A visit to a Disney park can be terrific in many ways. But perhaps the most underrated aspect is how you can indulge a bit more in eating as you’ll work it off nicely!
Go to Disney World and the snack offerings are plentiful to say the least. There’s anything from those classic Mickey ice cream bars to Dole Whips to the plethora of food stands about. For actual eating, there’s pretty much anything you can ask for from fast counter service spots to the lavish dinner places. True, you have to pay a lot for them but they can be needed to fill you up.
Some may be a bit wary of the abundance of “junk” food around. Counter service places aren’t quite known for their healthy side, with emphasis on hot dogs, chicken, pizza, or burgers, even if they can offer gluten-free options and salads. Also, some of the courses at a Disney park restaurant can be huge and fill you up majorly.
For those on a diet or otherwise wary of their health, it’s easy to think that skipping these bigger meals or sugar-laden snacks is best. Yet it can also be fun to indulge in it, as one of the most underrated aspects of a Disney park is that you work off the weight!
How walking at a Disney park is the best exercise
To speak from experience, when my family visited Disneyland in March 2023, I was trying to cut down on my weight by eliminating a lot of high-sugar and fatty foods. I was concerned about having to eat a bit more in snacks to keep up my energy but when I got home, I realized that I had actually lost a few pounds on the trip.
The reason is simple: a single day at a Disney park is a walkathon. At Disneyland, because the Magic Kingdom and California Adventure are literally across from each other, you can just walk from one to the other. Combine that with the marching around the park and that’s a good six to ten miles. If you’re bouncing from one park to another (as we did), that can double.
Disney World can be a bit different as the parks are more spread out. Yet given how big each is, marching around them (especially the Animal Kingdom and Epcot) is going to be a huge ordeal, with at least six to nine miles at each park and more if you’re cramming in more parks.
That’s without mentioning the time you stand in lines. It’s always smart not to make it a continuous march, as sitting around for rests, even if not in rides, is the best move. However, this means that you can easily walk off a couple of pounds a day on a Disney visit.
Then of course, there’s anything from the gyms at whatever resort you’re staying at to walking around Disney Springs to swimming to the walking paths set around the hotels. Heck, just staying at a place the size of Coronado Springs or Caribbean Beach resorts can mean a lot of walking around.
In other words, all that exercise can offset any worries on indulging yourself.
Why you should indulge on a Disney trip
This isn’t advocating just giving up on your diet as a balance of healthier meals on a vacation is always a good idea. However, thanks to all the exercise you do at a Disney park, it can be okay to indulge in a larger meal or break down for some ice cream for a change.
Being on vacation means breaking from your usual habits, to have some fun you normally wouldn’t. That can pertain to food as well as just being on rides or meeting characters. Given Disney parks have some snacks you can’t find anywhere else or are just better there (like the Mickey bars), this indulgence as part of your vacation can be a good thing to spark it up. A sweet tooth can bug you if it’s not indulged in once in a while, and there is no better place than WDW or Disneyland to do it.
Some folks may still want to keep to their diets and not go for such treats and that’s fine. However, given how easily you work off weight in a single day at a Disney park, it won’t be too terrible to get a bigger meal and/or some nice dessert that you can ignore later. The entire point of a trip to Disney is to be an escape and the travel you put in means giving in to temptation may not be a bad thing at the parks.