10 Money-Saving Tips for Your Disney World Holiday

Hi there! I'm Lucy, Owner and Chief Sewist at The Sew Dough Co. where I make Donut Mouse Ears and Plushie Pals for your travels. Having just returned from a 9 night trip to Walt Disney World (March 2025), I thought I would share some of our Money saving tips for your next Disney World Holiday for those of you like us, who have spent enough getting to Disney World, that we don't need to be forking out more cash on things we've already paid for. I have also linked my Amazon Travel List, which includes items below plus lots of other things we've found useful on our travels.

1.        Bring Double Walled Water Bottles.

All resort hotels have FREE water refill stations and ice machines. This means you can fill up your water bottles (yes even if you haven't purchased a Refillable Mug!) before leaving your hotel – and they will stay cool all day. Every restaurant and quick service will also provide you with free ice water - in fact any place serving fountain drinks. The ice can help with the flavour as Florida water is heavily chlorinated. Even better – grab some cordial drops at the supermarket to give yourself a better chance at staying hydrated.

Here's where to find the FREE cold water button and hot water tap in the beverage filling areas.

2.        Do a Supermarket Shop/Grocery delivery

I get it, you’re on holiday and you don’t want to be living on a shoe string budget – and I agree! But with resort beers costing $10 when you can get 15 for $18 in Walmart/Target that’s not even Girl math – that’s good math! So if like us, you enjoy a wine or a beer on an evening as you wind down, you’re actually saving money by picking them up with your grocery shop. The same goes for Snacks, I am a huge fan of Disney Snacks – but sometimes you just need a pack of Cheetos to munch through or some trail mix to keep you going between caramel apples. Especially if you're traveling with kids, with $6 a cake pop in Main Street Bakery, you’ll be glad you picked up a pack of Oreos to keep hunger at bay between meals.

3.        Pack a Medicine Kit

We know we always get sick on holiday, it’s a period of time when our bodies relax, airplanes are just giant incubators and on top of that we have a toddler, so it was inevitable we would get sick on holiday. Some of the essentials we packed were: Paracetamol, ibuprofen, rehydration sachets (very important for hot days/hangovers), throat lozenges (of which I used 2 bags whilst away 9 days!), Plasters, blister plasters, coldsore patches, tissues, Calpol, nasal spray, albas oil. The resort hotels all have basic pharmacy items, and the first aid stations in the Parks are also equipped but you can only get so far with them – and lets not forget the price tag. Most of these things you’ll have lying round at home for free – so just make some space in your case for a Tupperware box filled with all your necessary medications to keep you comfortable for the duration of your stay.

4.        Tupperware for Snacks / Meals

If you're travelling with kids, or just love to graze like we do, then packing Tupperware is a game changer! You’ve done your supermarket shop, and now you need a way to carry all these snacks round in you bag without getting crumbs everywhere. We found that not only our Toddler, but all three of us were making use of these – especially for bringing in cookies from large packets (see Oreo trays), or crisps from share bags. I could also pack sandwiches for the day and packed a couple of Ikea zip-lock bags to keep yogurt pouches and mini snack bags all in one place.

5.        Carefully weigh up hotel costs

We shopped around and had convinced ourselves staying at Universal Resort, or offsite would save us a fortune. Once we had priced up a couple of deals we noticed that offsite hotels often have resort tax to pay per day, plus parking fees. What's important to remember is, whilst these hotels provide transport to the parks, they will not be as reliable or as often as the Disney hotel transport. So if you hire a car, you’re paying for parking at your resort as well as parking at the Parks, which is included in a Disney Hotel stay. Even without a hire car, you may be more likely to use rideshare apps to get yourself home quicker on an evening when your feet are tired and your kids need bed. These items alone added up to more than was priced for the stay at Pop Century, so we weighed up all the advantages of staying on site (extra magic hours/Disney bubble/ better transport) and booked Pop!

6.        Buy a Refillable Mug if you like a coffee first thing, or are a soft drink fiend!

Refillable Mugs are currently priced at $23 (plus tax), and last up to 2 weeks from first use. For us this worked out at $2.50 a day, which was less than one coffee ($4.79 for filter coffee or a fountain drink). So even if all we managed was a coffee first thing, and a soft drink in the afternoon when we returned then we had saved money! Bonus points to me for filling my Refillable Mug with Vitamin water, then pouring it into my water bottle – and topping up with ice and water ready for my park day – and then filling my mug with coffee for my bus journey to extra magic hours. Honestly, I felt like an actual money saving genius.

Refillable Mugs are well worth the money if you're staying onsite more than a week.

7.        Save on Lightning Lanes by using your Extra Magic Hours

Another plus to staying at a Disney World Resort is the Extra Magic Hours, even the value resorts get 30 minutes first thing in the morning in EVERY SINGLE PARK. Which, sure, isn’t as much as it used to be, but trust me when I say this time is invaluable. Especially if you do not want to spend any extra money on Lightning Lanes. We had already spent £500+ on park tickets EACH, so I absolutely point blank refused to fork out any extra money to skip queues. And I have 0 regrets, we made sure to stay on our early morning starts (using our jetlag to our advantage) and got up and out onto transport 1 hour before the Extra Magic Hours began. More often than not this meant we would arrive in the park 20 minutes before Extra Magic Hours started, and therefore maximised the time – with our Magic Kingdom day we managed to ride 7 rides within the first 2 hours.

8.        Use the Deluxe Hotel Amenities

There are no resort police, and by that I mean, you can go and use a quick service and communal areas such as Lobby seating and grassed areas – even beach seating and hammocks in Deluxe resorts! After a busy morning in Magic Kingdom, we got the resort monorail, and headed over to Polynesian Village Resort. We enjoyed a few drinks at Tamu Lounge, and then headed to Captain Cooks quick-service and grabbed some food. We went and sat out on the grass and soaked in the Polynesians gorgeous vibes. You cannot use the pools in a hotel that is not your own, but that's it! Be sure to pack your Refillable Mugs and you can get a soft drink or a coffee pick me up in the afternoon for free.

9.        Only have Table Service meals if they’re your absolute Must Do.

We had one table service meal the duration of our 9 night stay, but our circumstances may not be yours. Our toddler is not a big eater and therefore once she’s burned through a colouring book and stickers she’s ready to leave. We risked Topolino’s Terrace because she had responded well to character meets and we knew we liked the food there from previous visits. I had also booked Tusker House, Kona Café and Home Comin’. But as the days rolled on I cancelled them all one by one as I knew all it would do is add extra time pressure to our days, we needed to be able to let her nap and we love trying snacks more than we like paying $100 for lunch! So it really made sense to use to prioritise one extravagant meal over 2-3 rushed ones.

Chicken Guy Quick Service in Disney Springs // Satuli Canteen Breakfast Quick Service in Animal Kingdom.

10.   Have kids meals / share adult meals

Kids meals come with a drink and a snack (sometimes two snacks!), and more often than not they are just a half portion of the adult meal. We really made use of this so that my Daughter could have a milk drink and an orange or apple slices and then I would have chicken tenders and fries. Two people fed for the price of a kids meal! At the Regal Eagle, me and my husband shared a meal and a side -which was ample food for the two of us. Baring in mind again, our aim is to keep energy levels up but not eat so much we don’t have space for Disney Snacks!

Regal Eagle in Epcot - Two adults sharing 1 main & 1 side // Woody's Lunch Box in Hollywood Studios - 2 breakfast meals and 1 kids meal (Cheese toastie, soup, tots, milk & a clementine).

We had such a fantastic holiday, and part of this was not worrying constantly about how much we were spending. We used the above tips, to knock our daily expenses down, meaning we could treat ourselves to a cocktail or snack when the mood took us.

I hope you've found this helpful! Let me know your experiences in the comments below, and check out my Amazon List, for any items I may have discussed to help aid your trip.