Okay, before I even start, let’s just acknowledge that Disney is a very expensive vacation. So if you don’t ever plan to attend Disneyland, I totally support you— and this post isn’t for you.

If you are someone who loves the Disney experience, including food and clothes, then I want to share how I budgeted to do it all with my family of 6.

I personally feel like immersing myself in the total experience makes it more fun! If you agree, keep reading for 4 budget saving tips AND my day to day meal plan at Disneyland!

Tip 1: Use credit card Points for Disneyland tickets

My favorite new discovery for this Disneyland trip is that I could use credit card points to cover some of the cost of tickets to the parks. FYI: I have a Capital One Venture X card.

The trick is NOT to buy from Disney’s website, and instead to buy from undercovertourist.com. The tickets are slightly cheaper, AND when it shows up on your credit card statement as Undercover Tourist it will “code” as a travel expense—so you can just go in and choose how many points you want to use to reimburse the cost of the tickets. We had enough to cover a little less than half the price of 3 one-park-a-day tickets WITH lightning lane (around $1200).

The other bonus to doing this was, at least at the time I purchased my tickets, Undercover Tourist also gave me money towards DiningDollars.com, where I was able to purchase a $500 Disney Gift card for $425. Disney gift cards are how I like to purchase food while in the parks. They’re so easy to use whether you do mobile ordering or not. Also, having a gift card with a set amount really helps keep you on budget because once its gone, it’s gone.

Tip 2: Bring Your Own Snacks

We like to stay at the Anaheim Desert Inn. It’s not super fancy or anything but it’s literally across the street from the parks, and they have a continental breakfast, so we never paid for breakfast in the parks.

I did bring in a few snacks of my own each day. These were bulk items I purchased from Sam’s Club that we eat often at home so any leftovers get used for school lunches and snacks.

Snacks I brought in:

• sun chips
• fruit roll ups
• oranges in a cup
• applesauce pouches
• beef sticks
• granola bars
• Halloween Oreos (we went in October)
• A Diet Dr. Pepper for hubby and me

Tip 3: prepare A Menu ahead of time

With my $500 gift card to use over three days, that meant we had a budget of $166/day. An easy way for me to break that up was that we could use about $50 total for snacks each day, and then we had around $9/person for lunch and dinner.

I downloaded the Disneyland App and spent around 3 hours total researching food available and how much it cost.

This meant I went in to the park with a solid plan. Yes, I even used a spreadsheet. We didn’t end up sticking exactly to the spreadsheet, but it did provide an excellent shell to work from and made decision making a lot easier.

I used a simple formula on the spreadsheet each day to help me know how much I had spent and how much I had left.

Coming in 1-2 dollars under budget is the most thrilling feeling! (Said no one ever?)😆

Tip 4: sHARE

The biggest tip I can offer when eating at Disneyland on a budget is to plan to share as much as possible. If you bring in some of your own snacks they can easily supplement meals if someone is still hungry. But also, when you’re getting pretty heavy snacks in between meals, no one is ever really starving.

Day 1 of eating at disney as a family of 6

Breakfast at the hotel.

Morning snack: Mickey Shaped Beignets from the Mint Julep Bar! We got a 6 pack of normal and a 6 pack of pumpkin spiced. We did NOT pay extra for the dipping sauce this time.

Total cost: $23.14

Lunch: Pizza & Breadsticks from Alien Pizza Planet. We shared 2 full pepperoni pizzas and 2 packs of breadsticks. We had maybe 1-2 slices of pizza leftover. One of my kids preferred the breadsticks so he didn’t each much pizza. I also pulled out oranges in a cup for everyone.

Our pizzas came with a large drink each, so we filled them with lemonade and shared. Water cups are always free so we asked for a few of those as well.

Total cost: $57.72

Afternoon snack: Dole Whip from the Tiki Juice Bar. We bought 2 and shared.

Total cost: $15.70

Dinner: Chicken Tenders from the Hungry Bear Barbecue. Me and the 4 kids got chicken tenders kids meals. They came with a small drink, 2 chicken strips, fries, and an applesauce pouch. My husband got a pulled pork sandwich. We ate later and filled up, so we really weren’t hungry again the rest of the night. No leftovers at this meal.

Total cost: $66.76

Final cost for Day 1 of eating at Disneyland with a family of 6:

$163.32 (eeek! A couple dollars under budget!)

Day 2 Eating at California Adventure On A Budget

We spent our second day at California Adventure. California Adventure has so many unique and culturally diverse food options. I was feeling sad that my kids pretty much only eat hot dogs and chicken nuggets, haha. If I was going by myself, or my kids were older, I would have explored more of the Asian and Mexican food places. Here’s a break down of what we ate in the park on Day 2:

Breakfast at the hotel

Morning Snack: we planned to get churros at Buzz’s churros but the line was way too long. So we decided to scratch the morning snack and eat some of our own snacks instead. I brought out the oreos, fruit roll ups and beef sticks.

Lunch: Corn Dogs from The Corn Dog Castle. We ordered 6 corn dog meals which come with a bag of chips and a drink, and this is my biggest regret. Three of my kids were so full from the chips that they barely ate any of their corn dog. Next time I’ll order 4 or 5 corn dog meals and we’ll share that among ourselves. My kids love corn dogs and I thought they’d eat more but they just weren’t super hungry I guess.

Total cost: $72.96

Early Afternoon Snack: Boudin Bakery Tour. This is free and they give you small baguette slices of sour dough bread! Easy and free snack option.

Late afternoon snack: Ice Cream at Clarabelles. It was cheaper to get 4 double scooped ice cream cones than to get 5 single scoop cones, and since 4 double scoops is more ice cream— we went with that option, duh!

I did the dipped waffle cone and ordered double scoops of Mint Chocolate chip, cookies and Cream and strawberry. My final cone was one scoop vanilla and one scoop chocolate.

This was in the running for our favorite snack of the whole trip. The ice cream and cone were delicious and filled us up so we could eat a late dinner.

Total cost: $37.88

Dinner: Mac N Cheese Cones from Cozy Cone and Chicken Tenders from Flo’s V8 Cafe. These two places are right across the street from each other so it wasn’t hard to coordinate.

We got a spicy mac n cheese cone with crushed hot Cheetos on top, and the bacon mac n cheese cone. These cones are weird, but tasty and my older boys go crazy for them. My younger kids only like Kraft Mac N Cheese (weirdos) so I ordered 3 chicken tender meals to share. These came with fries and a bag of carrots. My first time seeing a vegetable in 2 days! The guy at the counter said the carrots are the least popular item on the menu, ha ha ha.

I also got out the Sun Chips to make sure everyone had enough to eat (since they wouldn’t touch the carrots).

Total cost: $54.37

Final cost for Day 2 of eating at California Adventure with a family of 6:

$165.21 (woah, almost right on!)

day 3 of budget eating at disneyland for a family of 6

Breakfast at the hotel.

Morning snack: Churros in Tomorrowland. We got 3 churros to share, which was an easy 1/2 a churro per person. My kids absolutely love churros and would probably be happy to get them every day.

I can’t find the receipt for the exact cost but it was around $20.

Lunch: We ordered a sampler box and 1 chicken tenders kids meal from The Golden Horseshoe, and a rice plate from Bengal Barbecue. The sampler box came with hot honey chicken tenders, onion rings, 3 mini corn dogs and fries. I pulled out the sun chips again to supplement here.

My husband and I shared a skewer and rice plate, and also bought one extra skewer. It was refreshing to have some meat and rice and I loved the flavors of the two beef skewers.

These two locations are sort of by each other. It took a tiny bit of extra walking on my part but still wasn’t hard to coordinate. Mobile ordering makes everything quick and easy.

Total Cost: $58.68

Afternoon snack: Mickey Apple Pie Caramel Apple from the Candy Palace, and a spiced bundt cake from The Jolly Holiday Bakery.

Note: if you like macrons you should definitely get a macaron from the Jolly Holiday Bakery. My husband is allergic to almonds and I just don’t love macarons, so we went with something else.

The caramel apple was delicious! I used a plastic knife to cut it into wedges to share, and the bundt cake had a delicious cream cheese icing filling with fun Halloween sprinkles and glaze. The kids didn’t love the cake, but the apple was a big hit.

The Candy Palace and The Jolly Holiday Bakery are right next to each other. I couldn’t order the apple from the Candy Palace on mobile order, so I just went up to the counter to purchase.

Total cost: $22.53

Dinner: Grilled Cheese from The Jolly Holiday Bakery and Broccoli Cheese Soup Bread Bowls from the Royal Steet Veranda.

I got 2 grilled cheese and 2 bread bowls for us to share. The soup was amazing, and surprisingly the grilled cheese was delicious too. It was bigger than I expected, like think Texas toast sized bread, so my littles really only wanted a half. My older two boys shared a bread bowl and my husband and I shared the other. We all snacked on the grilled cheese that the littles didn’t eat. Overall we were filled up!

We will definitely get both these items again on our next trip.

These two locations were not near each other, but we had to walk past the Jolly Holiday Bakery on our way to the Royal Street Veranda, so it worked out fine. I just timed it right in the mobile order. We ate together at a little table at the Royal Veranda.

Total cost: $48

At the end of our final day we had $22 left on our gift card. We decided to stop at one of the gift shops on the way out and get each kid a Disney Pez dispenser($4.50 each). That used up all our money and we even got a trinket to take home!

Eating at Disneyland with a large family is definitely a possibility IF it’s something you want to do. It just takes a little more saving and preparation to help you stay on budget.

You can also bring in your own food each day and you’ll still have a great experience!

I personally love trying the food and especially the treats, so I’m always willing to wait and save up a little more to make that happen.

I hope this helps give you some ideas of how to feed a family of 6 on a budget at Disneyland! Make sure to check out my post about outfitting a family of 6 for Disneyland on the cheap!

Love, Abby