Disney World With an Almost 2-Year-Old: What Actually Worked for Us

There are people who will tell you not to take a two-year-old to Disney World. They won’t remember it. And they’re probably right. Our son is six now, and he certainly doesn’t remember everything about those first Disney trips. But we do. We’ve been to Disney somewhere around six to eight times over the past four years, and one of my favorite things about going back is watching the trip change as he grows. Every time, he’s a little taller. There’s a new ride he can finally go on. We visit somewhere we haven’t been before. Something that was completely magical at two is different at four and different again at six.

But that first trip? We learned some things. We were camping at Fort Wilderness, our son was almost two, and by the end of Day 2 my husband and I were basically holding a vacation emergency strategy meeting. We had just experienced two of the most stressful vacation days we’d ever taken. Something had to change if we were going to survive Days 3 and 4. Thankfully, it did.

If You’re Debating the Stroller, Bring the Stroller

This is still my advice, and our kid is six now. We’re bringing the stroller. It’s not common for him to walk 18,000 steps in a normal day at home, so I’m not sure why we’d suddenly expect him to happily do it at Disney World. Honestly, at this point it’s as much about parental self-preservation as it is about him.

On that first trip, we actually brought two strollers. We started with a jogging stroller. Personally, I was perfectly happy with it. I liked pushing it, and I especially loved that I could shove approximately half our belongings into the storage underneath.

My husband was not a fan. He thought it was too cumbersome to maneuver, park and deal with throughout the day. After two days, we decided to try something different.

The Giant Bag Trick

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Before I completely move on from the big stroller, though, one of our best tricks for Disney bus rides was bringing a large IKEA bag. Before boarding, we could quickly toss everything from the stroller into one bag, fold the stroller, and get on the bus without trying to juggle a dozen loose items.

I haven’t been able to find the exact IKEA bag we used online anymore, but there are a couple of similar options. This one is a more stylish take on the iconic blue IKEA bag, while this one is closer to the bag we actually brought.

The bag itself doesn’t have to be anything special. It just needs to be big enough to hold all the random things that somehow accumulate in a stroller during a Disney day. When the bus pulls up, being able to throw everything into one bag makes life so much easier.

The Thing That Changed Our Trip: The MiniMeis

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By the end of Day 2, the big stroller wasn’t working for us. Our almost-two-year-old didn’t particularly want to sit in it. He wanted out. Then back in. Then out again. So that night at Fort Wilderness, my husband and I talked about what wasn’t working and decided we needed to change our strategy. Enter the MiniMeis shoulder carrier.

Game changer.

Instead of being strapped into a stroller where he couldn’t see everything, our son could ride up on Dad’s shoulders and see the park. He was content. We knew exactly where he was. He wasn’t constantly trying to escape. Win-win. We paired the MiniMeis with our smaller folding stroller. If our son needed a break—or Dad needed a break from carrying him—we had somewhere for him to sit.

Another huge benefit was how compact everything became. We were able to fold both the small stroller and the MiniMeis and bring them with us onto many of the rides and attractions we were doing with an almost-two-year-old. We weren’t constantly leaving our stuff somewhere, wondering if it had been moved or trying to remember where we’d parked the stroller.

That combination worked so much better for our family. Our compact stroller  ·  The MiniMeis shoulder carrier we used

We Also Picked the Worst Possible Time to Fight the Pacifier Battle

Here’s one of the parenting decisions we made before this trip that sounded perfectly reasonable at home. We’d already started trying to reduce our son’s pacifier use and weren’t really using it outside the house anymore. So we thought: Disney is a completely new experience. He’ll be so distracted by everything happening around him that he won’t even think about it. Excellent theory.

Terrible execution.

By Day 3, we finally gave the kid his beloved paci. And would you believe it? He was content. We were content. And my husband and I were left wondering why we’d fought this battle so hard for the first two days. Disney is sensory overload for adults. Imagine being almost two.

There were crowds, noises, characters, rides, music, people everywhere and an entirely different routine. His little brain was trying to process all of it, and we’d simultaneously decided this was an excellent opportunity to take away one of the things he used to comfort himself. So he got the pacifier.

For the trip, we stopped worrying about it. Then we went home and went right back to the routine we’d already started. Easy peasy. Not every parenting battle has to be fought in the middle of Magic Kingdom.

Bring Two Stroller Fans. Yes, Two.

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If you’re doing Disney with a little one in the Florida heat, a stroller fan is a no-brainer. But here’s my addition: Bring two. We had one clipped onto the stroller aimed at our son and another positioned for whoever was pushing.

Lifesaver.

Nobody needs to be a hero at Disney World in July. A stroller fan similar to the ones we used

Everybody Gets a Water Bottle

Insulated water bottles are another thing that seems obvious until you’re several hours into a Disney day and extremely grateful you brought them. I’ve seen families get very creative with this. You can use bottles that clip onto the stroller, and I’ve even seen people hang shoe organizers from strollers to hold drinks and supplies for larger groups.

For us, it was just me, my husband and our son, so everyone having their own bottle worked fine. With the big stroller, storage wasn’t an issue. With the little stroller? The water bottles fit underneath. Not much else did. That’s when we started carrying a small backpack.

The Bag That Comes With Us Now

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These days, I’ve moved on from the little backpack and use a KAVU-style sling bag, and it has worked out so well that it comes on every Disney trip. I don’t try to carry our entire lives in it. A couple of emergency snacks. Something to help us cool down. Portable charger. Glasses cases. The basics.

Take Your Glasses Cases Out Before Disney Security

Learn from us. Take your glasses cases out of the bag and hold them when you walk through security. Ours set it off. Every. Single. Time. Then you’re getting the extra bag check and adding time to your entrance. Tried-and-true advice learned through repeated annoyance.

Your Two-Year-Old Does Not Have to Do Disney Like Someone Else’s Two-Year-Old

This might be the biggest thing we figured out. Our son needed a nap. Not a stroller nap. Not a “he’ll eventually pass out when he’s tired enough” nap. His bed. His sound machine. A real nap.

So we stopped fighting it. At that age, he usually napped around 2 p.m. We’d head to the park around 10, spend roughly three hours there and then go back to the room or camper. He’d nap. We’d rest. Then we’d head back out for a couple of hours in the evening.

And you know what else happened? We missed the hottest part of the day. It worked beautifully for us. We have friends whose two-year-old can absolutely rock a stroller nap and keep going all day. That’s fantastic.

That just wasn’t our journey. Our kid needed his bed and sound machine. And, if I’m being fair, so did his parents.

Have a Plan. And Plan for the Plan to Change.

There’s an important caveat to our Disney experience. We’re fortunate to live in Florida. We have access to Florida-resident ticket pricing, and Disney is somewhere we’re able to visit more than once. I completely understand that isn’t the case for every family.

If you’ve saved for years, traveled across the country and this may be your family’s only Disney World trip, of course you want to experience as much as possible. So I’m definitely not going to tell you to spend three hours in the park and go take a nap because that’s what we did. But I will tell you this:

Have a plan. Then plan to be okay when the plan changes.

A ride will go down. It will rain. A crowd will be much bigger than you expected. Your toddler will decide the attraction you’ve been looking forward to for six months is absolutely unacceptable. Someone will need food at the exact moment you planned to be somewhere else.

That’s Disney. Pick a couple of things that are your must-dos. Make those the priority. Then everything else? Bonus. Cherry on top. If you walk into the park with 27 things that have to happen for the day to be successful, you’re giving yourself 27 opportunities to feel like something went wrong.

You Don’t Have to Maximize Every Minute

This is probably where we went wrong during those first two days. You’ve paid a lot of money to be there, so there’s this temptation to think: We need to be at the park when it opens. We need to stay all day. We need to ride everything. We need to get our money’s worth.

Meanwhile, your two-year-old has absolutely no interest in your cost-per-hour analysis. What made the rest of our first trip better wasn’t discovering some magical Disney parenting hack. We changed our expectations. We changed the stroller situation. We gave the kid his pacifier back.

We started taking real midday breaks. We figured out what made our particular kid comfortable. We stopped trying to force the vacation we’d imagined and started having the vacation that actually worked for the three people who were there.

“But They Won’t Remember It.”

Nope. Probably not. Our son is six now. He remembers some things about Disney from when he was five. He’s forgotten plenty from the years before that. But I haven’t. I remember taking him when he was almost two.

I remember the things he loved. I remember the rides. I remember watching him experience Disney at that age. And one of the unexpected benefits of going back as he grows is that we don’t feel like we have to do everything on every trip. Each time, there’s something new.

He gets a little taller and suddenly there’s another ride available to us. We try another park or another experience. And if he doesn’t remember riding the Tomorrowland Speedway the previous five times? That’s okay. I do. Maybe this will be the time he remembers it.

And if it isn’t? He gets to experience it like it’s brand new all over again. There’s something pretty great about that, too.