How to Plan a Trip To Disney World

There was a girl with badass tattoos all up and down her arms and legs – like dark, intricate tattoos – of Disney things.   If she wasn’t displaying her Disney love, I would never have placed her on the Disney spectrum.  I would have placed her at a severely hipster café giving attitude to customers and hiding behind her dye-black hair and huge glasses (I mean she probably is also this).  Anyways, I was surprised she was so into the mouse.

Then there was this ancient looking couple that looked as if they had stepped off Quadra Island (this is a BC reference.  Imagine the most hippie commune place where the staples are granola and weed and you will understand), with long gray hair, Birkenstocks, and necklaces FULL of Disney Pins (do you know the ones I mean?  Pin trading and collecting is BIG BUSINESS).

And in between were all the families in full on matching t-shirts or annual pass holders who proudly declared this on their hats.

Below all that is me. 

I mean my family was coordinated but we didn’t match. 

And I loooooooove Disney World/Land/Euro/Tokyo (yes, I have been to all of them numerous times). 

But I would never tattoo my body, devote every vacation or decorate my house with it.

I WANT MY KIDS TO BE OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER

Fair enough. 

This is something I hear a lot.

My reasons for taking our kids at the ages they are (2.5 and 4.5) were:

1.  Alice was FREEEEEEEE. 

Kids under 3 are free.  Free to the parks, free to eat, etc. and it is a huge savings. 

But is 2.5 a good age to take your child to Disney?  Sure!

Having a toddler with moods and the inability to be reasoned with was a tad difficult at times.

But more often than not, her little face full of wonder was too darn cute.

And she LOVED going on ‘JUMBO’ over and over again.

2. We wanted the kids to go when they still believed in the ‘magic’. 

Although my son already figured out that there is a man inside of Goofy (who told him? I am very mad at that person). 

George is still at that age when he unabashedly loves Buzz Lightyear, Mickey AND Snow White (without embarrassment for loving a princess.  Damn you school – I know what’s coming).

My first trip to Disney was at Alice’s age.  I don’t know if I remember it or not (you know when you’ve been told the stories so you can’t tell if your memories are real or just stories?). 

I do know that my mum still talks about how I took off when I saw Mickey and just stuck to him and Minnie like glue. I believed they were real.

My love and sentimentality for Disney was embedded then (which I realize might sound cheesy.  Disney was a safe haven for me when I was 11-13 during that awkward time between childhood and teens.  A time in which the mean girls were exceptionally mean to me).

I feel there is no perfect or wrong age. 

Kids at every age get different experiences.  I still believed in the magic when I was 13.  My mum is 73 and still loves the escape of real life you get at Disney.  

One thing I enjoyed at this age (with two children who don’t love rides) was slowing down to do the things I don’t normally do.  Like watching the Mickey and Minnie stage show, or parades, or a marching band or the Main Street singers.

This is something to think about when you are planning a trip to Disney World

These last few paragraphs might confuse you if you have never been to Walt Disney World in Florida.

When planning a trip to Disney World you have to know:

WDW is HUGE. 

Like crazy massive huge.

If you choose to stay ‘on property’ this does not necessarily mean you are across from the Magic Kingdom (I mean you can be – for about $600 USD a night), it just means you have easier and closer access to the parks than those who have to drive from outside the property lines.

We stayed at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, currently a moderately priced resort (I say currently because as soon as the Skyliner Gondola opens up -I am sure the rates will go up.  No idea what a Skyliner Gondola is?  Check it out!).

According to Google Earth, we were literally across the street (and swamp) from the German and Italian pavilions at Epcot.  But you have no idea that you are so close.  The entrance to Epcot is still an uber/bus/gondola ride away.  

The other part that takes planning are your FastPass+.

What are FastPasses you ask?

A Fast Pass is a time window that you book (an hour with a grace period after they expire of 10 minutes) to get to the front of the line.

 They are FREE.  FREEEEEEEE.

In some theme parks you can pay extra to have front of line access so people don’t believe they are free. But, yes, they are free.  And they only have so many per time so you truly are guaranteed to head to the front of the line (or near the front).

Choosing what rides to get them for and what times to get them for are a bit of an art.  Each person gets three per day per ONE park.  Once those three are used up, you are able to book another fast pass in whichever park you want.

In the Magic Kingdom, all rides and events are created equal and you can get a fast pass for Mine Train, Splash Mountain and Space Mountain (the big attractions).

At Epcot, Hollywood, and Animal Kingdom the rides are broken down into tiers.

Take Animal Kingdom:  all the Pandora rides are in Tier One.  You can only choose ONE ride in this tier.  You can choose three in Tier Two, or one in Tier One and two in Tier Two.

Confused yet?

It honestly makes sense once you get there, but it can seem confusing if you don’t know the lay of the land.

This is where your head might want to explode when it comes to planning.

What I did was this:

I cross-referenced the Crowd Calendar, my EMH (that Extra Magic Hours) timetable, and what parks we wanted to hit first and came up with a rough schedule.

Then I chose what rides were most important to us in each park.

Due to the fact we have small children, I opted for Peter Pan (yes, you need FastPass for this) and Enchanted Tales with Belle over Splash Mountain.  Or Frozen in Epcot over Test Track.  And Alien Swirling Saucers in Hollywood (fun fact-  my children liked NONE of these rides).  If your kids want to meet the characters – you can get FastPasses for all the meet and greets.

The rule of thumb is to get your FastPasses scheduled between 11 AM – 1 PM so that you can book other rides later in the day.

See? An easy-going trip.  Just kidding. It was not.

Having to rely on what Fast Passes were booked truly made us more regimented than I wanted to be.  When we finally got to Florida, figured out how our kids dealt with the heat, walking and waiting in line – I wanted to change plans!  But these damn FastPasses were set in stone.  And there isn’t much flexibility to change them.  We ended up going to Animal Park one more day than needed to go on a damn Pandora ride (the river one – honestly not worth it) and I gave up my coveted Slinky Dog FastPass because we were having so much fun at Magic Kingdom.  Alas – these are seriously first world problems.

Mouse Hacking has a very good post on this over HERE.

WHAT PARK TICKET DO I GET?

My choice is always as many days as we are there for and Park Hopper option.

These are a big expense – but obviously the biggest part of your trip.

We chose the 6-day pass for our 7-day trip because the price difference between 5 and 6 was not much.  We felt we could not go to a park one day and it wouldn’t be a total loss.

I also always pick the Park Hopper which definitely can add lots of money to your ticket cost.  However, after more research I found that if you are going for a longer time (like we did), the Park Hopper was only an additional $75 for all of us. Not bad.  But if you are going for a shorter period of time, the Park Hopper can add quite a lot to your ticket.  Which sort of sucks because that’s probably when you would want one.