“Work hard, play hard!” – I like this motto. We do work hard and we deserve to relax and have fun, right? By golly, we’ve earned it! When we go on vacation, we tend to throw moderation to the wind, kick up our heels and indulge, feast and pamper ourselves – all the things we deny ourselves day-to-day. I’m no nutrition or financial management expert, but as I get older, I feel like I’m having a more difficult time snapping back after playing hard. When we vacation, we tend to over-indulge in every area – food, drinks, and snacks, extras and souvenirs. Never is this more true than on a Disney vacation. I’d like to change that habit.
Sensible Consumption on a Disney Vacation
Let’s talk about food first. Our family is all about trying new things and making our Advance Dining Reservations (ADRs) at the earliest possible time. One table-service meal per day is our minimum requirement for optimum happiness and we’ve been known to book more. We overeat on vacation and rationalize it by believing that all the walking we do will burn off those excess calories – honestly, that’s just not the case. 
The older we get, the harder it is to lose weight. Gone are the days where those extra pounds just drop back off once we get home. Recently at Walt Disney World, Raymond and I tried to be more mindful of this – baby steps, really – and what we tried seemed to work well! On next vacation, we plan to use these strategies –
- Portion Control – Often portions are HUGE and totally share-able. We tried sharing lunch a couple of times – splitting appetizer, entrée, and dessert. Turns out, we were completely satisfied with half-portions and this was a great lesson to take into the future.
- Give and Take – Think a little bit ahead as in…I’ll pass on this ice cream now in favor of dessert with dinner. I’ll admit that this one will be a bit of a challenge – when I’m hungry and have a hankerin’ for a churro or a Mickey ice cream bar, I’m in the moment and might swear (to myself) that I’ll pass on dessert later. In reality, if cheesecake’s on the menu, Raymond will definitely order it and I’ll have to eat some. This one sounds good in theory, but execution may prove impossible.
- Choose “Less Unhealthy” options – It’d be silly to suggest that we could or would eat only healthy meals at Walt Disney World, but we can make better selections. Maybe. We can try!
Now, about those adult beverages – We enjoy wine with dinner, but recently blundered with wine pairings for each course at Jiko. Not only did we overeat big-time, but were way too sleepy when we left – no return to the parks for us that night. We headed straight back to our resort and fell asleep. I don’t even want to talk about what that splurge did to our dinner bill. It’s easy to over-indulge with empty calories in this category, but we’ve got a plan formulated for dealing with that as well…
- Allow one (maximum of two) splurges per day – We know we’re still going to order a bottle of wine with dinner, but we can cut down on the number of times we stop for a cold beer in Animal Kingdom or Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Also, we love the Resort Loop Pub Crawl but can probably be perfectly happy with one stop per day (or less).
- Prioritize our “Must-Try” list – There are quite a few things on this list – most of which can be found in World Showcase. Before I say planning in advance for these vacation libations will take all the fun and spontaneity out of exploring the World, we need to give it a try…I’ll let you know how it goes.
- Skip the after dinner specialty coffee – Yes, even after the wine, it’s sometimes tempting to enjoy a fancy adult coffee with dessert…or even AS dessert. Since this splurge is rare, it may be the easiest one to do without.
The extra expenses – Food and beverages are a huge part of our vacation budget, so we try to work out how much that’s going to set us back and set aside that money in advance. We save about $7 when we purchase $150-worth of Disney gift cards at Sam’s Club, so I try to buy enough gift cards pre-vacation to take care of our food, drinks, and any spa treatments we have booked. As far as souvenirs go, I’m all about Disney Christmas ornaments and always add one or two to our collection on every vacation. We usually also like to buy a couple of Disney pins and a coffee mug. If we could stick with these, we wouldn’t have a problem – we could easily budget for this expense.
Disney merch! This company sure has our number and knows exactly what buttons to push to get us to spend more by playing on our emotions. There’s really only one way to cut down on spending in this category and that would be to stop shopping! Ha! Like that’s going to happen. What we can do is just say no…right now. 
With the Shop Disney Parks app and the ability to use personal shoppers from home, if I pass up something using this “say no right now” method and later decide I can’t live without whatever it was, I can always try to get it later. I believe this will cut way down on impulse/emotionally driven purchases. Maybe. We’ll see, won’t we.
Do you try to exercise sensible consumption on your Disney vacations? What are your best ideas to avoid over-indulging?
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It is easy to focus on the negative. It’s human nature for most folks – even if you tend to be a glass-half-full person most of the time, change is tough! I’ve mentioned it several times before, but feel the need to weigh in again today after watching the Disney fan community erupt on social media in opposition to recent cut-backs, closures, price increases, and event changes. Over the past few days a Disney survey collecting opinions on the proposed addition of $15 per night resort fees has caused quite a stir and those fees don’t yet exist. Food offering changes are also a hot button for Disney park fans. Heck, I’ve expressed my own disappointment over the loss of the Roasted Pork Shank from Gaston’s Tavern and the Sweet and Spicy Chicken Waffle from Sleepy Hollow (both beloved Magic Kingdom snacks!).
Maybe, just maybe, after closures, construction walls, and cutbacks we will find that all of it… the inconvenient and expensive changes and adjustments…has been worth it. What if the painful short-term sacrifices produce exceptional long-term gains and our favorite vacation destinations emerge better than they’ve ever been before? As for me? I’m willing to wait and see for myself if all the upheaval has been worth it. I’m optimistic that I’ll find true Disney vacation happiness still exists on the other side.
