To Plan or Not: your reasons why

[jkjs]

We have never planned a Disney visit. We have always winged it. We are not foodies so we are never worried about having a meal at a particular restaurant. I see so many on the DIS agonizing over their plans months (years?) in advance. I don't see how trying to live up to plan once you are actually at WDW can fun. Trying to do so would make it seem like work, not a vacation in our opinion. From our standpoint, there is too much to do in a single visit - unless you are there for two weeks- that you are going to miss something no matter how much you plan. Or if you plan to do it all, you're not going to have fun.

This is our opinion which is neither right or wrong.

Please let us know your reasons for planning or not. It would be interesting to hear from a planner who stopped or a non-planner who started.

 

[blessedby3]

We have never planned a Disney visit. We have always winged it. We are not foodies so we are never worried about having a meal at a particular restaurant. I see so many on the DIS agonizing over their plans months (years?) in advance. I don't see how trying to live up to plan once you are actually at WDW can fun. Trying to do so would make it seem like work, not a vacation in our opinion. From our standpoint, there is too much to do in a single visit - unless you are there for two weeks- that you are going to miss something no matter how much you plan. Or if you plan to do it all, you're not going to have fun.

This is our opinion which is neither right or wrong.

Please let us know your reasons for planning or not. It would be interesting to hear from a planner who stopped or a non-planner who started.

I am a planner to an extent. We are not big into the food at WDW...we do eat 1 or 2 TS during a week long-10 day trip, but we mainly eat CS. I do plan what park we will go to each day. I like to look at www.easywdw.com to see what parks are projected to have lower crowds and thats where we go. I dont plan out our ride order...we just start with what the kids want to do and go from there

 

[Spunky946]

I'm a natural planner at heart and dh is not, so he allows me to plan which park on what day and our meals and that is it. Other then that I don't follow a touring plan or guide. We get to a park as early as possible, next trip the kids want to see the opening show at Magic Kingdom.

We do rides/shows and eat our meals. If a line is too long we get the fast pass or skip it and come back. We don't do the big rides because my big kid is afraid and my little kid is too short and I think afraid too.

Any more planning then that, my family will revolt. If I pulled out a touring plan, I think dh would throw me to the wolves. LOL.

 

[hollypoast]

I don't over plan our trips but simply try to have enough information at my finger tips to limit waiting time as much as possible. Plus, I hate crowds so that's a big motivator too.

 

[Mariep26]

It depends on the trip for me. For example, our upcoming December trip has been heavily planned. We are bringing my mom who hasn't been to Disney since the 80's as well as my stepson who has been there but does not remember his first trip. Additionally we just confirmed that my best friend, her husband and her two kids will be coming along and taking their first family trip at the same time. So I have taken on full responsibility for planning all of the restaurants, shows and to generally map out what parks we will go to on what days. I have a spreadsheet on Google docs and I have shared it will all the adults attendees..it has been working out great!
For our February trip we are pretty much playing it by ear. I did grab a reservation to BOG as well as one character breakfast but other than that we are sticking with QS restaurants and will eat on the go and plan which parks on which days. We didn't get park hoppers because we don't want to overbook our days and we want to spend a bit of time at the resort and relax!
Our August trip will be a birthday trip so a fair amount of planning will go into that to be sure we get the birthday boy's wishes covered.

 

[Iwant2BAprincess]

I am a planner. My ADR's are made at 180+10 and that is about the time I start scanning for new shirts or designs on the creative boards. I also keep up to speed with the ever changing offerings (characters/closures) Now, I don't plan every moment of our trip. I lay out a rough daily park plan (which one to be at) and go from there. As to why...the planning is fun for me, I don't stress about it and it gives me an excuse to add Disney to my thoughts for 6 bonus months

 

[budafam]

I plan simply because I want to get the most for my money. I use notecards and write down approx. what time we need to be up by and what our first few destinations are for the day. Of course, everything doesn't always go according to plan but it doesn't ruin my day if it doesn't... I adjust and move on. If I didn't do the planning, I would probably forget certain things & not get as much done. I say do what works for you and don't critique those who are different.

 

[mjp12831]

The reasons to plan are ADR's and EMH.

With FP+, there could soon be a third reason.

 

[Mickeyrella]

I am not a planner. The only thing we plan in advance is one or two ADR, but that's it. We've been no planners for over 20 years and we can't imagine planning our vacation, I really admire the people that do lol. But we are definitely nonplanners and we still enjoy our vacation and enjoy all the fun things Disney and DVC have.

 

[KimK2006]

I am a planner to an extent. We are not big into the food at WDW...we do eat 1 or 2 TS during a week long-10 day trip, but we mainly eat CS. I do plan what park we will go to each day. I like to look at www.easywdw.com to see what parks are projected to have lower crowds and thats where we go. I dont plan out our ride order...we just start with what the kids want to do and go from there

This is us! Except we use the TouringPlans.com for the projected lower crowd. We head for the most popular rides first to do those before the crowds hit. Then, we wing it after we have ridden those.

 

[heather13]

I'm a "planner" to reduce stress on our family while we're actually vacationing. Knowing where to go and what we're doing actually makes it more fun and relaxing. Not that we plan every second, but to know which park we're visiting, and where we're eating that evening and to not have to wait (with a 4&6yo) makes it so much easier. Plus knowing the first few attractions to see (versus standing around at the entrance debating and arguing) makes life happier for all. I've learned that someone has to have a plan and take charge for our trip to run smoothly.

This past April I tried not planning a trip. It was a cruise with 9 other family members besides my 4. I made no dining reservations and planned only one high-priority excursion. It was a miserable experience, waiting for everyone else to figure out when & where to eat, trying to appease everyone who wanted to voice their opinion (both parents and kids) and determining when & where to meet. I think in a smaller group, or an environment where there's not much to do (weeklong beach vacation for instance) it might be fine but the no-plan-system doesn't mesh well with my personality.

 

[waynesgirl]

I plan to the wire- everywhere but WDW.

I do like to make a few ADRs but since I really don't know what I am going to feel like until that day, I don't make any that require a credit card hold.

We pay a little more to get hoppers because we like the ability to get up and leave if we want.

My DH complains about me getting FPs because it sometimes requires you to criss-cross the park...I mean, really? Who cares about criss-crossing? Geez, I need to tone up the ol' legs a little.

Point is, I am on vacation at a place I am very familiar with because we are lucky to go so much. Why plan and plan to get the most enjoyment when, fo us, the most enjoyment is simply waking up saying, "What are we going to do today?"

 

[eliza61]

Unfortunately the one time I tried to plan my trip turned into a disaster.
When my boys were little and we were planning our first trip to the world I read these boards like a bible. Unfortunately the majority of post were things like "If you don't do rope drop, you'll never get any thing done" and "if you don't have ts reserved you will be doomed to eat burgers the entire trip".
Well since the dis doesn't have a lot of views from the 'other" side, I turned into some type of spreedsheet nutcase.

Long story short, I pushed and yelled at my family to follow the spreedsheet because God forbid I didn't get to dumbo by 9:30 we would be doomed to stand in line for an hour. by day 3 my sons were crying and wanted to go back home and my dh threaten to simply keep the kids at the resort.

that was the absolute last time I made any type of plan.

My family is more easy going, maybe it's because we are dvc'ers and in the back of our heads we know in all probability we will be back but now we don't do rope drop and we have found that we always get a TS reservations whenever we want one. We also very lucky in that in our opinion disney restaurants are pretty much chain quality so if we miss one it's no biggie.

We enjoy meandering at a slow speed and we've even have days where we don't go into the parks.

 

[Bob NC]

We are non-planners.

We are early risers so we always get to the parks at opening and we always use hoppers. I would guess that we get more done without trying than some people do who plan their brains out.

A foodie at WDW is kind of an oxymoron.

We used to make lots of ADR's but we found the planning, making sure we are in the right place for our ADR at the right time, hardly worth the effort. The pressure to have to have an exact schedule so you don't miss that important meal just isn't worth it, for us.

We don't rush, we don't plan, we always eat what we want....It's a VACATION, not the Bataan Death March.

 

[erincon23]

I've been a minimal planner in the past, but I'm turning into a better planner. The last full-scale family trip we took was in 2009, and I did plan what parks we'd be at (because DS20 was there with his band and choir, and we wanted, if possible, the opportunity to see him for a few minutes on a day or two). We were there over spring break, and had been to the parks many times before, but I have to say, I was pretty miserable a lot of the trip (and not all of that had to do with non-planning, to be honest).

The last trip I took, which was with a friend in June, was pretty well planned - we did touring plans for each day, which we pretty well stuck to, but we gave ourselves license to deviate if desired. I must say, we did more and had a better time than on previous trips! In three weeks, I'll be at Disney with DS20, and we've talked about what we want to do and what parks we want to be in, but we're not making a major plan -- it should be lower crowd days, and there are few things that are MUST dos. We have one ADR, a rough outline of our 2-1/2 days, and we know what will be closed and what the park hours will be that week. That's about it.

However -- next spring, we're hoping to do a spring break trip while DS16 is at the parks with his choir, and I fully intend to do some major planning, because the parks will be very crowded.

So all I can say is -- I think some planning is absolutely necessary for higher crowd periods, if it's important to you to be able to see a fair amount and get into certain restaurants. If you're going in lower crowd times, don't really care what you ride, and are just going for the atmosphere, no plan would work -- as long as you know in advance that you may be standing in lines, eating at QS places, and bumping lots of elbows. But to each his own!

 

[EagleFlyer]

For me, planning is half the fun. But my idea of "planning" probably would be seen as winging it by some. I'm more "information gathering" than planning so I know what to look for when we get there, making sure I'm prepared and we don't miss out on anything out of ignorance.

For example, I'll have a good idea before we go of where we'd like to eat in each area park so if it's lunch time and we're in Frontierland, we won't just wander around and hope for the best and possibly miss out on something good. But I won't have it planned out to the point where we'll know ahead of time where we'll be at lunch.

So far my actual detailed planning has been just figuring out which park to go to on which day based on crowd calendars and making one dinner ADR on our early ending park day at AK. I've also asked my kids what their top priorities are, rides or characters or shows, so we know what to focus on first to make sure we get everything done that they want to do.

 

[Hunclemarco]

We're not planners, but i do check to see what's going on, and keep up with the news so to speak. When it's just my wife and i, we'll plan on a table service the morning we go. Our choices may be a bit limited, but we always find something we like.
When we vacation with friends, they like to plan out all TS meals, so we plan with them.

We generally have annual passes, and that gives us the opportunity to go where we want on any given occasion. If the crowds are huge, we just go to another park or head back to the resort and come back later. We don't go with the thought that we just have to get on this ride or that ride. We'll get there eventually.

Stressing about where to eat and having to be on an attraction or ride just isn't worth it. No amount of spent money is worth that, and we generally do accomplish all that we would like to do too!

 

[2manypets]

I used to be a park hopping nazi. It just made for a miserable time for my family.

Now the only thing I look at is where EMH's are and try to avoid those parks. I set up a few must do ADR's and we just wing it from there, mainly because I don't have any idea of what I'll be in the mood for in 6 months.

DH & I spend a lot of time relaxing at the resort now that we're older and been there / done that.

 

[44Majestic]

Interesting topic. We do TS restaurants pretty much every night we are at WDW, so as far as dinner ADRs we do plan. At this stage in our life that is pretty much the extent of the planning. When the kids were younger we planned much more, to the extent of which park to go to, which day to hit the parades at the parks etc. Now we have a few guidelines, such as avoid the Early Opening park because we don’t want to wake up super early and rush to get to a park. We take afternoon breaks from the parks and also enjoy a leisurely TS dinner. We also try to get to the park we choose to attend close to opening time.

I also think it depends on the time of year whether you can do no planning. If you are going at a crowded time ( i.e. Christmas week) and want to eat at a TS restaurant you have to plan. We are going this year and we are going to need to decide who wants to do what so we can at least get a few “must do’s” done.

 

[memakwed]

I am guilty. I am a planner to the utmost proportions. I can and do plan years out for the trip. I plan because it is important that everyone has a good time and everyone gets to do what they want. What I want is to have order and not be standing in the park hovering over a map or looking at times for this and that or figuring out our meals. That gives me piece and allows me to enjoy the trip. I plan in advance to stay on top of my budget. To be able to afford the extras that make the trip a little more special. With time and planning I can make a bday unique and fun and really give that one person someting special. If I didn't plan things out maybe I wouldn't be able to get into a certain restaurant or take the wishes cruise or do pirate league becuase the extra cash flo wasn't there...especially with the economy now adays. I plan so my mom can see the parade and fireworks and my son can go in the castle and ride POTC my dad can do the WS, my DH can see Indiana Jones, and extended family can see Pooh and eat in Moracco and everyone can eat at Boma. I have a lot of people to keep happy since they all pay their fair share for the trip so I plan. I plan for health reasons, who can eat what and where, keeping a diabetic on a schedule, keeping me from the exhaustion and pain of MS, a GAC for my son, will we need the wheel chair, air purifier, c-pap machine, pain meds, ice packs wraps.....that in itself is the reason to plan.Lastly, I plan because it is something I do to bond with my child. To talk about what we've done in the past and what we want to do this time round. We read together, talk together and share a common interest together which is important to me because eventually he will grow up and I'll be left with some great memories of when we used to plan disney together.