I've tried different ways and we always end up with 1 or 2 bags full of sacks using our extra credits at hotel checkout. We've tried:
- $4 or more, tons of credits left over
- anything except drinks, tons of credits left over
- 1 snack per person per day, anything you want - still tons of credits left over. Early in the day no one wanted to waste their 1 snack. Then with lunch and dinner, by the end of the day not everyone wanted a snack.
- use your allotment as you please. This is what we do now. If the kids want a chocolate milk mid-day, that's fine. I figured I'd rather "waste" a credit on a $3 chocolate milk than pay it OOP only to take home yet another cookie/rice krispie treat, etc.
There's already at least 2 desserts included that day with meals so I don't mind using snack credits on a drink. Because my 2 kids are young, we tend to share snack credits too (ex. 1 funnel cake is enough, sometimes getting a 2 scoop ice cream in a cup instead of them each getting their own, sharing popcorn, etc.). Because we often go in August and the heat is brutal, we try to drink lots of ice water and use snack credits mostly on ice cream/ice pops anyway. Since many places offer ice cream as a CS dessert anyway, we still don't use all of our snack credits. Some days we'll use 8 credits between us 4 (ex. in Epcot!) and other days we'll only use 2. Our last trip I had no stipulations, didn't pay for anything OOP, and we still had about 8 credits left over at the end of the week.
I'd suggest checking your remaining # of credits after day 3 to determine if you need to start paying OOP for any snacks.