I love this picture. I don't know who took it (it was probably my mom), but this is me, my dad, and my brother arguing over which way to go on the map of Disney's Animal Kingdom a year after it opened. It was the family trip we took before I was to depart for my work exchange program at Disneyland Paris. Quick note: those frozen chocolate covered bananas that you can get at Animal Kingdom are awesome! This picture leads me to my blog entry for the day...maps and map planning at Walt Disney World.
If you've never been to the Walt Disney World Resort before, it may not occur to you to think how big it is and perhaps look up the different maps of the parks or the whole resort online. Everyone is different. There are the non-planners who just go with the flow and figure 'this is my vacation, why should I have to plan everything'; and then there's the complete opposite side of the spectrum, the planners who have a spreadsheet worked out for their Disney trip with every last detail planned down to the bathroom breaks. My advice as a seasoned Disney expert? Neither of these ways is going to be fun. (Gasp!--Hope I haven't insulted anyone!)
To the non-planners: I'm sorry, but you have to plan a little. This isn't an all-inclusive beach vacation where you're going to lie around all day and only get up to go to the bar or get something to eat. There are THOUSANDS of other people there at the same time as you who will plan and not care when you are the ones waiting 45-60 minutes to get into a restaurant when they made the reservations 6 months ago.
I know I use restaurants a lot as an example with these entries. So to paint another picture, how about you golfers out there? Did you know that you can make tee time reservations for one of the five championship golf courses at Walt Disney World up to 90 days in advance? I've made those reservations before. I know that there are guests who come down there just to golf. They will find out when their 90th day out is and make that lovely 7 am tee time for each day they are there, have a break for lunch, and on some days throw in an afternoon tee time as well. Why not? The wife is spending the day at the spa and then having a delicious "tea time" of her own at The Garden View Tea Room at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort and Spa. All reservations I might add that she made well in advance too.
What if you're visiting with the kids? You're little princess wants to have her hair and makeup done at The Bibbity Bobbity Boutique and you thought ' I'll just see what's available when we get there, I don't know which day we want to fit it in...' Only when you get there, you decide which day you are going to the Magic Kingdom and call from your room for those reservations and guess what? "Well sir (or ma'am) I don't have an opening at the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique tomorrow at Cinderella's Castle (like you and your princess wanted), the next available is in 3 days at the Downtown Disney location.' Or there's no availability at all...you can check for cancellations. Do you have a crying princess now? I've seen it happen a hundred times. Plan....just a little.
On the other side of the spectrum, people who are over-planners and type up their spreadsheets, etc. generally do get all the reservations that they want for their vacation to Walt Disney World. But I've seen this happen a lot of times as well, where they've spent HOURS before their trip studying the park maps and figuring out what times to hit what attraction and where to be at what time for the parade. There are two reasons that this may be detrimental:
1. You can't know how many other guests are going to be in the same park as you on any given day. This effects the wait times for the attractions, the return times on fastpasses, the waits for the restrooms, and the crowd levels for the parades, fireworks, and shows.
2. If something has a got a longer queue than you had planned, or something unexpected happens, generally someone who plans everything down to the last detail is going to be upset when something doesn't go the way that they had anticipated. And it very well may put that person in a bad mood, therefore affecting everyone else in their party as well.
So to the planners and non-planners out there...I know it's against your grain, but how about meeting somewhere in the middle. If you haven't decided to book your Walt Disney World vacation through me (hint, hint) and you have the task of doing all the planning by yourself; take a piece of paper and write down the days of the week that you are there, and fill them with a breakfast, lunch, dinner, all or some of the restaurant reservations that you know that your family wants to go to. Also go online and see the park hours for those days (you can pull up calendars for the parks on www.disneyworld.com as fas as 6 months out - keep in mind the farther out you go the more subject to change they are), the extra magic hours, parade times, and fireworks times, and that really is enough. If you want something like golf tee times or bibbity bobbity boutique reservations, work time in your schedule for that. Look up the park maps online so you can get a general idea of how big that park is and if you may or may not want to spend a whole day in that particular park, and that really should be enough for you to have a "magical" vacation!
Planners--resist the urge to figure out what time you want to hit each attraction; and non-planners--force yourself to make dining reservations, it will make a difference. :)
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