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R & R and lack thereof: Disney World Part 1 - Planning / Trip Prep / Arriving, All for Disney Virgins
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I'm a little belated in my Disney recap! It was a busy summer, but let's be honest, Fall isn't any slower. As you may remember, I was slightly dreading our Disney trip for several reasons. I honestly thought it was going to be a beating. But now that we're back, all I have is fond memories. It truly was a magical trip!
Just a quick disclaimer - prior to this trip, I had not been to Disney since age 17. Awesome things like
MagicBands or FastPasses didn’t exist back then, or even smartphones and apps
for that matter. (I’m totally old.) So in a way, I was a Disney virgin.
So, we hadn't told our kids we were going to Disney. I just told my eldest, 7, she'd
be missing out on the last week of school because we were going on our summer
vacation early. She did start to get suspicious the last couple of weeks, and
asked me many questions, including "Are we going to Disney?" To which
I replied, "We're going to Florida." See how tricky I was there? To
be honest, she was pretty angry with me because of the things she missed
at school. I started to second guess my opinion to play hookie and
take our vacation early to beat the crowds. But it totally worked out in our favor. (More on this in my next post, hopefully sometime this year).
We told the girls our destination
when we reached our gate at the airport, and I gave them some Disney-themed
goody bags filled with things like Frozen PJ’s, custom-made autograph books
which I purchased from the TopangaDaCat shop on Etsy, personalized Minnie-inspired tank tops from my Mom
(Mimi’s Bebes), and their favorite candies. I wish had a photo of these bags,
but --->
blogger fail.
Custom Minnie-inspired tank tops from Mimi's Bebes
I’ve decided to break my Disney post into 2-3 parts: 1) Planning / Trip Prep
/ Arriving at Disney World for Disney Virgins and 2) Reviews and Rants – Our
experiences at the Magical World of Disney and the Disney / Clearwater Combo
Trip
Planning / Trip Prep / Arriving in Orlando / Disney’s Magical Express.
I booked with a travel agent, who shall remain nameless because she was
useless. All she did was book a vacation for which I did countless hours of
research myself on hotels, dates, experiences, MagicBands, FastPasses, etc. She
didn’t advise me on our Fastpass choices or dining. She didn’t even mention
booking Elsa & Anna. That’s a BIG deal (but more on that later). In comparison, I have friends whose Disney
travel agents not only booked their trip, but also booked ALL of their
Fastpasses, meals, and more. At times I had trouble just getting her to return
a phone call or an e-mail. So if you’re Disney virgins like us, I do recommend
using an agent, but choose wisely. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
Just a little background on our specific trip –I call it the Disney /
Clearwater Combo Trip. I had searched online trying to find advice on this, but
came up with nothing. Hopefully my blogs on this will help others planning a similar trip, because
Disney combined with the beach is the perfect vacation! My youngest
is still quite young (she had just turned 4), so we decided to only do Magic Kingdom
on this trip. We spent 3 ½ days at Disney, and then drove to Clearwater
Beach where we spent the remainder of our trip (a week total.) My husband and I (and our girls by proxy) are big beach people and we couldn't fathom not going to the beach for our summer vacation. We purchased roundtrip
airfare from DFW to Orlando, and booked a rental car to drive from Orlando to
Clearwater. We returned the rental car at the Orlando airport. To return a car
at a different location from which you rented it, you’ll most likely have to
call the rental car company instead of booking online. We used Enterprise and
it worked out great. More details on this can be found in my next blog post(s).
As I said above, I did my own research to book, including where to stay. I found a useful blog while researching, called WDW Prep School. Their blog post about the pros and cons of each Disney resort was very helpful! Since we only planned to stay for three nights, I wanted to splurge and go ALL OUT. We stayed at Disney's Grand Floridian, and it was AWESOME!
To truly enjoy modern-day Disney, you cannot be afraid of using the
Internet, e-mail and smartphones. These items are your Disney-planning friends!
To begin, once the Disney portion of your trip is booked, create an account
with Disney by visiting this link: startyourdisneyexperience.com. Here is where
you’ll eventually be able to personalize your MagicBands, choose Fastpasses, and
make dining selections. Disney will notify you (via e-mail) when it’s time to make
these selections, but being proactive and knowing ahead of time will benefit
you. Speaking of MagicBands, these arm bands, for which you’ll receive one for
each member of your family, are your room key, your meal plan, your FastPasses,
and your method of payment all rolled into one. Disney spent like a zillion
dollars developing these, and IT WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY. It’s so easy to pay and
access every part of your trip through your MagicBand. Disney has special “readers”
for your MagicBand everywhere – from the Orlando airport, to downtown Disney,
to Magic Kingdom, to your hotel, and more. You simply just touch the Mickey on
your armband to the Mickey on their “readers” and voila, you’re paying for your
food or gaining access into the park. I wish I could go through life with a
JulieBand. Life would certainly be easier. Oh, and you can personalize your
bands with your names and choose from an array of colors. Let each family
member choose their favorite color, or all go with the same color. I chose pink
for our entire family. Real men wear pink you know.
Once you book, you can also choose your dining options right away. Some of
the character dining experiences book in excess of 6 months in advance, so book
it NOW. I booked in January for our end-of-May trip, and I could barely get a
reservation at the popular O’Hana (the Hawaiian-themed restaurant located at
the Polynesian resort) on Sunday evening. I also booked dinner at Cinderella’s
Royal Table for the Saturday evening we were there. While you can book
breakfast, lunch or dinner at the Royal Table, I chose dinner because I’d heard
the food is quite good (and it is). If you’re on a meal plan, a meal at
Cinderella’s Royal Table will cost you 2 full service meals per member of your
family, or you can pay outright. It’s well worth the cost. These are the only 2
meals I booked prior to arriving at Disney. Some Disney planners may call this
crazy, but I wanted to have some flexibility while there. I also didn’t want to
book anything for the night of our arrival in the event that our flight was
delayed or canceled. I believe it depends on the time of year whether or not you
need to book every meal prior to your arrival. If you’re going during a peak
season, you may want to consider it. I’ll review our restaurants and character
dining experiences in my Disney #2 post.
Dinner at Cinderella's Royal Castle
When you’re 60 days out from your trip, you can book your FastPasses. Make
sure your Disney package includes these! A FastPass is basically a jump to the
front of the line pass. It's like a reservation, but with an hour time window for your ride/attraction. Most of these “passes” are stored on your magical
MagicBands, although I did see a few people with printed FastPass cards. Following
are the experiences/rides you may want to consider booking immediately when you
are 60 days until Magic Kingdom:
Recommended Magic Kingdom FastPasses
·Meet Elsa & Anna
·Aerials Under the Sea
·Seven Dwarf's Mine Train
·Splash mountain
·Big Thunder Mountain RailRoad
·Peter Pan's Flight
·Barnstormer
·Buzz Light Year
·Enchanted Tales with Belle
If you want to see Elsa and Anna, I’ll be honest – you should probably stay
up until midnight the night prior to your 60-day mark. FastPasses for the
Frozen gals book up immediately. I got online about 9 am the morning we were
60-days out, and the best I could get was mid-day on our departure day
(Monday). If we’d had a flight to catch instead of driving to the beach,
we wouldn’t have been able to see them at all.
Don't miss meeting Elsa and Anna at Magic Kingdom. Book a FastPass when you're 60 days from departure.
It's OK, if you don’t want to be completely scheduled from the time you show up until
the time crash in the evening. To be honest, the only thing for which
we had FastPasses prior to leaving home were the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train,
Meeting Elsa & Anna, and Aerial. I secured the rest when we were already at
Disney. Even if they don’t show any available when you check, as one Disney
castmember pointed out to me, people just like you are constantly switching out
their FastPasses all day long every day, enabling you to nab passes to popular
rides at the last minute. You can also check
as often as you like. The My Disney Experience App makes this even easier! Also,
one thing I didn’t clearly understand until actually getting to Disney, is while
you can reserve 3 FastPasses per family member per day ahead of time, once you’ve
used up all these passes, you can pull up to three additional Fastpasses one at
a time. The only downside to these 3 additional passes is currently they must be
pulled from a Disney kiosk inside the park, and cannot be pulled until you have
used your first three. So if your Elsa and Anna pass is not until 5:00 PM, and
you’ve spent your first 2, you’re not getting any more until after you see Elsa
& Anna. So, the lesson learned here is choose early reservation times for
your FastPasses so you can pull more once when you get there and have used
yours (Especially if you are an early park-goer).
One more thing about the MagicBands - keep them with you or just put them on
when you depart! Some families we saw already had their bands on prior to arriving
at the airport to fly out. Luckily I had mine in my carry-on, and we put them
on during the flight. They are adjustable for different size arms (of course),
but you can also permanently re-size the bands for tiny arms. A bellboy at our resort
showed us how to do this on our second day, and it was a gem, as my
littlest R didn’t really want to wear hers. For children (or adults) with tiny
arms, you can actually remove the black exterior border portion of the bands so they fit more
snugly. Warning – once you remove the black portion, you cannot put it back on.
So be sure you want to do it! Adults will most likely need the extra room the black border provides.
Left: MagicBand with black border still attached. Right: MagicBand with black border removed (more child-sized).
Prior to our trip, our travel agent sent us some sticker Disney luggage
tags, which are temporary tags that you put on your bags at the airport prior
to checking them. Had I read the instructions, I would have done this, but
well, I was busy OK? When we arrived at the Orlando Airport, we had to go the
luggage caroseul to claim our luggage, while all the other Disney goers headed
directly to Disney’s Magical Express, the transfer service. Apparently, if
you put your Disney luggage tags on at your origin, Disney will get your bags
for you and they magically appear at your resort hours later. I’m not entirely
certain my mistake was a bad one though, as we were able to get our luggage
quickly and it traveled with us on our shuttle bus from the airport to the
resort, and we had it upon arrival. This proved to be helpful when we decided
to immediately change into our swimsuits and hit the pool at Disney’s Grand Floridian.
To recap, here are my cliff notes for Disney World Trip Planning
/ Trip Prep / Arriving in Orlando / Disney’s Magical Express:
·Make reservations for preferred and popular
dining and character meals immediately upon booking.
·Choose FastPasses for popular rides and
attractions when 60 days out from departure.
·Size your MagicBands and have them on before you
arrive in Orlando.
·Decide whether or not you want to deal with luggage
at the airport and use (or don’t use) the Disney-provided luggage tags.
·Relax - you’re about to embark on a magical trip
making memories with your family.
