I haven’t been to Disney World since I was 6 or so, and I’d like to go again. We’ll be taking two kids and meeting my sister and brother-in-law there. We have about 4 nights, 5 days to do whatever we want and, after looking at the Disney website, I realized - I have no idea how to plan a trip to Disney. There are so many options! So, what are your recommendations?
I’m leaning heavily toward just booking the package through Disney and staying on a resort in the park and getting a dining package for all of us, along with tickets to the major parks. We’ll probably plan to see just 3-4 areas max (maybe a day in Epcot, 1 day in the main park, split time in the Safari area, etc.). We’re taking two fairly young kids (my son is 5, my daughter is 18 months), so we’re working in a bit of time to relax, too. So, your thoughts? Recommendations? What did you love and what did you hate and what do you hope never to do again?
Stay on park, get the park-hopper pass, let Disney coordinate all your transportation for you. You won’t regret it. The are the masters at logistics. Don’t forget Downtown Disney as well.
Research, research, research!
Putting in a few hours now before the trip is a must to optimize your enjoyment of WDW.
I suggest: allears.net for good general information. wdwtoday.com has a good podcast, but the topics are less appropriate for a person starting from (nearly) scratch.
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World is a good resource too (touringplans.com).
I would recommend a Disney travel agent. They are free (Disney pays them), and they can help you plan.
In terms of stuff you should know:
Know that FastPass exists and how it works. (I can write up a summary if you like, but it is all on allears.net and I need to go soon)
Know which attractions gather the longest lines and when during the day those long lines are shortest. For example, Toy Story Midway Mania in the Studios can have 2 hour waits, even in the low season. Get there early (at opening) to avoid crowds.
Get there early BEFORE opening. Take advantage of the lower temperatures and lower crowds. When 1PM rolls in, LEAVE. Take a nap or a swim or both. Go back in the evening to enjoy lower temperatures and lower crowds.
I love Disneyworld. PM me if you have specific questions.
Oh. And under no circumstances whatsoever should you or your children ride “stich’s great escape” That one is a stinker that usually results in crying children.
I think you have the right idea if you can afford to stay at one of the resorts and purchase the dining plan. As a local to the area, I can tell you that it is much easier to use Disney’s transportation to and from the resorts to the park then trying to get around either Kissimmee or Downtown Disney independent hotels. If you want to save a bit, stay at Port Orleans or Riverside which are very nice and provide buses to and from the parks. My family and I stayed at Riverside for a couple of weeks after the hurricanes a few years ago and they were very nice and reasonable. With young children, I wouldn’t plan to spend too much time at Epcot. You may want to plan to do Animal Kingdom and Epcot in one day and just skip the countries. The kids will just be bored. Plan to spend at least a day and a half at magic kindom and a day at MGM. Downtown disney is a fun place to walk around at night but keep in mind, many of those restaurants are NOT on the dining plan, even the most expensive one. Depending on how much time you have, you may want to take the kids to Seaworld for a day. I know this was my daughter’s favorite place when she was five or six and we spent nearly every weekend there after purchasing an annual pass. Have a nice time. Bring sunscreen and lots or bottled water. Also fold up rain slickers as showers come late afternoon like clockwork in the summer and you dont’ want to have to wait them out.
More or less I agree. Except, don’t bother with a Park-hopper at Disney World. See, the cost goes hwayyy down per day, but with PH there’s a large premium. There’s so much to see & do at each park, there’s no reason to ever need to hit two parks in one day. I suggest
Magic Kingdom- 1-2 days (if you go to Disneyland in CA a klot, it can be done in a single day, but I think you’ll need two days)
Epcot= 2 days adults, 1 day kids
Animal Kingdom- one short day (you need a short day anyway, to do Downtown Disney or sit by the pool, etc for a couple hours)
Hollywood- 1 day.
If you want a sit down meal its best (not ALWAYS necessary, but you don’t want to be disappointed) to make reservations far in advance. This is especially important if you do the dining plan, as people have been known to be unable to use their dining plan credits.
For a short trip though, I’d skip the dining plan. I think you spend too much time in restaurants and not enough time touring the parks. And the parks are great. With the exception of a character meal - food isn’t great, but with little kids, character meals are great.
Bring a stroller for EACH kid. Hoppers are nice (expensive, but nice) because you can limit Epcot to evenings when you pop the kids into the strollers and spend your time in World Showcase. We seldom do Epcot during the day. That will free up a second Magic Kingdom day, if you want it.
Arrive at the park of the day BEFORE OPENING (about fifteen minutes). You’ll get more done in the first two hours than in the next five.
You will be disappointed. The whole place is a cheap-ass crock of hyper-safe pseudo-thrills that wouldn’t excite a mouse. Oh, and between about 10am and 3pm be prepared for queues that would deter an East German.
Go to something worthwhile like the La Brea tar-pits instead.
If you’re doing the Magic Kingdom and other parks with young kids, do the other parks first. The Magic Kingdom is the park that is most oriented to kids. So if you take them to Magic Kingdom first, they’ll find the other parks to be a let-down from that. Take them to Epcot and MGM first and they won’t be comparing them to Magic Kingdom so they’ll enjoy them on their own merits.
Go as early as you can get the kids around. You can get a lot down in the morning before the crowd grows. And if you do the animal park, you have to go early - many of the animals are active around sunrise and then sleep through the mid-day.
I would recommend skipping Epcot - it’s really for older children and adults. I’d do two days at Magic Kingdom, one day at Animal Kingdom, one day at Hollywood Studios, and one day at Seaworld. I’d also skip the park hopper - with kids your age, I think one park per day is plenty.
When I spoke to a Disney travel agent, they told me 2 times of year are the cheapest: January and August. August is horrible for the heat. If January is doable, the price difference in the hotel was substantial! We stayed in a nice room at the Animal Kingdom hotel because of this difference.
My daughter was 5 when I took her and in hindsite, one day at the hotel would have been good. They have animals on the grounds, a pool and a park. It would have been a nice rest day.
I also agree to skip Epcot. It was boring to her and the only reason we went was to have lunch with the Princesses in “Norway”. Character meals are great - they have several different ones - but make sure you book in advance!
The last thing I would recommend is to go to travelocity or similar and look up reviews on the hotel. Originally I wanted to stay at the Polyneasean because my daughter loves Lilo and Stitch but overall, the hotel received horrible marks.
The nice thing about a Disney hotel: they pick you up at the airport free of charge. This can be quite a savings.
Staying on property is nice but the last time I went it was with a lot of the family and we rented a house about 5 minutes drive from the properties. It was always a quick drive back and forth plus you have the convenience of a 5 bedroom house with full kitchen and private pool! This option worked out much cheaper than hotel rooms for the family so you may wish to give this some thought.
I also recommend the Passporter Guide to Walt Disney World! It is full of ideas and even has sample plans on how to get the most out of each park. I believe it also had suggestions as to which days to visit each park. One tip I remember is that if one of the parks is closing early that is the park to visit. Most people won’t visit that park due to perceived value issues and that can really cut down on the lines.
I would also recommend keeping your eyes and ears open for special deals. Our family went during the “Year of the Voluntear” and because we made some blankets for the homeless we received special fastpasses that we could use to get onto the 5 most popular rides in each park without going through the regular fast pass process. Following the tips in the book and with the special passes I don’t think we waited longer than 15-20 minutes in any line.
You may have people suggesting using the photopass system. It has its pros and cons. We did it once but will most likely not do it again. The photos were, for the most part, not any better than I could take. The lines for the photopass people were fairly daunting, especially around the characters (which is where the majority of the photopass people could be found). The biggest plus would be that you don’t have to carry around your own camera but we ran into one (and heard about others) photopass person whose camera was broken and he could only take pictures with your camera.
TLDR: Get a good guidebook (highly recommend the Passporter) and hang out at some message boards (my wife really got a lot from www.disboards.com.)
Have fun and take your time. Don’t knock yourself out trying to cram it all in because, unless you have 3 or 4 weeks you won’t see it all.
Don’t forget about Disney Quest. A 5 story arcade, where upon admittance, all of the arcade games are open use upon admittance. Admittance is included with the Park Hopper pass.
Not only do they pick you up from the airport, but they will also collect your luggage for you and deliver it to your hotel room. So once they drop you off, you can rush right off for a dinner that you foolishly scheduled for the night you arrive. (Or at least we had to rush right out for a scheduled dinner the first night. If we had to do it again, we’d plan for a more relaxed first night. Plus that first meal was in the Mexican pavilion at Epcot, and as we already live in the US, Mexican food isn’t that special or exotic.)
If you can afford to rent a car I’d say stay off property. We did this 1.5 years ago with an almost 4 year old and 1n 18 month old. We could get to the park in 15 minutes, be home in 15 minutes, and we could make most of our meals there too.
The time that we went was the same as another friend who took her kids, they stayed on the resort and she told me it would take an hour to catch a bus sometimes, not something you really want to do with tired kids.
Depending on what time of day you want to get there and leaving, I’d get passes for every day you’re there. The price goes way down after like 4 days and the extra day or two cost like $10 per person. Even if you don’t use all of the days, it’s still nice to be able to have them.
I second taking either a double stroller or one for each. They are expensive to rent, something like $30 a day. The kids will be tired and much easier to push then to carry. Plus it allows some place for the little one to sleep.
We had a great time, though it’s very expensive, once you get past that just enjoy yourself.
It is possible that some children will be bored wit Epcot or Animal Kingdom, but this advice is not universal. I don’t know what the target age is for Kim Possible, but my understanding is that the Kim Possible adventures in the Epcot Countries has made touring the Countries with children much better than before. (Adults like Kim Possible too).
This is not correct. Disney Quest is not one of the four major parks. Admittance to DisneyQuest can be obtained with a separate ticket or by purchasing the “and more” option on the Base Ticket. “park hopping” option allows admission to more than one of {Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney Studios, and Animal Kingdom} on the same day.
“and more” adds separate admission to the water parks and DisneyQuest (and Wide World of Sports, I think). These admissions are independent of the main park admissions. In other words, going to DisneyQuest on a day doesn’t burn a day for admission to the main parks ad vice versa.
I think I’ve come to the conclusion that even if you didn’t have tickets you could ride around on monorails and busses and boats all day, visiting the resorts and various Disney facilities. One day we went all over the place including the Wilderness campground. A bus dropped us off at one end of the campground but we needed to be at the opposite end (up near the lake.) We saw all kinds of golf carts parked at the bus stop and considered just borrowing one, but walked instead. It was a good 30 min walk. It looked like they issue each camping spot their own cart, so it’s good we didn’t take someone’s cart.
One reason to stay on property is because of the “magic hours” in which one of the parks is open early or late only for those staying at a Disney hotel or resort.