WDW2002
I agree! You can buy tons of food , on sale ahead of time and save yourself lots of money on breakfast, snacks and even some lunches. Then with the money you saved, you can buy some snacks at the parks that you just cant get at home or cant ship ahead (the Disney $2.50 ice cream bars, treats from the French bakery at Epcot, or other snacks that you just can't get anyplace else). Spending $16adult/$10child (oops, thats out of date, those prices are rising) for one character breakfast doesnt sting quite as bad when you know that your other breakfasts were nutritious, healthy and were very inexpensive. I wasnt interested in trying to cook at the resort, or spending a lot of time on food preparation, but by planning ahead, we had plenty of reasonably healthy food that worked for breakfast or on the go snacks, for not much money. We also had more time to enjoy the park attractions instead of wasting time waiting for waitstaff to serve us food or waiting in lines for counter service. And, I dont think a childs Disney experience is robbed of anything by not eating the chicken fingers every day at the parks.
For breakfast, I shipped individual boxes of kids cereal, I measured out grown up cereal into individual ziploc snack bags). Also shipped juice boxes, raisins, dried apricots, foil pouches of tuna (they now sell foil pouches of chicken too), triscuits, wheat thins, aerosol cheese (I had never used this before, but it was pretty good and needed no refrigeration), granola and cereal bars, Chex morning mix, single serving applesauce and diced fruit (used for breakfast sometimes and for snacks-- and they required no refrigeration) and pudding cups (this was a big hit), peanut M&Ms, packages of cheese/peanut butter crackers assorted cheese & cracker packages, rice krispy treats, trail mix, pocket bread or tortillas (not as bulky as bagels and dont have to worry about smashing them, like regular bread), peanut butter, cookies, and Frito-Lay snacks to go (these are new in our area, I dont know if they are available everywhere, but they are chips or other salty snacks in a plastic container (about the size of a pringles can) with a recloseable snap on lid
.these worked well in the backpacks, as the chips didnt get crushed), and assorted candy.
Then when we stopped at the grocery store on the way from the airport, we bought yogurt, milk, string cheese, some deli meat for lunch on the first day, apples and oranges (that didnt need to be refrigerated since the room was cool enough). It worked great for us and Id do it again.