
Of course, you can purchase water bottles, but with the amount of water you need daily, it could get pretty expensive. Our favorite option is to buy a few gallons of spring water before going to the parks. That way we can fill up our large reusable bottles and if you take a stroller in, consider bringing a gallon along. You will be drinking better quality water, without having to hunt it down.
Also, don’t forget the electrolyte sticks. We love adding LMNT packs and found the added electrolytes kept our hydration and energy up throughout the day.
Bring all the Healthy Snacks
If you are looking for healthier snacks at the parks, you may want to pack them! Most of the park food is your typical fried or overly sugary type of food. If you’re there for only a couple of days, you may not want to bother, but if you’re there for a longer stay, those healthy snacks are a must for clean energy and to fight that mid-day crash.
Some easy options are dried fruit, fresh fruit, cheese, beef jerky, energy bars, nuts and seeds, healthy chips, cold pressed veggie juices, and carrots. We heavily relied on Macro Bars (+ kids macro bars) and grass fed beef sticks. The snacks carried us through the whole week, we did stop for some popcorn and popsicles a couple times, which the kids loved!
Reservations Matter
There are some great restaurants at Disney World, however, there aren’t a lot of health focused restaurants. Also, the better restaurants are usually booked months in advance. You may need to be strategic, but with a little prep and planning, you can reserve many great restaurants with better food options.
We find the most difficult park to find better food options is Magic Kingdom. Our last trip, we knew we wanted to stay at the park all day to get all the rides in, so we packed sandwiches, chips and fruit for dinner. Other than that day, we booked great restaurants at the parks. One of my favorites is the Hollywood Brown Derby at Hollywood Studios. Their famous chop salad was seriously delicious.
Another option for your kids at the restaurants is to consider ordering off the adult menu for them. More often than not, the kids menu is full of fried food with little meat and veggie options, but by sharing an adult meal with you or between multiple kids, you can find much more variety and fresher food. My kids loved the clam chowder at the BlueZoo restaurant!
Image taken from Todd English’s BlueZoo Restaurant inside the Dolphin Hotel.
Plan a Recharge Day
If you plan to do all the Disney World parks and maybe even some Universal, you may benefit from a recharge or rest day! Our last trip to Disney World, we decided to go hard. It was a blast, but we did 7 parks in 9 days…we needed a recharge day in the middle! If you can manage to add a rest day, it greatly helps with the endurance of the week. This can be a great chance to take a long nap, lay by the pool, or go play put put. Obviously, with little kids, a rest day is not incredibly “restful.” However, we still found it to help and allowed for extra low-key activities we would not have considered without a day off.
Consider Supplements
If you want to add in a few beneficial supplements to help digest all the park food, there are a few that I would definitely consider! These are: probiotics and/or enzymes for better digestion, and a multi for any nutritional gaps. Veggie juices are also great add-ins for extra nutrition in the park, they always gave us that extra energy and helped with hydration too.
We especially love buying kombuchas to keep in our hotel fridge on these trips. Anytime I ate a meal that left me feeling sluggish or bloated, the kombucha seemed to bring me back to life. The kids loved sipping on them too. Just make sure to not take any glass bottled kombuchas into the park, we’ve been stopped before for that one and found ourselves chugging at the entrance, haha.
Disney World can be a blast, and with a little extra prep and plan, can also be a healthier trip where you don’t feel like you need to press a reset button when you return!
If you like this post, you will love these tips on healthy snacks for kids.
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