Good luck at LOYNO! It's a great school! You'll love it!
So about our trip, almost all of our trips have been pretty much last minute. I think the longest out we planned was 2 months. The shortest was about 10 days. We never booked way in advance so we have never gotten to do EVERYTHING that we wanted, especially dining reservations. Well this time we knew free dining would be coming for August so we started planning back in February, made our initial reservation about a week before FD was anounced, and added the FD once it was released. This trip we got litterally EVERY dining reservation that we wanted, including some that we had never gotten before, such as Chef Mickey's character breakfast. We are big character breakfast people, and would eat character breakfast every day if we could!
One thing that I HATE is a trip ending and feeling like we didn't do anything! Our last trip was only 5 days, but in that 5 days it seemed like we didn't do anything at all. This is partly because in the hustle and bustle of trying to get "everything" in, you waste so much time traveling back and forth, walking or riding to destinations that are nowhere near each other, or putting things off to do later, and then never getting to them. I'm a planning freak, so naturally this drives me CRAZY! But Heidi is more laid back, and sometimes likes flying by the seat of her pants... or more accurately she likes casually strolling by the seat of her pants
This is our longest trip that we've taken (11 days total! 8 parks, 3 waterparks/free days), and it's booked the farthest out, so I definitely wanted to plan out as much as possible to make sure that we utilize our time the most effectively.
During my last few weeks of school I was already pretty much checked out mentally, so I would sit in my night classes and literally work out a plan for every day. I don't plan out like every moment as far as what rides we will go on, but I've planned out what parks we will go to on what day, mostly according to EMH. I also planned out time for extra stuff like going to Down Town Disney, Disney Quest (my first time!!!), and a quick 9 holes at Oak Trail! (Heidi is a great caddy!) Having 11 days to fill really makes it fun shuffling around stuff to do and fitting everything in. The schedule has changed so many times it's ridiculous, including changing almost every dining reservation at least once, but still getting exactly what we wanted! One night it hit me that a lot of time could be saved by figuring out what mode of transportation was the quickest from one destination to the other. I found the website
www.ourlaughingplace.com which has a really neat Transportation Wizard section. You put in two destinations in the resort, and it will tell you the amount of time that it takes get between them on all of the different modes of transportation. We love using the resort transit system (busses, boats, MONORAIL!!!) and while driving is almost always the fastest, we try to do it as little as possible. I also try to schedule in some boat rides or walking whenever it's not that big of a time killer. Both of these can be so relaxing, which is nice to do sometimes, because we all know that a week in the WORLD is anything but relaxing! One of our favorite things is eating breakfast at Cape May on an Epcot day, then walking from the Beach Club
over to the International Gateway and entering the park through the back enterance. Nothing super exciting or secret, but one of the little things that we like to do each trip!
I have a spreadsheet on my laptop that is a grid broken down hourly for each day. It's color coordinated to indicate what times we will be in a park, at a dining reservation, at a WPnM option, even a few special surprises that Heidi doesn't know about!
I may be a dork, but I get so excited working on my spreadsheet, shuffling stuff around, and finding more efficient ways of getting everything in. My latest obsession with the changes was getting in the most Monorail rides that I could for us! I'll have to be careful as I share stuff with everyone that I don't spill the beans on any of the surprises, but later I'll give you guys an example of some of the planning that I have done so far. And know that I am ALWAYS open to suggestions for changes to our plans, better ways to get from place to place, and even maybe a few activities to add!!!