You might think as a professional Disney World planner with
just the knowledge in my head I could navigate my family to the perfect
vacation. You’d be wrong. Every vacation is different –
from different vacationers to different days of travel. Each circumstance is different and thus
each vacation deserves its own plan.
One of the most important things you can do to assure
yourself a great time visiting everyone’s favorite mouse is to have a
plan. It doesn’t have to be a
grand plan. You don’t have to have
every minute planned out. But you
really should have some basics down.
If you don’t believe me or if you have not yet done so, you may want to
go back and review part I in this
series – What’s In a Plan.
This article is Part II of the series and examines my family’s plan for a recent trip to
Disney. Here I will discuss what
my plans were (and weren’t) and why I made them prior to our trip. The first thing to do when making a
plan is to take into account who the travelers are. In this case, it is my family plus fellow blogger Bob, so I
know them well, but perhaps you do not.
So very briefly let me summarize the travel party for you. Then you’ll learn some more details as
we go.
The Cast:
Todd – Adult male Disney enthusiast (me!). Cost conscious. Likely leader of the group. Motion sickness.
Dani – Adult female.
Cannot do a lot of walking so will use a motorized scooter and wants to
make memories with her children while her health allows. Food allergy to gluten
Two boys age 7 and 5.
Both super excited to return to Disney World, having gone two years ago. One Dumbo lover and one dinosaur lover.
Moma – Grandmother.
Excited to see her grand kids go to Disney. Active and ready to go. Kid at heart.
“Uncle” Bob – Adult male Disney enthusiast and fellow
blogger.
The Basics:
Driving and planning to arrive in Orlando area Saturday
night. Checking into Port Orleans
Riverside Sunday morning for a 1 week stay. Magic your way basic tickets (not park-hopper). Free Dining Plan. Not sure where they are going to stay
Saturday night. May try to extend
their stay in Disney if arrive early enough. Otherwise, will find something cheap in the area.
Creating The Plan:
With free dining and no park hoppers, the plan starts with
selecting restaurants. Due to the
free dining, it will be virtually impossible to walk in to any of the more
popular restaurants at a reasonable dinner-time and be seated any time
soon. So advanced reservations are
a must. (They are also necessary
during busy times of year when free dining is not offered. Really, for the most part, they are
almost always necessary if you want popular dining locations without a wait.)
We identified 5 dining locations that we really wanted to
visit if possible. They were: ‘Ohana in the Polynesian (a popular
family style meal we’ve eaten at once before), Chef Mickey’s breakfast in the
Contemporary resort, T-REX Café in Downtown Disney (the boys love dinosaurs),
Chefs de France in Epcot at a time where the boys can meet Remy from
Ratatouille, and one of a few other locations in Epcot. This will help us with planning parks
because, without park hopper tickets, you generally need to plan your dining
around where you are going to be or vice versa. The last dining location was open for consideration
depending on our location.
The next step, lacking park hopper tickets, it was important
to decide how many days we wanted to dedicate to each park. Hollywood Studios is collectively our
least favorite park so we planned to spend 1 day there. On the flip side, we like Animal
Kingdom second only to Magic Kingdom, but Animal Kingdom is doable in a day if
planned properly so we intend to spend one day there. That leaves arrival day, departure day, and two other days. These five days will be split with three days in the Magic Kingdom, which the children love and there are
many highly repeatable rides along with parade, shows, and character meets to
fill the time, and two days in Epcot which is large but perhaps has less to do
for the children especially with Test Track under refurbishment.
So, with this information (and further knowledge of our
travelers goals too extensive to include here) we are ready to blend our dining
desires with our park desires, taking into account park events, crowd levels, and
available dining reservations and make a plan.
The Plan:
SUNDAY - Arrive the evening before and stay in a local
hotel. This allows us to awaken
early and check in at Port Orleans Riverside. The goal is to make it to the Magic Kingdom (low crowd
level) at park opening so the boys can see the opening ceremonies on our first
day there (It may be a challenge to check in and get to the park at opening). At opening, we will likely go to
Tomorrowland for Space Mountain fastpasses and then ride Astro Orbiter. From there, we’ll take the day as it
comes with a break in the afternoon to go to the room. Dinner that evening is ‘Ohana followed
by Wishes fireworks and then Extra Magic Hours in the Magic Kingdom until we
are tired.
MONDAY – Arrive at Epcot at park opening since this should
be a low crowd day for Epcot.
Immediately get Soarin’ fastpasses, then visit the pavilions on the right
side of Future World. At World
Showcase opening, ride Maelstrom in Norway and Gran Fiesta Tour in Mexico
followed by an early lunch in one of the countries since we have an early
dinner at Chef’s de France.
TUESDAY – Today we go back to the Magic Kingdom because it
is a very low crowd day. Magic
Kingdom closes at 7:00 so Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party can take place
so we will be done in the parks a little early this night. On the plus side, however, the party
will lessen the crowds at Magic Kingdom for most of the day and also offer a
special fireworks display. We will
likely start this day in Frontierland with a park opening fastpass from Splash
Mountain while the group rides Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This evening’s dinner is at 1900 Park
Fare in the Grand Floridian after the Magic Kingdom closes followed by viewing
the Halloween fireworks from somewhere along Seven Seas Lagoon.
WEDNESDAY – Arrive at Animal Kingdom at opening and go
immediately to Kiliminjaro Safari.
An early ride on the safari will allow for the best viewing of the
animals since they will still be active after just being fed. Then proceed through Africa and Asia to
DinoLand USA. Animal Kingdom closes
at 5 today and the evening is flexible including dinner plans which might end
up trying to walk in to T-REX café in downtown Disney, do counter service
dinner, relax at the hotel, or go Miniature golfing.
THURSDAY – This is Hollywood Studios day. There is a lot to do and limited time
so a plan becomes more important on this day. Since I don’t ride either Rock and Roller Coaster or Tower
of Terror, I will go at opening to Toy Story Mania for fastpasses while the
rest of the group proceeds to Tower of Terror and then Rock and Rollercoaster
before the crowds grow. If we did
not do T-REX the night before, we will go there for lunch today.
FRIDAY – Today we go back to Epcot and see the things we
haven’t seen yet plus repeat any favorites. Dinner is at Teppan Edo in Japan in the World Showcase.
SATURDAY – This is our final day and we top off our visit
with one more trip to the Magic Kingdom.
Arriving early, we can do what we want before crowds build. (This is the one day on the trip we
face a fairly crowded park.) We’ve
scheduled the last breakfast of the day at Chef Mickey’s in the
Contemporary. We can then return
to the Magic Kingdom until we are ready to drive home.
You’re probably noticing a few things. First, the plans aren’t very detailed
and I am a planner. There’s a few reasons for that. First, even as a detailed planner, I
don’t like to over plan a Disney vacation. So much of the allure of Disney can be found in the details
and the magic feelings and you have to slow down to fully appreciate those
things. Secondly, I do have a bit
of an advantage in knowledge and though I may not have anything planned, I do
have ideas that I normally share with clients on what things work well so I can
wing it a little bit better than most.
And finally, when you are traveling with a group, it is important to be
flexible so detailed planning doesn’t completely work.
Secondly, you’ve probably noticed there aren’t a lot of
details as to why I am doing things certain ways. Trust me that there are good reasons for doing things a
certain way (such as why get the last breakfast seating at Chef Mickey’s), but
those reasons are beyond the scope of this document. Hopefully, we will get a chance to discuss them later in future
articles or even individually if I am helping to plan your vacation.
So that was the plan.
Come back next week to find out what actually happened. and learn the
importance of being flexible and being able to deviate from your plans, recover
gracefully, and still have a wonderful Disney vacation.
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