If you have kids ranging from newborn to six or seven, thinking about a stroller at Disney is probably on your list of things to figure out. What you may not realize is that you can rent strollers, even beyond the hard plastic ones the parks offer.
We’ve taken kids to Disney using strollers from home, from the parks, and renting from a company called Kingdom Strollers. Here are our thoughts to hopefully help you make the best decision for your family!
A few questions to ask yourself to help decide if you should take a stroller from home
Do you have to travel through any airports with a layover? What helped us decide to take our stroller for our toddler a few years ago was the fact that we had to get through Chicago’s O’Hare airport fairly quickly and didn’t think we could carry a toddler or god forbid she wanted to walk herself, and make our flight in time. We also thought having a stroller would be really helpful if we had any delays and she needed to nap.
Does your stroller from home have anything that a rental couldn’t provide? If your child has any special needs, the stroller you have might be the best choice. Strollers you can rent at Disney parks are hard plastic and don’t recline or offer a lot of comfort. However for bigger kids ages 5 and up, these would be better to just rest their legs before jumping out for the next fun thing.
Are you okay if it gets broken or lost? If you are flying, you will need to check your stroller at the gate. Our stroller got pretty beat up. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed once we got through the terminal but enough to make us notice and consider if we would want to do that again. We have seen stories of much nicer and more expensive strollers than ours getting really beat up to the point they couldn’t be used. This might be a good note if you do have a few strollers to maybe leave the Benz at home.
Stroller Cost and Comfort
The most recent trip we had a four year old who we knew could walk and explore more but would definitely still need a stroller. (Honestly at 36 I want a stroller by noon.) We had planned on using the park strollers but I was worried about needing a stroller around our resort, to and from the bus stops, and if we wanted to go explore other resorts.
After some research, I came across a company called Kingdom Strollers. Their stroller options are just like the stroller our kid was used to and came with all of the bells and whistles we needed, a rain guard, a stroller that reclined, and cup holders!
Booking with them was so incredibly easy. It was done all online and we paid for our stroller at time of booking so we didn’t have to worry about it on the trip. We could schedule the day and time we needed it delivered and they brought it right to our resort! They sent us a text when they were there, we met them at bell services to get it, and then we were on our way to Animal Kingdom!
The Citi Mini Single stroller was excellent quality and easier to fold up than the one we had from home. This is important because you have to fold up your stroller when you get on a Disney bus. Our kid loved it and never complained about any part of it. She also loved to help and push it when she could.
I told my husband that even when our kids aren’t stroller age, I will probably always get a stroller to haul our stuff. Look at how hard this baby worked for us! When our kid wasn’t in it, our backpacks, mobile-ordered meals, or stuffies were!
The best bonus for us was renting this stroller for seven days was cheaper than renting the strollers in the parks!
I enjoyed my experience with Kingdom Strollers so much and will definitely use them again and will recommend them to all guests we help! If you want to book your stroller or learn more, Kingdom Strollers were kind enough to accept us as affiliates so we get a small commission if you use this link!
So taking into consideration your family needs is really the best way to make a decision on taking or renting a stroller.
Need more tips on how to make your park day easy? Check out this post on what to pack in your park bag.
Update #1: Using a Disney Stroller – No.
After renting a stroller from Disney for a day trip, Kingdom Strollers IS the way to go. We stayed at Disney’s Polynesian Resort and had access to the monorail so we thought surely our 5-year-old would be fine, but she proved us wrong. After a long park day, she was begging to be carried to the monorail. It was also a pain to go to Disney Springs and have to wait to get a stroller, return it, and then carry all of our bags to the bus stop.
Update #2: Second Experience with Kingdom Strollers
We just got back from another trip and this time we rented the Summit X3 Single stroller because our daughter is now 6 and we wanted more room for her. It was again a great experience! We REALLY appreciated the free rain cover this time because it rained every single day of our trip. The cup holder on this stroller was also great! It holds 2 large water bottles or your fillable mugs easily. We had storage for snacks and phones, too. I always bring carabiner clips to hang cups and bags but the undercarriage of this stroller was huge and fit a ton!
We checked into Disney’s Art of Animation Resort where they brought the stroller and resort hopped over to Universal’s Stella Nova where they picked it up! It was awesome to know we could take it with us the entire trip and not have to worry about renting strollers in two places. 5/5 stars for Kingdom Strollers!
