We went a few weeks ago with our 3 little ones and most years go quite often as we live nearby. Although they "check" your bags or strollers at the front, we bring in our refillable yeti water bottles and they never to care. There are water fountains around the park for us to refill it. It is somewhat expensive to buy food and or drinks there probably somewhat equivalent to an a&m game or so. We got 3 orders of cheese burgers with fries and I think they were about 15 bucks each. Everything is generally somewhat overpriced but you can definitely do it cheaper depending on what your looking to do. We generally buy a refillable soft drink cup each year for like 20ish and you get free refills all day and usually all season (mostly kids work the concession stands who could care less).