Let me start off by saying My husband and I are NOT DISNEY people, we will not be going every year or two to Disney so we knew this may be our son’s only trip and we wanted to make sure we did as much as we could. My son is 7 and we took our 10 year old nephew with us who also had not been to Disney.

If you plan far enough a head of time you will feel prepared and have your bases covered and will be able to enjoy your trip and not break the bank while you are there. We stayed on Disney property which to me is a MUST!!!!! We stayed 4 nights we had 3 whole days at the parks and 2 half days. If I was planning this trip again I would plan to have at least 5 days at the parks to get everything in. We also had a meal plan which did not really save us money but it was nice to know it was already paid for and was one less thing to deal with while there. Since this was our first trip we also got the memory maker photo plan, I don’t regret the choice but we were disappointed in the lack of photo opportunities at the parks, but we LOVED having all the ride pictures. I will also state up front that neither of our boys had any interest in meeting any of the characters or seeing any of the shows.

Since our son is an only child and our nephew is almost ( he has a 2 year old brother) we wanted to try to eliminate the boys asking for stuff at every turn. With these tips they felt spoiled and treated and it costs us much less than if we had done all of this at the park. And I will say neither boy asked for anything while we were at the parks no toys, extra ice cream, shirts, etc. it was great.

For a few months leading up to our trip I collected goodies without the boys knowing about it. So here are some of the goodies that I collected leading up to our trip. My plan was to stock up on goodies before the trip so the boys had something new and something Disney each day.

We drove from Kentucky to Disney so I made sure we had activities for the car ride and wrote about that HERE.

Below you will see glow sticks that I got from the dollar store to have each night at the parks instead of buying them there . And these have 2-4 per pack for $1!!! The yellow packs at the bottom of the pictures are rain ponchos from the dollar tree too which is better than the $12 you would spend at the park. I would get 2 per person. Our boys also used them on the rapids ride at Animal Kingdom and rode the ride like 5 times in a role and enjoyed not being wet the rest of the day.

I also picked up some cheap goggles and pool toys to have since they never seem to make it home in one piece.

For the picture below from left to right. I got some cold n’ hot patches for the grown ups I also got these at the dollar store, then I got 3 first add kits from the dollar store, one for my bag and one for each of the boys. Hand sanitizer, and corn pads in case of blisters.

Next I have pins ready for trading, I ordered from ebay but made sure the pins in the listing were the actual pins that I would receive. I also wanted to make sure there were some I thought the boys might actually want to keep and tried to get several that were in the same set etc to show them what to look for etc. I will write another post about this fun activity which the boys loved.

The watch below I ordered from walmart.com and the lanyard for their pins was an add on item on an amazon order and was like $2 each. The Mickey shirts I ordered from Walmart.com and they were $6 I also ordered some almost just like them for the grown ups from Disneystore.com when they were on clearance. I also watched Disneystore.com clearance section and got stuffed animals for $1.99 each, and reusable grocery bags. Then each night as we where leaving for dinner I would send the boys to the car and put that day’s prize on the boys’ bed and they when we returned they thought it was from Disney and a part of the trip. They knew they were getting something each day so they did not ask for things in many gift shops we walked through.

Backpacks… this was THE BEST IDEA I HAD!!!! I got the boys these neon drawstring back packs to carry all week. Neon is cool, Under Armour is cool, so they loved wearing them. I loved them wearing them so I could spot the boys easily and told them if they got separated from us to stand still and hold the bags up in the air so we could spot them. In a plastic bag I put a change of clothes, just in case ( and my son actually needed a change of clothes one day) and a pair of plastic flip flops for water rides. Who wants wet tennis shoes all day. Each boy had 2 $25 gift cards for anything extra they wanted, so those ponchos, sunscreen wipes, tubes of sunscreen for the face, and any snacks that they wanted for the day. They were responsible for their bags having them paced and they did great with this. This made it were I was not carrying stuff for everyone.

I put this bag in my backpack to have on just in case.

Also don’t forget lots of sunscreen. I got the sunscreen sticks for everyone’s bags for fast application for faces. And I have never seen the sunscreen wipes before bur read about them on another blog and ordered some from amazon HERE and I LOVE LOVE LOVE them. The boys could put them on themselves and was great for the back of necks and arms.