The nuance and chaos of feeding young children at theme parks: 4 strategies for making the best of your experience
Someday I probably will buy that 5-pound Hershey bar.
Kids and their caregivers thrive with routines, and there is nothing that throws everyone for a loop in the way that a day at a theme park does. Here are some food-and-eating-centric suggestions for making the most of your day!
Note that these tips are based on my experience with an 18-month-old and 4 1/2-year-old, so your approach will likely be somewhat different with older kids.
1. Recognize that children will have a harder time tuning into their body signals for thirst, hunger, and bathroom breaks, so you may need to give them more gentle reminders than you might normally.
When kids are having fun, they generally don’t want to be pulled away from that to drink, eat, or use the bathroom.
So while on a normal day, I wouldn’t think much of it when my son says he doesn’t need water, if we’re at a theme park, my move is just to hand the open bottle to him and say “here, have a sip.” I’m not forcing anything, but I am prompting him in a different, more direct way than usual.
This approach of being one step ahead with their physical needs might reduce the number of meltdowns over things like needing to sprint to a bathroom because they ignored their body signals until just moments before they were about to have an accident.
2. Pack snacks for everyone…“everyone” includes you.
I had some great conversations about this recently with my friend and fellow dietitian Tory Stroker when we traveled to Austin for the Weight Inclusive Nutrition & Dietetics conference in April.
As parents, it feels like a reflex to think to pack snacks and water for the kids, but I find myself constantly forgetting to take care of myself too (I also need snacks and water! Why does that feel like it’s not always so obvious to me?).
Most theme parks have an abundance of food options, so it may feel like overkill to pack your own food, but most theme parks are also extremely crowded and unpredictable. You might need to wait in line for 30+ minutes just to place your order, and those 30+ minutes feel less painful when you can pull out some snacks for everyone who was anticipating eating right away.
It’s important to also factor in that everyone, especially parents, might be hungrier than usual from all the extra walking, pushing strollers, holding crying children, chasing running children, etc. Never underestimate the power of a packaged snack to give you the mental fortitude needed to make it until you can get a meal.
For Hershey Park, I packed GoGoSqueez fruit pouches and Nature’s Bakery fig bars for the kids, and KIND bars for myself. And we of course had Hershey bars and a bunch of cookies from the chocolate world bakery on deck too.1
3. Work within a loose meal and snack structure that encourages everyone to eat in a way that gives them the energy to get through the day.
When everyone is having fun, it can feel tempting to bypass normal mealtimes, but a loose meal and snack structure (deciding that stopping for lunch, for example, is something that must happen) helps everyone.
For our Hershey Park trip, that meant stopping rides around noon to get lunch at a barbeque place, which we chose because it was the closest thing to us and smelled great.
When I asked my son what he wanted, he said, “nothing” (of course, because the sight of a merry-go-round in the distance numbs his ability to feel hunger), so I proceeded to get an assortment of things for him and his sister to share that I knew (a) they might like and (b) would give them energy for the afternoon: roasted chicken with BBQ sauce for dipping, mac & cheese, baked beans, and pink lemonade.
What my son actually ate was a few bites of chicken, one bite of mac & cheese before declaring it was simply “wrong”, some of the bread from my pulled pork sandwich, lots of lemonade, and half a chocolate chip cookie left over from earlier in the day. I consider that very successful because the definition of success here is that he got food in his belly and was better equipped to handle a few more hours at the park.
4. Most importantly perhaps, allow kids to have freedom around choosing the fun foods they want to enjoy.
Exciting food options are part of the theme park experience! This doesn’t mean you need to buy your child every fun food available at the park, but you can allow children to explore their options while setting reasonable boundaries.
For example, you might decide that you’re willing to buy your child two fun foods at the park, at whatever time they decide they want them. You could say something like “There are so many yummy things here! Let me know if you see something you want to try. You can pick one snack in the morning, and you can try another in the afternoon.”
Of course, you may end up in the situation I did, where the thing my son wanted to try the most was the world’s largest Hershey bar (yes, the 5-pound one). I did not purchase that for many reasons, one important one being that I did not want to carry around 5 pounds of melting chocolate in my backpack all day.
But I did buy him a larger-than-usual Hershey Kiss that also delighted him in the same way and cost less than $5, which felt like a fair compromise!
I hope that sharing my strategies for feeding my own kids is useful to you. I listened to a great episode of The Gray Area podcast recently that emphasizes the importance of thinking publicly, which is to say, I don’t think any of my suggestions in my posts are perfect and I am open to discussion and feedback so that we can learn from each other. And ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what works best for your family given your unique circumstances!
What tips would you give parents/caregivers heading to theme parks this spring/summer? It doesn’t need to be food related!
If the park you’re going to doesn’t allow outside food, you might want to give the kids an extra snack or a bigger meal right before heading in and be a bit more strategic in planning when you’re going to stop for a food break.