My teens won't go to the Disney parks with me anymore. With a few compromises, we make everyone happy — and I save money.
When my kids were little, we spent lots of time at Disney World, but they're over it as teens.
Instead, I recently planned a theme-park-free weekend at Disney World with my husband and two kids.
The trip showed me we can find a happy medium that includes everyone together and Disney magic.
As a Florida-based journalist who writes about Disney World quite a bit, I've been taking my kids to the Central Florida theme parks for years.
When my husband and I relocated our family to Florida from Maryland in 2016, we immediately signed up for annual passes and started visiting its parks almost every weekend. My kids were 6 and 8 at the time, and we made lots of great family memories at Disney.
Now, my kids are 14 and 16, and between their own busy social schedules and occasional bouts of teenage angst, neither of them is really into the theme parks anymore. They rarely visit with me, and I'm the only one in the family who still has an annual pass.
They're good kids, though, and they know I still love a bit of Disney magic. So recently, they agreed to go to Disney World for the weekend as a family if I promised to find non-theme-park things to do to fill our time together.
Here's what it was like to take a Disney World vacation with my family without setting foot in a theme park.
Instead of waiting in lines to meet characters, we had breakfast with them.
Some of my most cherished photos of my kids through the years are with Disney characters at the theme parks.
Seeing my kids grow and change while beloved characters like Mickey Mouse and Cinderella stay the same is bittersweet, and I knew I wanted to get some character photos on this trip.
To make sure we could meet Mickey, we booked a character-dining experience at Topolino's Terrace for breakfast one morning.
The restaurant was right in our hotel, so it was easy to get to, and we met Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, and Donald without waiting in a single line or buying a park ticket.
My teens liked trying TikTok-approved Disney treats.
Hunting down popular social-media treats on the trip appealed to both of my teens.
Our resort was home to Le Petit Café, a coffee shop that gets lots of buzz on TikTok for its cinnamon cold-brew coffee. My daughter couldn't wait to try the popular drink, and we ended up ordering it a few times during our stay since it was only about $5.
One evening, we also stopped at Disney's BoardWalk to visit AbracadaBar and try some of its viral mocktails.
Some of their favorite childhood treats are available outside the parks, too.
I have almost as many photos of my kids with giant sprinkle doughnuts from Joffrey's Coffee & Tea Company as I do with Disney characters.
Joffrey's is the official coffee of Disney World, so there's at least one at every theme park and plenty of other locations scattered around the property.
For nostalgia's sake, we took the free Disney Skyliner gondolas from our hotel to Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort, where there's a Joffrey's. We got a few of the huge doughnuts and rode the Skyliner back to our hotel while we ate them.
Our afternoons at the resort were more low-key than past park days.
Marathon theme-park days were always tough on my kids — which is why I always tell parents to return to their hotel for an afternoon nap before going back into the madness.
My kids were all too happy to leave behind the grind of visiting theme parks for hours and take a more relaxed approach to our full day at Disney. Instead of facing crowds and long lines, we hung out at the hotel pool.
My daughter and I took a Mickey Mouse mosaic-making class at the resort in the late afternoon, and my son took Disney bus transportation to Disney Springs to see a movie.
At this slower pace, everyone could do what made them happiest.
At this age, my kids are all about their friends, so we met up with some.
One of my favorite parts about being the mom of two teenagers has been getting to know their close friends.
When we heard that two of my kids' buddies were visiting Epcot the day we were there, we quickly made plans to meet up with them for a drink outside the park before our dinner reservation.
As a parent, I always want quality family time. But when it comes to hanging out with your teens at Disney, it really is the more the merrier.
We watched the fireworks, just from a different vantage point.
One of my all-time favorite Disney hacks is grabbing dinner at a Disney resort with a view of the fireworks instead of battling crowds for a spot to watch them from inside the parks.
On this trip, we visited the Four Seasons hotel located on Disney World property and dined at its Michelin-starred restaurant, Capa.
We timed the reservation perfectly so we could enjoy the delicious food and then step onto the restaurant's veranda to watch the fireworks at both Magic Kingdom and Epcot.
The Disney magic was still everywhere, but my kids were way happier outside the parks.
As it turns out, I didn't really miss the theme parks on our weekend trip. Every part of Disney World is so highly-themed and magical that I was able to get my fix while doing things that actually interested my teenagers.
Saving hundreds of dollars on admission tickets didn't hurt either.
We had wonderful dinnertime conversations, laughed a lot, and still managed to feel very immersed in the Disney bubble without waiting in lines or sweating in the Florida heat.
I would absolutely go back to Disney for a non-theme-park trip, and better yet, I think my kids would, too.
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