FREE Dining - What do you do for breakfast???

[momfor2kids]

Just wondering what people do about breakfast with their FREE Dining. I am all set for lunch and dinners (we are going 8/19-8/25), but wondering what do you do for breakfast. Do you use your snack credit for breakfast or do you bring stuff with you??? We are flying and just doing a carryon bag each so space may be at a premium. Also how do you find "snack" credit things that would be good for first thing in the morning?

Thanks for the help - this is our first trip to Disney.

 

[justintime]

My kids aren't terribly hungry in the morning, so I'll bring Pop Tarts or cereal bars with me for them. I will usually use a snack credit for myself to get a muffin, or if I am going to Epcot I will stop at the Norway bakery before we leave and get an apple turnover or something else there with my snack credit to eat the next morning. My husband just buys his breakfast at the counter service restaurant at the resort. You can get eggs or waffles not too expensively.

 

[ROEDISNEY]

Me & my DH get a cs bk and split it or get a muffin or a bagle piece of fruit.

 

[MHSweb79]

There are a LOT of desserts included on the dining plan, so many people will get a muffin, piece of fruit or other pastry-type thing for dessert and save it for breakfast. The restaurants will package up any dessert to go for you.
Last time we were there it was pretty easy to see which items counted as a snack credit. I'm sure it's still the same.
Don't worry about going hungry -most people have unused snack credits at the end of their trip (we did!) so you'll be fine.

 

[1disneynutt]

I plan on just using our snack credits for breakfast. We are staying at Pop and I guess you can get both cereal and milk for 1 snack credit. I also plan on going to Main Street Bakery at MK to get a cinnamon roll I hear they are huge and wonderful that is also 1 snack credit. There is a snack sticky thread at the top of this section which lists all of the snack items.

 

[MissMagnolia]

We either use a snack (Main Street Bakery in MK is a good choice) or bring some "snacky-breakfast" type food with us and then book an early lunch (earliest lunch seating we can). That way there is a bigger break before eating dinner. You will find that the dining plan is A LOT of food and you are not always going to be hungry for the next meal.

Sometimes we book a breakfast for our TS (especially if it is a character breakfast) and then a late lunch that doubles for dinner. Your breakfast is so much food that you are not really hungry right at noon so the late lunch is good for dinner too. You will find that even the CS meals tend to be big. Then we get a snack to eat while watching a parade, fireworks, or show later in the evening.

 

[Kitikat]

i am planning on eating in our room/eating on the way to park. We are driving so i have been stocking up for the 6 of us. I am bringing bagels, cereal, pop tarts & oatmeal. plus other snack for out the days and evening. My son can't understand why i am packing so much food but we will be there 8 days times 6 ppl is 48 & that is just breakfast.

 

[brymolmom]

Our family is 4 of us - dh and I with ds7 and dd5. We ALWAYS eat breakfast. I will be bringing 1 - 2 boxes of cereal and maybe a container of mini-muffins in our carry-on luggage (we are paying to check ONE bag - to put all our sunscreen, etc. then carrying on the rest). In addition to this - we will split some snacks and use snack credits for milk for the cereal. Planning on maybe some donuts, cinamon rolls, bananas.

Works well for us!

 

[RMulieri]

We stay in the villas so we go to the grocery store and get cereal and milk

 

[baj0505]

When we go to Epcot we stop by Boulangerie Patisserie in France before heading back to the hotel and pick up a few Ham and Cheese croissants for breakfast the next morning(they count as a snack item)--they also have lots of other pastries that count as snacks and sometimes we will use 3-4 snack credits. They are served to you cold and keep good in the fridge. Sometimes the kids will toss them in the microwave to warm them up.

Throw some baggies in the bottom of your suitcase they will come in handy for keeping this type of stuff fresher.

We also ask for a fruit cup to be subbed for some of the desserts (either kids or adults) and most places will do that for us. We have those for breakfast also. When we get tired of soft drinks for lunch and decide to split one, several places have bottles of orange juice or cranberry apple juice and we have asked for those as our lunch drink and taken them back to the room (every place has different rules so just ask if you can sub and most of the time we are pleasantly told yes!)

If you have a toaster in the room, most of the resort markets have boxes of 8 Eggo waffles for about $4.50 which are another quick breakfast.

 

[dkbnyc]

i plan on bringing a box of cereal and shelf stable milk boxes

 

[Letsbgoofy]

Our plan is to go shopping and get healthy breakfast foods...what I will really do is eat dessert from the night before! I love chocolate cake for breakfast - only on vacation of course

 

[pumba]

Hubby and myself eat a good breakfast every morning ...some sort of small lunch and then we have between 4ish and 5ish dinner reservations each day.....We could not eat a big lunch and then dinner....

 

[ReneeA]

I bring pop tarts, granola bars and cereal bars for the mornings. We've also saved CS desserts (most seem to carry well in the backpacks) for morning meals.

It works out well for us because then we are hungry early - around 11 am, so we stop for lunch before any of the CS places get busy.

 

[DisneyNDecember]

My son & I eat breakfast in our room at Wilderness Lodge. We have We Go Shop deliver our cereal, milk, a few snacks, orange juice, bottled water, & of course my 12 pack of Red Bulls (a girl needs her caffeine) on the day of our arrival & we eat breakfast in our rooms.

 

[catne]

We drive, so usually stop at store on our last night on the road to pick up snacks & cereal bars, milk & cream. Then we generally end up eating none of the stuff we bring, lol. So far, everytime we end up buying pastries for the next day on the way out of the park at noon (we leave parks for a break just about every day) Or we pay OOP for an occasional counter service breakfast if we get a day we wake up really hungry (doesn't happen much on dining plan!)

One suggestion...if you're planning on buying pastries for next day breakfast, take a couple of the giant zipper storage bags to put your goodie boxes in (2 gallon size) The to-go containers are great to carry your goodies from the park back to your room,but they are not even close to air tight...we learned the "hard" way how fast the bakery pastries get hard & stale overnight.

 

[mickeyplanner08]

Add us to the list of checking one bag full of food We have Pop tarts, nutrigrain bars, a couple bags of goldfish, some jolly ranchers, etc. to have while we are there. Unlike most people, we really don't end up with snack credits left over....we try (and usually succeed) at using one per person per day. I got one of those famous cinnamon rolls from the Main Street Bakery one morning last year, and Starring rolls has some yummy looking morning treats at DHS, too. Don't worry, no one will go hungry

 

[cassandrap83]

We are using our TS for breakfast 4 of 7 days. We like to eat a full meal in the morning, and could easily just have a "snack" for lunch, especially since we'll be sleeping through it most days when we go back to the hotel! hehe

 

[Orangeandwild]

For breakfast we use our Snack Credit and use our Refillable mug for the beverage. Lots of choices for a Snack Credit at the Pop Food Court and this way we extend our DDP to a full days worth of meals.

Lunch is CS and our TS is used for dinner

 

[pooch]

breakfast from home trick once. Kids looked at me like I was nuts. Food from Home?!?!? on VACATION?!?!? Yea, brought a whole carry on full, took it home too!

Free Dining is an annual DD & me trip now and we have it down to a science for us. I go to the food court and get the largest CS breakfast available, usually eggs, meat, home fries, biscuit, coffee & large OJ, while she gets ready. One is plenty for both of us. Then we split a CS lunch and mostly get apple slices as our dessert to munch on later. By our TS dinner, we have room to eat our own. This way we aren't stuffed all day and we have a couple of CS on the last day to take lunch to the airport. Works really well for us. I think we spent maybe $30 OOP on food for 7 days last year. That covered a couple of appies we got & a funnel cake by the American Adventure!