Is there an advantage to wearing plastic sheeting I don’t know about? Some reason I would not want to take our lightweight somewhat breathable Columbia rain jackets? We bought them for our tropical rainforest vacation two years ago, and unless it’s a downpour for two hours they keep you pretty dry and (relatively) comfortable, assuming your feet are appropriately attired. Ponchos in my experience are a hassle, sweaty and don’t work well for small children. Maybe because they’re cheap, small and disposable so keeping up with them isn’t super important? We will have a stroller with a rain cover, 3 and 6 yo kiddos. I am trying to buy things we’ll need out of the park to avoid in park mark ups. And I really dislike one-use disposable plastic items. I KNOW it will probably rain at least some part of every day we are there. TIA!
If you already have jackets and you could stow them in the stroller, I would just do that! But we have gone twice in July and never needed a raincoat or a poncho–we just dealt with light rain, or we were napping when it was heaviest. The worst rain happened when we were already in swim suits, so no big deal! lol
You’re right, I think people buy the cheap-o/throw away ones because they’re small, easy to carry and inexpensive. If you already have nicer rain jackets, bring those! I bought these on amazon. Inexpensive but we can use them again.
It somewhat depends on how long your stay is and how likely you are to run into more than one day of rain. A found that a new poncho takes up very little room in a bag or the bottom of the stroller, and even our light jackets took up more space when folded (ok, when crumbled together into a somewhat ball-shaped object).
We also didn’t realize until after we purchased our ponchos that any of the stores will exchange your damaged ponchos for free. It doesn’t take long for a poncho to tear, so at the end of the day it also solved the problem of not needing to dry and store a used poncho. So after the rain storm was over we didn’t have to worry about packing the thing back into our bags and just got a fresh one.
Which also means that at the end of your stay, you can get a new set of them to take home as a keepsake for your car, and the next time you end up in a downpour without a coat at home you can remember how much more fun it would be to not be wherever you ended up needing to wear it!
My DH and DGD used their ponchos once. Then refused to put them on. Wet clothes dried out quickly in the heat and we found the rain refreshing. I used my poncho to keep our backpack dry.
We did get rather nice WDW ones for free when caught in a serious rainstorm during our Waynama Safari at AKL and it made a nice souvenir.
I will agree with everyone else and say use your raincoats. Unless you want to use ponchos on wet rides there is not really a use for them. We went last year end of June and it only rained on us twice in a week. Maybe we just got lucky but it wasn’t an issue. We just used a small umbrella instead of the 20 ponchos I brought with us. 
We went in August. It rained every day.
If you have a rain jacket you like, bring it! We brought ponchos other years but last year brought rain jackets. We discovered that only my son’s target and hunter collaboration rain jacket was really waterproof! Mine and my daughters were a joke and my husbands 15 year old Columbia jacket had apparently hit its end of life. We stopped at the Columbia store in Disney springs to get him a new one.
I use our lightweight, breathable Columbia jackets. Can’t imagine plastic ponchos. I roll them up in a ziplock, squeeze out the air and throw it in my backpack. Also comes in handy for night-air chill (not so likely in July). We’ve had summer trips with daily rain showers and it’s nice to have a little protection. A little rain has never slowed us down though!
I like the poncho because it covers the backpack as well.
I like the dollar tree ponchos because they are light weight and disposable.They will fit in a pocket most of the time.
We prefer IKEA ponchos. They are large!
The disposable cheap ponchos were uncomfortable in the heat. The WDW ones were ok. We’ve been to WDW in tropical storms in June.
I second the light Columbia rain jackets. Don’t forget to use waterproofing spray on them before you go if they’re older than a year or two. We discovered that the waterproofing had failed on one of them the very hard (and wet) way. We also used one of those vacuum bags that you could just sit on to squeeze all the air out of. 7 rain jackets compressed down into the size of a dictionary and we just tossed them in the bottom of the stroller most days.
Great advice! I’ll be sure we give them a good coating before we go!
I looked online for the IKEA ones mentioned elsewhere. Are they in stores only?
We bought that light weight children’s jacket, and it was amazing, so light, easy to store. would not cover a backpack though. No way some of my family members would put on an actual coat of any kind in the summer even in the rain. We bought adult multi use ponchos and have used them multiple days on two trips.
I found them in store.
My friend and I went last August when it rains virtually every day and bought the WDW ponchos - I actually really like mine! It’s heavier weight than the ones you get at the Dollar Store, and it has snaps on the sides under the arms to keep it from flapping around. I carried a plastic CVS bag with me and when I was done with the poncho, I turned it inside out (so that the dry side was facing out), rolled it up tight into the plastic bag and shoved it into the bottom of my backpack. I use the small backpacks that the parks sell (currently rockin’ one from Animal Kingdom, but previously used the 2015 themed one) so it’s not like I have tons of space in the bag, but I did not find that these took up much room.
When I had a stroller we brought rain jackets
Since then we have brought the disposable ones because they fit in my purse, keep you reasonable dry in a downpour and then you don’t have to carry around a wet poncho.
Two points: I hate disposable plastic but make this an exception. I do carry a water bottle at WDW!
Also, I could never get the nicer ponchos to dry in between coming home from the park, and packing them up the next day