Saturday, March 31, 2012

Animal Kingdom Outfits!

Yes... The kids have at least one handmade boutique outfit or t-shirt for each park. I just finished Animal Kingdom today!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Best mailbox surprise....

I knew it was coming... it usually hits about 30 days out. But today was *THE* day... we got our vacation package info in the mail!!! I know it may seem kinda silly to get excited about paperwork, but this is the real life, in-my-hands, so close I can taste it, confirmation that WE will be in disney world this time next month.

It's a neat little welcome packet. It comes with...

  • All the information to confirm your reservation, names of your entire party, how many nights you're staying, what hotel, a dining plan (and all that's included with it) and all the details so you can confirm exactly what you're getting. Your check-in/confirmation number is included.

  • Super cool Disney luggage tags (this year's are hollographic Mickey ones)

  • Magical Express Tags (those are the yellow stickers). You put these on your luggage, and as soon as you land, Disney whisks you away on a luxury coach straight to your hotel. They pick up the bags at baggage claim (as long as you have these yellow tags) and deliver them straight to your hotel room for you. No extra fees, it's all part of the perks of staying on Disney Property.

  • Tickets for refillable mugs - we will each get a neat refillable travel mug that we can use to fill with soda, coffee, tea, water at our resort as many times as we want during our stay.

  • An arcade card for the resort arcade, with 100 points to play games. A cool little perk, that Tobias in particular loves. You win tickets and get useless crap prizes that the kids of course love.

  • A bunch of coupons - Guided fishing tour discount coupon (15% off a guided fishing tour on Disney property).... Children's Activity Voucher (15% off of child care services at the more expensive resorts that offer it).... Miniature golf voucher (Disney has two really neat miniature golf courses on property, this is for one free game).... Marina discount coupon (15% off the rental of a boat, see racer, pontoon, canoes, etc at select resorts)....discount spa offer (15% spa services).... Planet Hollywood Restaurant - 1 free souveneer (usually a keychain or something of the sort) and a $15 meal voucher.... Sammy Duvall 10% discount coupon.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

A sweet surprise...


My kids have done amazingly well in school this year, so I wanted an extra special reward for them. As if going to Disney world wasn't enough, I wanted to sprinkle just an ounce more pixie dust, so this will be waiting in the room for them when we check into our hotel (with a special note)... It has Mickey & Minnie ears embroidered with their names, an Ariel plushie (Gianna's fave) and a Jedi Mickey Plush (Tobias LOVES Star Wars), along wtih autograph books and Epcot passports. I can't wait to see what they think!

Dear Gianna and Tobias,
Welcome to Walt Disney World! We are so glad you could come and join us in celebrating the awesome school year you have had! Way to go on the good grades. Your mom and dad are so proud of you and what you've accomplished this year, so they talked to us about getting some surprises ready for you. There is a lot of fun in store for you, some special surprises and celebrations we made just for the two of you. Congratulations on a job well done. We hope you enjoy this reward!
Love,
Mickey & Minnie

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Dining in Walt Disney World!!!

I love this part. Mostly because I love food.

Disney has this fantabulous idea that they can make us believe that it's worth it to be up at 5am at 180 days in advance of our trips to make dining reservations. And ya know what, they're right, because we fall into their elaborate scheme and we do it - because we think we need to. And if you want those super-coveted reservations, you better do it too. The most popular restaurants fill up with reservations quickly. It also depends on the business of the season you are headed down, as to how easy or how hard it will be to get your reservations. These are called Advance Dining Reservations, a.k.a. "ADRs"

First decide...
1. Disney Dining Plan or not? There are three different levels of the Disney Dining plan, but the most popular and the one that we use is the "Regular" Disney Dining Plan. Each member of your family gets One Counter Service Meal, One Table Service Meal and One "Snack" per night of your reservation.
There are a lot of calculations you can do to decide if it's financially worth it to you or not. There are many ways to save while eating out on Disney property. We could probably save money by not doing the DDP. HOWEVER - the reason I opt in for the dining plan is to NOT have to worry about it. I'm on vacation, relaxation is a major factor for me. I don't want to have to worry about getting the cheaper entree, or sharing one to save money or (GASP!) cooking a meal. So with DDP, I get what I want, when I want it, and it's the one time of year where we all get to do that and really spoil ourselves. So the dining plan is a plus for us.

Also to figure in....
2. How many meals you are going to eat at Disney restaurants (you can bring all sorts of food into the parks if you want, and you can also get suites with kitchenettes in your resort to make your own food)

3. Do you want any "Character Meals"? This is where while you're dining, random characters will come and visit you at your table. This is a great way to save time in your touring schedule and killing two birds with one stone.

4. Lastly you decide which restaurants you want and work it into where those restaurants figure into which park you're going to be when.

There is a great overview of all the on-property Disney World Restaurant Menus Here. I use these in my calculations so that we get the most "bang for our buck" on the dining plan. There are reviews here as well, and they are updated very frequently and are a great resource.

Josh @ EasyWDW also has his own personal recomendations, which fall really well into my own recomendations as well. Josh and I are cool like that, he's a genius because he agress with me. Here are EasyWDW's Table Service Recomendations & Quick or Counter Service Recomendations.

Once you decide where you want to go and what day it fits into your itenerary, there is one more thing to consider before you make your ADR .... The time you will be eating. We opt for a bit of early times when dining, because no matter the season you are visiting Disney, there will be crowds bigger than what you're used to at your local Applebee's. That said - we typically go for 11/11:30 for lunch and 4:30/5 for dinner. This get's us seated before most of the crowds show up, which is nice. Plus, you are doing an awful lot of exercising just walking around, so our family is typically very hungry much earlier than normal.

Just be ready to call (or go online) to make your ADRs 180 days in advance. If not, you can still get many through dillegence and repetetive calling and checking. So get to making your Dining reservations and choices, and we'll move onto individual park Touring Plans!!!

Dates are set, reservations made....

The next step is to plan your high level itenerary. That is, what parks on which day, which coincides with which restaurants (if you are using the Dining Plan and/or making sit-down meal reservations 180 days in advance - as you should!). I know the restaurant reservation thing sounds CA-RAZY... but we'll touch on that later.

I personally use two websites to decide which parks we will go to on which day.

Walt Disney World Made Easy - A free website run by one man who lives near Disney World. He literally hits up "the world" 2-3 times a week to prove his methods. Plus, the author's humor cannot be beat. Josh cracks me up!

Touring Plans - A not free, subscription site that is well worth the money for a one year subscription. It is based on a book series (with a new edition every year) called the Unnoficial Guide to Walt Disney World. They have more of a statistical analysis approach, and have the numbers to back it up. EasyWDW goes by his experience. TouringPlans goes by the numbers.

As with anything involving humans, there are trends and statistics surrounding the crowds. Humans are lemings, they follow eachother and through general instinct follow the same actions and reactions. That, along with historical crowd information, we can easily find out which park will be the least crowded on which day.

That said, I start composing a spreadsheet using Google Docs. This makes it easy to view anywhere, even on my iPhone. An example of my spreadsheet is below. I lay out each day, and list the parks with the respective hours for each day. I also use it to throw random notes into when I read about something I want to do online. I'll just throw it onto a certain day, or by a certain park, so I am reminded to add it to my touring plans when I do those later on.
I also note which park has "Extra Magic Hours" (aka "EMH) by bolding the AM or PM for each park.... EMH is a "perk" offered to guests staying on Walt Disney property. This is important, because as a general rule - planners in the know AVOID that specific park with EMH on that day. It sounds whack, I know... but the thing is that the general public swarms to the EMH park that day, typically making it more crowded. So hence, we avoid.




Once all the days are listed out, park hours filled in, etc. I go back to both EasyWDW and TouringPlans and note which park is recomended by each website and which park is the "park to avoid" that day. You can see this in the fourth and fifth columns from the left (that are red, green and yellow). I color code for ease of viewing and deciding. For the most part, the two websites coincide, but sometimes they don't based on the different methodologies used. Here's where you just get to play with which parks you want to visit and how many days - and fenangle it to what you think will work best. I tend to lean towards what Josh @ EasyWDW.com tells me, because he posts pictures a few times a week proving his predictions were right (or I have yet to see - wrong). To me, the proof is in the pudding.


Let me be clear, that you shouldn't fret too much over getting the "perfect" park on the perfect day. Yes, I spend time on this, but I don't kill myself over it. Because the MOST important and most effective part of planning your disney vacation are your plans once you get in those parks, not necessarily the crowd levels that day. If EasyWDW is telling you it's the park to avoid, and TouringPlans says its the park to go too... don't be up to 2 am fretting over it and ordering an Rx for xanax because you just can't decide. I have been to parks on "red" or "super oh hell to the no do not go there" (otherwise known as "not recomended") park days and we did JUST fine, because we had a flawless Park Touring Plan.




So get your days set, and we're off to Dining Reservations and Meal Planning!!