By Nicole Smith
Image provided by Photography by Sean Cassidy
*Disclaimer: There is no “right or wrong way” to do Disney. This is just a guide on how we do Disney!*
We are planners. We feel the more prepared you are the smoother everything will go. Some people are fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, we are not those people. This is what works for us:
- First we pick the time of year we want to go. We use park planning calendars to check crowd levels to get an idea of how busy the parks will be.
- Based on when we want to go we look into airfare, hotel, food, park tickets and car rental and create a weekly budget that will take us to our trip date covering everything so we do not come home to a bucket full of debt. My husband is key here because he is a budget wizard. I am the “let’s put that on our credit card and go now” kind of girl. We set it up so a livable amount of money will come directly out of our checking account and go into a passbook weekly. We choose to put the money is the passbook because you have to physically go to the bank to remove the money which means we won’t nip into it for frivolous things like dining out.
- We mainly book a value resort or off property. The money we save by staying off-property allows us to splurge elsewhere like dining with characters. We are staying in a 3 bedroom suite on our next trip that was cheaper than a value resort. (Both on and off property has its perks, you have to decide what is right for your family.)
- We have only park hopped on one trip. If you have young kids that tire easily one park per day is enough. My kids are 11 and 8 and on our last trip we had the passes and only park hopped 2 days. It is a cool perk if you are going to use it? Yes. But it is not a necessity if you are on a budget.
- For us renting a car is a must. I do not like to wait for busses. I like to come and go as I please. *let me adjust my tiara*
- Six months in advance websites will announce crowd calendar predictors. These sites (Kenny the Pirate and Disney Trip Advisor?) have graphs for each day. We always use this to determine which park is expected to have the lowest crowds.
- At 6 months out I can tell you what parks we will be at one which days because I will be making the dining reservations. If you stay on-property you can make your dining reservations for your entire trip on the 180 day mark. If you stay off-property you get to get up every day for the duration of your stay to go online and make your dining reservations. I only got up early for our 2 big requests, Be our Guest for Dinner and Cinderella’s Royal Table for before the park opens. (You get great pictures and knock 5 princesses off immediately.)
- We do not do dining plans. It is way more food than we can eat for way more money. We did do free dining once and that was awesome but we would not pay out of pocket for it.
- Fast passes, you can reserve these 60 days before for on property and 30 days for off property. You can book 3 rides/attractions/meet and greets and once they are used you get another at the park. Now this requires some concentration. We write down which park we plan on being at on each day and 4 rides we want fast passes on. When they day comes to make fast passes we try to get 3 of our top rated. You have to factor in your dining reservation times and what time you know you can get your crew to be motivated and to the parks. We find that we like to get to the park as it opens and ride the rides between fast passes, we usually crush our must ride list with this strategy. We sometimes head home in the afternoon and come back in the evening if we are hot/tired/cranky.
- When we get to the parks we have an idea of what we want to do but we aren’t schedule Nazis. We are flexible and let the mood of our family determine if we are going to go fast paced or more relaxed and chill.
We are not travel planners of any kind; we are just a family that is Crazy for Disney. After trial and error we found this is what works for us. Good luck planning your trip, I know it will be magical.