Toddler Friendly Snack Ideas for Flights & Theme Parks

For our recent Disney cruise, we planned to fly in a day early to break up the travel time. Flying to Orlando and then taking a transfer to Port Canaveral would mean an entire day of non stop travel.

Our morning flight meant we would arrive in Orlando around 2PM. Since we would be missing lunch, we packed some snacks for the kids in a soft sided lunch bag to tide them over until we landed.

We always travel with snacks because we have one child with severe food allergies. While it’s easier in theme parks to find meals and snacks that he can eat, food choices are a bit limited on airplanes for him.

Here’s several reasons why we always pack snacks for flights and theme parks:

1. No Food Service

Most of our flights are short haul ones so the only food we’re getting is a drink and a pack of pretzels. Hunger can strike little ones at any time (or maybe it’s just our kids?) and we don’t want to be asking for more pretzels or paying $2.50 for a small can of chips.

2. Very Few Kid Friendly Options

Most of what is offered on flights we’ve been on aren’t very kid friendly. There’s quite a bit of snack items (chips and candy mostly) and heavy sandwiches which they wouldn’t like and are unable to eat without us helping them.

3. We Know What They Like

If you’ve ever dealt with a hungry child, you probably already know they need food as soon as they ask for it – it’s probably better if you have options available before they even ask. Hungry child + limited food options = meltdown + stress in the skies. Am I right, parents?

We make sure to pack snacks we know they like so there’s no having to shell out $10-20 on things they may or may not eat.

4. Avoid Cross Contamination

You can never be too sure about cross contamination. Even though all food is wrapped or individually packaged on a plane it’s hard to know what type of facilities they came from – are they nut free, gluten free, dairy free?

We also carry our lunch bag into theme parks as well as there’s sometimes few options for desserts and snacks when everything is kept in the same fridge or storage area. Cupcakes containing nuts are sitting right next to a dessert that doesn’t appear to have nuts in it.

Below are a few items that we make sure to have on hand when we travel with our kids.

1. Sippy Cups with water

2. Cereal or Mini Rice Cakes

3. Fruit Snack Pouches – think apple sauce in a squeezable pouch

4. Cereal / Fruit Bars – We love the Dare’s Morning Snack Wowbutter® and Strawberries bars as they’re small enough for little hands and individually packaged

5. Dried Fruit – apple rings, apricots, mango (we usually pick these up in big bags at Costco as they go in the kids’ lunchboxes during the week)

6. Goldfish

7. Grapes – easy for young children and rarely gets messy. We don’t bring these on flights but theme parks, yes!

8. Crackers & String Cheese

9. Cookies – Again, we really love the Dare cookies (especially Bear Paws Minis Chocolate Chip & Wowbutter®) because they come in small snack size bags which make it perfect for travel.

All of these items are allowed inside Disney theme parks and this is one of the ways we save money on food when we visit Walt Disney World.

Snacks We Avoid

Mainly anything that can melt, go soft and mushy in heat or stain easily and anything that might spill in the hands of a toddler – banana, avocado, berries that stain – strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, dip, yogurt.

We’ve had two Munchkin Snack Catchers ever since our eldest was on finger foods and they’re always in our carry on, diaper bag or strapped to our stroller when travelling with our kids.

They’ve held up for 5 years and we recommend them to all new and expecting parents! Canadian parents, you can purchase the snack catchers here.

American parents, you can find them here.

We use them for cookies, cereal and Goldfish and it keeps the plane, car and stroller relatively clean. Relatively being the operative word. 🙂

What are some of your kids’ favourite snack items when you travel?

*This is a sponsored post for Dare Foods. We love their new line of Wowbutter® snacks including morning snack bars, cookies and Wagon Wheels.

All three products do not contain artificial colours, flavours or trans fats and are baked in a nut-free/peanut free facility. To find out more about these snacks go to Dare Food’s website or the Bear Paws Facebook page.