One of the hardest things to get sorted for a Disney Trip is a park plan. Once you’ve figured out when you want to go and where you want to stay, you’ve got to sort out your wish list of things to do. If you’re doing a week-long, multiple park, family trip like us, then comes sorting out what days for what parks, what dining reservations to make, and what rides/shows/character meet and greets for FastPass reservations. If it sounds daunting, it absolutely is.
Ticket prices for Disney are insane. I’m not going to argue that with anyone. The value and ROI for those prices are always debatable and, I will always maintain, are relative to your situation. Many of us take for granted the fact that we can even consider whether we’d like to spend the money on this kind of thing, so I make no presumption everyone agrees with me on this. For our first trip together as a family, I was ready to go all in, but it didn’t make entering my credit card number any less painful.
Now that I’m out of graduate school, my bandwidth is freaking out looking for anything to do because I must be forgetting to do an assignment about now, right?! Fortunately, our upcoming Disney trip is the perfect outlet. I’m not sure my family agrees with my grad level intensity, but it’s really hard to dial that down when you’ve been steaming along at 1000 mph with six-week intensive courses for two years.
Since we haven’t been to Disney World in about a million years and have never gone with kids in tow, I wasn’t sure there was any such thing as a “best time to go” no matter how many Pinterest pins say so. With so many special events, seasonal promotions and scheduling considerations, one of the biggest challenges of planning a Disney trip is figuring out when to go. Going with the whole family certainly added a layer of complexity I wasn’t fully prepared for and wasn’t looking forward to debating.
If you have kids, you’ve been in a store with a toy section or a snack area at some point and had your ears bleed while your child demands, in their own special way, to GET ALL THE THINGS. I tell my daughter she can wish for whatever she wants, but all her wishes may not come true. I’m not trying to be a total buzzkill, but let’s face it, she’s not likely to get that 8-foot stuffed bear or a face full of jellybeans every time we go to Toys R Us. I think the same is true of any vacation, especially when planning for a group. Everyone has an opinion and all of them should be mine. I kid. Sort of…
If you’ve ever planned a vacation, you know that there are lots of moving parts. If you’ve ever planned a vacation with your extended family, you have my sympathies. Why would anyone want to juggle that many preferences, wishlists and personalities all while discussing how to have fun together? One word. DISNEY. But let me assure you, this is not your parent’s trip.
We’re about to embark on a rite of passage for many families, especially in the States. One fraught with emotional baggage, marital pitfalls and tears – hopefully of joy. Yes, friends, we’re going to Disney World.
As I mentioned in my previous post, our annual forced vacation is upon us and that means packing. Lots of packing. Fortunately, my years of traveling for work have honed my packing process into a finely tuned machine. It’s nothing complicated, really. It’s just a grid separated by day, but without it, I’d be hopelessly lost and it’s my first Quick Tip.
Suburban Jackpot 