Anyone else feel like they overplan?

We're a happy medium. We plan the stuff we MUST DO, like certain dining reservations or a special event. And the rest of the park stuff we leave to chance. We make FP+ reservations in advance but we frequently don't use them or drop them the day-of in favor of something else. I could never do a touring plan. It just doesn't sound fun for our kind of trip.
 
So sometimes overplanning can be a necessary thing. That doesn't mean we got to everything on the plan but it certainly did us good with regards to number of rides experienced and better food choices and way less waiting around.
This.

This is it exactly. You don't have to stick to the plan but if you don't have one, you're just standing in line.
 
I think planning the trip is half the fun, but I sometimes feel like I am OVER planning and wish I could be more spontaneous.

Anyone have any tips to balance the obsessive plan freak in my head and my desire to throw caution to the wind?

What I do:

Plan the morning: Rope drop, fast passes, lunch reservations, etc.
And after the three fast passes are used up .. then do the afternoon and evening spontaneous .. utilizing 4th, (or more) Fast Passes or just see attractions (like shows) that don't require long waits. (except maybe dinner if you want a certain ADR). It just lets you be open to whatever the group is feeling .. tired? Go back and rest? Hungry? Grab a snack without worrying about ruining a dinner ADR .. etc.

Also .. don't do more than 1 ADR a day. Some plans I see on here get me stressed just looking at them .. jumping from a park to a hotel and then back. Yikes.
 


First, I do all the planning. I love the planning part to get everything right for which park and what reservations we need. Then we get there and usually go freestyle the rest of the time. We don't like having too many table service dinners but we also don't like quick service all week so I spread things around and look up what we have not tried. We plan the fast passes for busy ride but then the rest is free for us to find.

I think we found a balance between planning too much and not enough. One year we skipped all dinner reservations and my wife hated it. By the end of the stay she wanted a nice sit down meal.

I find I do most of the research on the attractions and shows so that I know about them but if they don't fit our time we skip them. We definitely do not get uptight about sticking to a plan.
 
I KNOW I over plan, but it's what helps me have the time go by before our trip. (and it really helps to have a realistic, well laid out plan IMO)

Dan
 


I do a lot of planning, but I wouldn't say that I over plan. Instead I have waves or stages of planning over the months leading up to our vacations....

  1. select dates, hotel, flights (11 months out)
  2. use park hours and crowd calendars to select park days (6-7 months out)
  3. plan meals and make ADRs - we like a lot of table service meals so we can sit and relax (6-7 months out/180 days)
  4. make FP+ selections (60 days)
We don't plan every hour of ever day, instead we use these reservation as the structure for our days. We generally know where we are going next, but there is still plenty of room for spontaneity and flexibility. To me, having a little structure actually makes the days more relaxing... we don't spend all day saying "what do you want to do next?"/"I don't know what do you want to do next?".
 
We make sure to plan the things we absolutely don't want to miss and wing the rest. I like to keep up with news and updates all throughout the looooooooong wait. We go every other year for now.

We've booked our resort for Thanksgiving 2017 and decided where to have Thanksgiving dinner. That's all I can think about this far in advance :D
 
For lack of something better to do at work for the majority of my day (man, when we get busy though, we get BUSY!), I sit here and research and plan... then plan some more, then revise it. To be fair, I am a single mom taking 3 kids 8 and under to Disney for their first time and my first time in 18 years - for a 5 night/6 day stay that I am absolutely insane for thinking I can handle. But planning it makes me feel like maybe I will survive this after all. I am going to be overhauling my newest plan, which is a week old, to break things up into blocks and have a priority list instead of trying to break it out into 30 minute blocks and travel around the park.
 
"Hi, my name is Phil and I'm an obsessive over-planner"

"Hi Phil"

Seriously, though, I plan everything right down to the socks I wear on any given day. My business is decidedly NOT plannable. The phones or radios go off and we run. So, planning everything outside of work gives me an outlet for lack of any control over events at work. My wife, on the other hand, just shakes her head, giggles, and patiently let's me do my thing.

With little ones, we've found a happy medium. We plan ADR's because I'm a big proponent of sitting down as a family and enjoying a meal together. Not only does it give us some calm time to just enjoy each other, but it's the basis around which we can make other decisions such as park selection. Plus, I've been that guy with a hungry toddler, waiting in line at a CS spot, knowing that a single french fry will make the difference between absolute bliss and an earth shattering meltdown in the middle of Cosmic Ray's. We'll make our FP+ selections for each morning based on park choice and the things the kids would enjoy most. After that, we let life take its course and just enjoy the parks for whatever they have to offer over the rest of the day.

This way, if the kids get tired, we can go back to the resort. If they want to spend an hour running around a flower pot, so be it. I'll feel like we accomplished our goal, my wife feels like she's on a vacation instead of a forced march, and the kids get the best of both worlds.
 
Oh heck yeah! I don't think it's about planning less as much as it is knowing things probably won't go perfectly according to plan. I tend to plan for meals, a few FP+ but nothing really urgent. Most of this is because it will be driven primarily by our kids as this is their big trip. As it is a surprise, I'm limited in how much overplanning I can do! I found the trip where I planned the least (Hawaii) has been the kids' favorite trip by far, even over DLR where I had planned a lot of fun things. The kids loved to be able to relax and not rush to anything and lounge at the pool and beach. So I've borne that in mind to park in pool time and realize we probably won't see everything and that's okay.
 
I'm also an overplanner but what I'll do is give myself multiple options per day, all of which potentially work with my schedule. For instance, I know which park I will be in on certain days and will familiarize myself with 2-3 different QS options so I can have some semblance of spontaneity while there. After we've hit all four parks in our trip, I'll let our last few days be open to re-visit any park we want as well. I've found that even on non-Disney vacations, it never hurts to research as much as you can so you can make educated decisions.
 
Ah, fun to plan with MDE. Then get to change plans several times, including adding and canceling ADRs. And finally get to abandon plans when in the parks and other things crop up, like kid projectile vomiting in front of the castle. All part of the magic and the Disney experience.
 
I think planning the trip is half the fun, but I sometimes feel like I am OVER planning and wish I could be more spontaneous.

Anyone have any tips to balance the obsessive plan freak in my head and my desire to throw caution to the wind?
Excellent Question!

For me........I would say I probably do over plan........but I'm like the OP I love that part of the WDW Adventure. This past January we visited Disney with friends of ours who for the most part "Just wing it". We had a blast. I tried to incorporate some of that spontaneity into our November trip coming up. I hope I succeeded.......partly. I probably still over planned our first day in the MK.........but that was because we're going with my brother and his family.........and I want to make sure its special.pixiedust: All the other days in our 8 day trip are outlined but not overtly specific.

I guess we'll see.

Doug :goofy:
 
We just did our first minimal plans trip this last week since FP+ came out, and we all agreed that it was nice to get a break from a plan-filled trip, but that we did miss out on many things that we usually do also. While we did this by default (Trip planned under 30 days out, bought military tickets after arrival), it was neat to see that it could still be done. We only spent 3 half days and one full day in the parks, but we still managed almost all the big rides (Kali twice, Everest, splash, soarin, space twice, tower of terror, rocking roller coaster, toy story) as well as several smaller ones, saw one nighttime show, and ate at Marrakesh for the first time - was a hit with everyone, even the picky 12 year old- but we did miss out on test track, mine train, the new frozen ride and our ritual Crystal Palace breakfast. All said, we enjoyed doing a more "old school" trip, but we might not have been so comfortable doing that if we weren't regular visitors. We only used fast passes on our last part-day, because we were there over the busy part of the day, and to be honest, not many of the same day fast pass options were worth it other than at Magic Kingdom. We all went in with the knowledge that we would miss things, that we would be back, and had everyone set goals of their top three things they wanted to do. We probably could have done the rides we missed, but we all agreed that we could do them another trip as we didn't want to spend all the trip in lines, and instead opted for pool breaks at the resort. We enjoyed the planning break, and it's not a bad idea to do once, because now the family understands why planning matters, but I also know that no one melts down if something gets missed. Next trip I will be back to planning ahead, but I probably won't take it as far as I used to with the spreadsheets that usually end up just serving as a basic guide.
 
Yes and I think it makes the trip not as exciting once I get there.

When we went in 2011 it was a last minute trip and pretty spontaneous. It was booked but we were waiting until the 45 day window to decide if we would actually go. Well we did. In 45 days I made a few ADR's (since we had FD) and read on here a bit before going. We had been twice before. I had a rough draft on which park we would hit each day but some mornings we left that up to chance. It was THE BEST TRIP we had ever been on. I think just going with the flow and not having any preconceived notions on how it was "supposed" to go made the trip that much more magical.
 
Anyone have any tips to balance the obsessive plan freak in my head and my desire to throw caution to the wind?

Plan your mornings and maybe the last hour or two of the day, and leave the rest open. The first two hours or so of the day are when planning makes the most difference in terms of how many rides you get/characters you see. Get the ones that'll develop the worst lines done then, and you'll have more flexibility later.

Alternately, let everyone pick one thing per park or per day that's the most important for them, and do those things the first few hours of the day, and then go with the flow.

Hopefully, if you can convince your obsessive plan freak that you have a plan for the time that is most important (or the things that are most important), it'll be more mellow about you throwing caution to the wind and going with the flow part of the time.

Not sure how either of those will work, since I don't share your inner conflict. :scratchin My morning is planned out in fifteen minute increments, often as not, and I have a pretty solid outline for the rest of the day as well. But even at home I don't like to go to a restaurant without having a good idea of what I'll order before I get there; I like planning, and I like following a plan, and with five kids and a hubby who hates planning ahead, I don't often get the opportunity to do so! I don't insist anyone else follow it (when the kids were younger they could follow my plan or hang out with dad), but I always have a plan.

Particularly with a Disney trip, planning ahead that minutely means I have to grapple with the fact that I can't do everything I want to do way ahead of time, so when we're actually there and plans go south, I'm already in the mindset of, "Can't do everything, so just enjoy what you get done," and I can go with the flow. And, as others have said, planning means I've got a lot of research in my head about what I want to do early in the day and why. So in a sense, obsessively planning actually makes me more mellow about abandoning the plan.

I think overplanning is only an issue if you feel like you're going through the motions once you get there. If you've done it so many times in your head that it no longer has meaning in reality, you've overplanned. Those people freaking out because their plan isn't working out? Totally don't get why people call those guys overplanners. To me, they underplanned, because they didn't consider the fact that kids don't follow plans! :upsidedow
 

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