Does anyone have a set of Disney souvenir “coupons” for kids that they’ve used and liked? Thinking something like “one t-shirt,” “one set of Mickey ears,” “one bubble wand,” etc. We have some kids that are too little to really “get” the value of money yet, so a gift card isn’t a good solution.
There are a million sets on Etsy when I search, but I’m wondering if any Liners have a specific recommendation! Bonus points if they’ve got pictures on them for our not-yet-readers!
I don’t have an answer…but gotta say, I love this idea! If I still had young kids, I definitely would adopt this idea!
I definitely can’t take credit for it @ryan1! In fact, I think I first saw the idea from a liner years ago.
But agreed that it’s a great idea for younger kids—it’s good to have a way to make the idea of a “budget” concrete for them before a dollar-amount budget is feasible. I mean, you can hand a teenager a gift card and say, “here’s your souvenir money, when it’s gone it’s gone.” Not really an option for a 4 year old.
DNiece10 (who’s the oldest kid in our group) has pretty crippling FOMO when it comes to shopping even at Walmart at home, so I’m really hoping having to physically hand over her coupons will help her slow down at Disney. Guess we’ll find out! 
You know your 4 year old best.
We gave DS, then 4, like $100 to spend on souvenirs over a day 10-day trip that went to a number of different places. Legoland was last. He had to buy something from every place we visited. We provided some guidance and reminders of places still to come. By the time we got to Legoland, he was like $5 short for the Lego set he wanted! His mean parents didn’t make up the shortfall. Instead, DH yelled at me for letting him buy the stuff in the previous places! 
It was an interesting experience! DS didn’t understand money but he learned how not having enough money prevented him from buying the Lego set he wanted. A couple of weeks later, he got the Lego set he wanted as a birthday gift from his uncle!
He was more cautious with his souvenir money after that!
Good for you for sticking to your guns @stlouie! It can’t have been easy with him (and DH!) upset!
But, yeah, unfortunately with my crew I think that approach would just result in an empty gift card on Day 1 (despite any number of reminders of things to come), and a lot of tears over the next two weeks. These are my nieces and nephews, and they don’t get an allowance or anything like that from DBro and DSiL so they’ve never really handled money that they needed to save or budget before. This will be a totally new experience for them.
What happens if the kids want things that aren’t covered by the coupons? None of mine have ever wanted ears, for example, and on our first trip, my 7 year old decided to buy a crystal bauble decoration from Arribas Bros in Epcot…not something I would have thought of beforehand.
What we did was somewhat similar to @stlouie. Mine each had a $50 gift card to spend how they wanted, BUT I kept them in my bag and controlled whether they came out or not. We talked how there were multiple gift shops and stores we’d be visiting, so we couldn’t spend everything right away or they might miss out on what they might really want more later. We had hoppers and promised we would come back to a store if we needed to later. Our youngest was 5 then, has never found a gift shop she didn’t love, and understood that she had to make good choices and be patient to be able to make those good choices. All of ours came away happy with their purchases (and our oldest even had money left on his card!).
If you have the time and flexibility, maybe you could take pictures to create a visual “wish list” and then decide at what frequency to indulge in a purchase at a budget you set. The kids could have control to get anything on their wishlist that fits within that budget. This could be a fun dinner or break time discussion to decide what they’ll get. And if they decide not to spend all of it, then they get a higher budget for the next wishlist purchase. If they have money left at the end, they could go on a spending spree at Goofy’s candy shop or Gideon’s cookies or somewhere like that! 
But at all times, the adults set the limits and say when purchases are happening. Even if the kids don’t have much money experience yet, Disney could be a fun way to start learning.
This is a very good point and not something I had considered. We’ll have to decide how to handle this if it happens.
I really do think the physicality of the coupons will be best for our group, though, versus a gift card. In particular, two of the kiddos are neurodivergent and really struggle with abstraction. Having an object to hold onto / give up when deciding to buy something will help them out a lot to regulate and decision-make.
Physical dollars are good for this. Or even coupons that are valued at dollars. It’s easy to understand 10 when you have 10 pieces of paper. They don’t have to be actual cash; our kids earn ‘mommy money’ which they can trade in on a 1:1 exchange rate for whatever I pay for on my credit card.
That was my parents. Their goal was for us to save money. But when we earned our own money, we blew through every paycheck for a bit because it was our money and we were hungry to spend it as we liked! We had to learn to budget and save.
When I had kids, I told DH we had to give our kids some of their own money to teach them to budget, spend money, and save money.
There is so much to buy at Disney and sometimes, I don’t know if I really want stuff until I see and touch it!
You could do one (or a couple) of “misc.” coupons - depending on your budget, a “something under $15” and “something under $50” coupon, or something along those lines. Then if they see something random that they desperately want they could use those.
Second the idea about taking photos. My youngest child in particular is the king of wanting to buy everything at all time - I have literally heard him say “I don’t know what this is, but I want it.” We made a deal where we would take pictures of all the stuff he wanted and then in the afternoon of our last visit to that place (like, if we went to Magic Kingdom twice we did this on the second day) he could pick what he wanted to buy. That doesn’t work for things that they’ll want to use through the trip, though, like bubble wands.
This is what we did! Sorry I don’t have examples because I think I printed them out and then drew on them.
For little ones, it is okay if they don’t want something in each category. I found when DD was little she didn’t use all her coupons. That was fine! Just like an adult with a coupon book.
Around 8 years old the catagories changed to be more general - like “one medium item”, “one small item” and a clothing item. Even then, if she didn’t want clothes, she just wouldn’t use the coupon.
She actively chose the coupon system until she was much older. Even know, I think we subconsciously use it!
Talked it over with my mom (DGM to the kids, and the person footing the souvenir bill this trip!), and that’s what we decided on. “Anything you want up to $xx.”
And I’m glad to hear this method worked well for you @heathernoel!
What a cute idea!
We always encourage our kid to wait until late in the day (or late in the trip) to buy things, in part because Disney no longer delivers purchases to the hotel and we don’t want to carry stuff around.
We generally buy one item from each park, with a limit of one stuffed animal per trip.
One thing that did curb the FOMO is pin trading. If we bring or buy half a dozen pins, my kid is generally happy to just do that everywhere.