Did you have a trip to Disney planned and now you can not go? Today I’m sharing how to have a Disney experience at home when you can not go to Disney! Of course, you do not need a trip to Disneyland or Disney world to have a fun Disney experience at home. Here’s how to have a Disney staycation!

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How to Have a Disney Experience at Home

This week is our Spring Break and we were headed to California. One of the days of our trip, we had planned to surprise the kids with a trip to Disneyland. We are certainly bummed that we can not go to Disneyland. So we decided to surprise the kids with a Disney Experience at Home! This is our attempt at a Disney Staycation.

It was the highlight of our Spring Break so far and my seven year old said it has been the best Spring Break ever! So, if you had a trip to Disney planned this year and you will not be able to go, consider bringing the Disney parks home!

What You Need

If you have been to a Disney park before or even if you have Disney fans at home, you probably everything on hand you need to have a Disney Experience at Home! We did not buy anything for this day at Disney at home! Get creative and gather up everything Disney to make a magical day for your family!

Some Disney items you might want include:

• Mickey and Minnie Ears and Disney Apparel
• Disney Magic Bands
• Disney Trading Pins
• Favorite Disney Stuffed Animals
• Princess Dress Up Clothes
• Family Photos from Past Disney Trips
• Any Disney Decor or Disney Party Supplies

 

The Disney sky is the limit when it comes to planning a fun day at home! We decided to do a Disney day the night before, so we did not have a ton of planning time. While you can go all out, sticking with a few key Disney elements is all you really need.

Agenda for Our Disney Experience at Home

When my husband and I were brainstorming our Disney day, it really helped to map out an agenda.

We focused on the Disney experiences our family really loves including Disney snacks, trading pins and a few Disney movies! So whatever your family is really into at Disney is what you will want to focus on. If you have younger kids who love the Princesses, you would definitely add some Princess Dress Up elements to your day!

You could also narrow your focus to one specific Disney theme like Star Wars, Toy Story or Mickey and Minnie.

 

Disney Recipes to Try at Home

Food is definitely a big part of going to the Disney Parks! We start talking about what snacks we will get at the park as soon as we wake up on a trip! So, we picked a few of our favorite Disney snacks to recreate at home.

Mickey Waffles

Just like any day at the Disney parks starts, we began with Mickey Waffles in our Mickey waffle maker.

Mickey Waffle Maker found HERE

My husband used this Disney Mickey Waffle Recipe and everyone loved it! So good! The Disney waffles you get at the Disney parks has such a good flavor and this recipe turned out very similar to them.

waffle recipe via the Disney Chef

While there were not any official character sightings at our breakfast, we did have a few character stand ins including Pluto and Figaro (Minnie’s cat).

 

Main Street Caramel Popcorn

The Caramel Popcorn at Disney is so good! We made up a batch of this Main Street Caramel Popcorn to watch during our Disney movie session. Delicious!

Main Street Popcorn recipe from Meal Planner Pro

Mickey Pretzels

Our 7 year old son would eat multiple Mickey Pretzels a day at the parks if we let him. I was so excited to find this official Mickey Pretzel recipe. This was the most labor intensive Disney snack recipe we made, but it was worth it!

Disney Park Pretzels Recipe at Inside the Magic

I used my bread machine to prepare the dough, which saved us some work and time. These pretzels were so good. The key step was to submerge the dough in boiling water before baking. Yum!

Dole Whips

Last week, Disney released an official Dole Whip recipe and we immediately added the ingredients to our shopping list (even before we knew we would have a Disney day at home). We all love the Disney Dole Whips!

We did not add the powdered sugar and it was plenty sweet enough. Our Dole Whip had more of a smoothie consistency but still so good. We will definitely make this again!

Pizza Planet

Our last meal of the day was a Pizza (delivered to our house). This mom was tired from making all of the Disney snacks. So it was nice to call and order some pizza delivered right to our door! We called it our Pizza Planet pizza (since we watched a Toy Story movie that day:)

We could not have had a tastier day of Disney food!

If I had a little more time to prepare, I would have ordered these additional Disney snacks! You could have so much fun planning a day’s worth of Disney meals at home.

All of these recipes were a little labor intensive, but so delicious. The work was worth it!

 

RELATED POST: SPRING BREAK STAYCATION IDEAS

 

Disney Day at Home Activities

We did not schedule an activity every minute of the day, but we had fun activities every few hours.

Essential Disney Gear

To really get in the mood, we all wore our favorite Disney t-shirts. We also wore our Disney Magic Bands and Mickey and Minnie Ears!

It is amazing what putting on Disney ears can do to boost your mood! As my daughter said, you are always in a good mood when you are at Disney (or even Disney at home).

Disney Apparel Favorites

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We even wore our Disney Magic Bands.

Pin Trading Sessions

One of the highlights of the day was the Pin Trading Sessions. I had already bought a pack of Disney Pins in preparation for our Disneyland trip. We buy pins ahead of time to use as trading pins at the parks.

Disney Pins can get expensive especially if everyone in the family likes to trade them. So these Disney packs of pins are cheaper option to build your Disney pin collection.

We set up four Disney Pin Trading Sessions. I put the pins on some cork boards and the kids had the opportunity to trade one or two pins at each session. We gave them 3 trading pins from the Disney pack to get started so that they didn’t have to trade their favorites. 

 

We had a Disney trading session that involved rolling the die to see what section of pins you can pick from.

For one Disney pin trading session, my husband came out of a work call to trade pins as a Disney cast member.

The great thing about this Disney staycation is that we still have the pins we traded. So we can bring the extra Disney pins on our next Disney trip.

Disney Movies and Popcorn

We picked Toy Story 4 for our Disney movie. It was a great opportunity to relax and enjoy our homemade caramel popcorn.

Some of us drizzled chocolate over the popcorn.

Disney Ride Experience and Parade

No Disney experience at home would be complete without riding a few Disney rides. It is easy to bring the magic of Disney at home through the virtual ride videos you can find on Youtube.

One of our favorite times of day at Magic Kingdom is 3 pm for the Disney Parade. We watched a Disney parade at home exactly at 3 o’clock!

Schedule Rest Time

Just like at a Disney park, you can get tired on a Disney Staycation! We scheduled in some “rest at the hotel” AKA our bedrooms. It was good for everyone to have some quiet time. I will admit that a lot of my quiet time was cleaning up the kitchen in between recipes.

We ended the day with some pizza delivery and another Disney movie. It was a magical day!

 

Experience the Magic of Disney at Home

it was so much fun to have a Disney staycation! All of these fun little elements really made us feel like we were getting the Disney experience. I will admit that this Disney experience at home really made us want to take a trip to Disney. We are looking forward to the day that we can visit Disneyland or Disney World again!

Do you have a trip to Disney planned this year?