Our Disney World Day at Home

Our family loves to go to Disney World. With not being able to travel right now I wanted to spice things up a little and so I decided to make a fun Disney World Day at home for our family. I was inspired by Jaclyn from Coffee, Pancakes & Dreams and her Disney Day at Home.

I am sharing what we did with the hope that it might give you a few fun ideas that you might be able to use with your kiddos too. Or just for yourself, because really, you don’t have to be a kid to have a little Disney fun.

And maybe Disney isn’t your thing but you could take some of these concepts and recreate your favorite vacation or celebrate your favorite movie.

Here’s our loose schedule/checklist for the day:

Dress the Part

To get into the festive spirit we all put on a favorite Disney shirt and our magic bands from our most recent trip. If you haven’t been to Disney World a magic band is a little electronic device that looks like a watch and you scan it for your ticket to get into the park, your hotel room key, and to pay for things if you so choose.

Magic bands are totally not necessary for a fun Disney day at home but our kids love them and they are a special little souvenir from each trip.

Mickey Waffles

After we got dressed we had breakfast. I made Mickey waffles using our Mickey waffle maker. If you don’t have a Mickey waffle maker you could totally make Mickey pancakes pretty easily.

I also served all our drinks in the refillable resort mugs we have gotten on our trips. You could use any Disney cups or plates your family has to make things festive.

POG Juice

POG juice is a juice blend of passion fruit, orange, and guava juice that is served at a few places in Disney World and my husband (along with many others) is a fan. I couldn’t find anything too similar but I still wanted to get a fun drink so I ordered a fun, tropical-feeling juice blend for today. Food and drink are a big part of vacation so I wanted to set the mood by having some things we don’t usually have.

The Magic Kingdom Welcome Show

We started our morning by watching the Welcome Show that they use to open Magic Kingdom every morning. And being the nostalgic family that we are, we watched both the current one that happens in front of the castle and the old one that used to happen out front with the train. You can find videos of both of these on youtube.

Animation Class

The Disney Parks youtube channel has several videos where an animator teachers a lesson on how to draw a Disney character. My older son chose to draw Oswald. My younger son wanted to Draw the Hulk so we bounced over to Art for Kids Hub for his video.

Pin Trading

At Disney World they sell pins that you can collect. You can also trade pins with castmembers (people who work there). We buy our kids pins in lots online on Amazon or ebay because it’s way cheaper than in the park (just make sure you’re buying official ones!) and then our kids trade for ones they really like with castmembers. They really enjoy hunting for fun pins to collect.

For our Disney day they didn’t really trade pins but they got them out to look through each other’s collections and had a good time remembering finding their pins and trading for them.

Toy Story Midway Mania

Toy Story Midway Mania is a super fun ride over at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. A few years ago we picked up this Wii version of the ride. You compete in various carnival-type games like the ring toss, knocking over milk bottles, etc.

Popcorn

We had a mid-morning snack and ate it out of popcorn buckets that we have collected on trips to Disney World.

Storybook Time

We gathered up some Disney storybooks and snuggled up on the couch for some reading time after lunch.

Star Wars Show

So again I went to youtube and pulled up a video of the Star Wars stage show at Hollywood Studios. Then we watched some home movies of my sons doing the Jedi Training Academy at Hollywood Studios.

Lotus Blossom Cafe

I sneakily asked my kids about their favorite Disney foods last week and my 6 year old said his favorite thing was the orange chicken he had at Lotus Blossom Cafe when we were at Epcot last time.

To keep things super simple I got some orange chicken and egg rolls from the frozen section of the grocery store and steamed some rice and broccoli. The broccoli didn’t make this photo because I almost forgot it in the microwave until part way through the meal.

I just picked this show out for my sons because they love Star Wars but there are videos of many of the Disney World shows floating around out there so you could totally pick one of the others that your kids might like more.

Disney Crafting

We actually spent about 2 hours crafting. I had each boy pick out a character they wanted to make from perler beads. Then we looked for a pattern or example someone else made online and printed them out so they would have something to look at. Just google or search on Pinterest for “_________ perler bead pattern”.

Parade & Krispy Treats

I pulled up the Main Street Electrical Parade for them to watch. They haven’t ever seen it and we thought it would be fun. I did not manage to make Mickey-shaped Krispy treats this time but I’ve shared how to make them before.

Play with Disney Toys

This was just free play time for them to play with their tsum tsums and other Disney toys.

Tom Sawyer Island

It isn’t on the list/schedule but while I was making dinner I kicked them out to go play on Tom Sawyer Island. This was basically just them running around playing outside in their playhouse and such. It should also be noted that they had a few snatches of free time to play throughout the day too.

Ohana Dinner

One of our favorite meals at Disney World is Ohana, a family style restaurant at the Polynesian Resort. Normally the meal has a whole bunch of different parts to it but I wanted to keep things a little more simple so I made the Ohana noodles and shrimp to go with them.

If you make the recipe I linked please be sure to pour just a little of the glaze onto the noodles at first and then see how much you need. I poured a bunch on without thinking about it and it was way too much!

Fireworks

Happily Ever After is an amazing fireworks/projection show. We watched while the boys enjoyed Mickey Premium bars. You can get them at a lot of grocery stores now.

Disney Bedtime Stories

When staying at the Disney World resorts there is a channel that shows kids’s bedtime stories each night that my kids love to watch but unfortunately they are not up on youtube anywhere. We settled for watching an older version of it but it wasn’t nearly as good. Still fun, just not great.

Ohana Bread Pudding

And once the kids were tucked in for the night we tucked into our dessert. Mickey premium bars are good but Ohana bread pudding is magical (even if my kids don’t like it).

I used this Ohana bread pudding recipe minus the flambe part. Still turned out great. It’s not the prettiest dessert every but the breadpudding, caramel sauce, and ice cream are absolutely delicious.

So it was a decent amount of work to put together a day like this for my family but it was a lot of fun. You can also do a much more simple version of a day like this and it would still be a really special and fun way for your family to spend the day together.

I hope this post of our day gives you some ideas for making a fun day for your family too!