A Practically Perfect Vacation

[1GR8DISNEYFAN]

What are some of your favorite tips that you have read here at the disboards and used that you feel made your trip to Disney practically perfect. We have had 3 wonderful vacations with a family of 5 and I would wish the same for everyone.
The top favorite things that I feel made our trip Practically Perfect are:

Alway get to the parks at rope drop. We can do our top pick of rides in
the first 1-2 hours, and then enjoy everything else at a slower pace. Then
take a mid-day break back at the resort for a swim or nap, then back to
the park for evening fun.

Staying at a monorail resort if at all possible.

We have a long flight just to get to Orlando, so staying off sight the first
day to rest and adapt to different time zone.

Go with a plan, which day, which parks, which resteraunts.

Expect the worst weather and go prepared, last visit we were ther during
a tropical storm and it rained harder than I have ever seen in my life! But
with rain ponchos on we still ventured out and had a great time.

I love the over the door shoe organizer to help keep bathrrom neat and tidy.

 

[ShepFam]

I agree with many of the same you posted and would add...
1. Using garden grocer (or wego) to get food and adult beverages for the room...saved so much money on snacks and lunches!
2. Spray misters for the summer trips: the kids love them and as I learned so did the adults!
3. Mastering the use of the fast pass as quickly as possible like when getting into the parks at the rope drop, getting fast pass tickets for one attraction and then hitting the lines for others while the lines are shorter. We've always been amazed at much we get done during the EM hours.

 

[Blackbeltdisneygirl]

What are some of your favorite tips that you have read here at the disboards and used that you feel made your trip to Disney practically perfect. We have had 3 wonderful vacations with a family of 5 and I would wish the same for everyone.
The top favorite things that I feel made our trip Practically Perfect are:

Alway get to the parks at rope drop. We can do our top pick of rides in
the first 1-2 hours, and then enjoy everything else at a slower pace. Then
take a mid-day break back at the resort for a swim or nap, then back to
the park for evening fun.

Staying at a monorail resort if at all possible.

We have a long flight just to get to Orlando, so staying off sight the first
day to rest and adapt to different time zone.

Go with a plan, which day, which parks, which resteraunts.

Expect the worst weather and go prepared, last visit we were ther during
a tropical storm and it rained harder than I have ever seen in my life! But
with rain ponchos on we still ventured out and had a great time.

I love the over the door shoe organizer to help keep bathrrom neat and tidy.

I love planning my trip until I can plan no more. My son says I am now making up things to plan so I don't run out of things to plan. I use my smartphone to put all my plans for the day into a schedule, and include confirmation numbers and phone numbers in case I need to cancel an ADR.

Take your time. It only increases fatigue, stress, and pain in feet to rush. I send my hubby and dad out to get fastpasses while we stroll to the other rides. This time we are taking our good old time so we can experience everything!

We love the dining plan. Going to the themed out restaurants is part of the experience for my kids, and they truly look forward to them.

Take medications such as painkillers, anti-diarheals (sp), sleep meds, etc... We are looking into Body Glide to avoid the chafing issue I had in October. It lasted over a week!

Bring shoe changes, especially if you ever have foot pain.

Strollers for young kids. I know there are major controversies over the amount of strollers in parks and how old is too old for a child to use one. I thought my 4 year old was gonna be fine without one in October. My mom purchased one and brought it. Thank God! I felt so bad for the people carrying their kids out of parks. Some people were stuck with 2 children to carry, and I can't handle one, let alone 2 with my feet issues! We have pics of my daughter falling asleep all over the parks! She turned 5 two months after we left Disney, and I am looking for a sturdier stroller for her so she can rest better. In an ordinary setting, children of that age shouldn't usually need one, but Disney is no ordinary setting! She ran out of steam every day. And as Disney is for kids and kids at heart, I don't care how many strollers there are!

 

[mousiemom]

all of our trips have been perfect!!!! always have a plan for each day. skip the breakfast buffets and hit the parks early. utilitze the fp machines, do all of your favorites in the morning, have lunch, and do the shows and use your fp. be sure and use the photopass!! this is one of my biggest tips i tell people, be sure and get photopass pics made at every park, characters, etc. when you get home, order your photopass calendar personalized by you with borders and birthdays (and you get 26 of your pictures for a whopping $26.00) i get one on every trip and you can begin it at any date.

 

[Tinkerbellie16]

Tips I learned on the DIS that have been great! :

Subscribe to Tour Guide Mike - his red/yellow/green morning/evening parks are spot on! He's got some other tips that I can't repeat but it is definitely worth getting the subscription!

Relax and smell the roses

Dining! I barely ever sat down for meals but the DIS introduced me to Ohana and Le Cellier (Excellent!) and character meals which I would have NEVER considered but y'all convinced me and it's the best way to see 'em!

Glow items & ponchos at the dollar store

The best or the quickest way to go from point A to point B (many times they are different)

Take a midday break - OK I knew this before I read the DIS but never realized what excellent advice it was until I read it - 1000 times

 

[Rotti955]

We found the restaurant threads to be really helpful in picking the best restaurants. I loved that that people even posted photos of their plates

For our son's surprise birthday party, I found the greatest cake on the restaurant threads and went directly to the Contemporary restaurant so he would get exactly the cake I saw online. It was the highlight of our trip.

I completely agree with Shepfam - disboards helped us find garden grocer to deliver groceries to our room. So great to have milk, a case of water, breakfast items, kids snacks, and sunscreen that I didn't have to pack.

I am the type of person that wants to do everything !!! Reading through the boards and seeing other peoples trip reports have helped me in planning our days ahead of time. Rather than try to do it all in a rush without any plans.

 

[happycamps]

From disboards:

Garden Grocer (esp. if we fly)

Ohana

Collapsible laundry hamper ( I actually have a disney sorter that I love)

Pack all of my kids outfits in individual zip lock baggies (I think I got that from disboards) - underwear, socks, shirt and shorts. I love this, mornings are much easier

Dole Whips

Boating from DHS to Epcot (or the opposite direction)

 

[hops&dreams]

I went on my first trip as an adult, wife, & mom last year. I read a TON on all ears, and here's what I found helpful:

• One thing that I did on our trip last year (DD's first trip, for her 6th b-day) is I made an invitation to her from Cinderella, inviting her to dinner - we had a character dinner planned. When we checked into our hotel (Wilderness Lodge), I asked the person at the desk to give it to her. She took it and had it delivered to the room, with a bunch of balloons! It was WONDERFUL!!!!
  
• When we went to the scheduled dinner (DD had no idea of dinner reservations), I mentioned the invite to our waitress, and Cinderella came up to DD and said "I'm so glad you got my invitation... thank you for coming to dinner with my family, and I'm glad to see you were able to bring your Mommy and Daddy too" and asked her to come watch her dance with Prince Charming, and she even asked Prince Charming to dance with her and keep it up... it was unreal!
  
• Also, I mailed a post card the last day of our trip to DD, from Mickey, thanking her for visiting. She got it a few days after we got back and thought she was pretty darn special! She can't wait to go back next year!
  
• Other tips:
• We ate on the Diney Dining plan, and we would swipe out 2 counter service meals for the 3 of us to all share at lunch time. Then when we got back to the hotel after the parks closed, we went to our hotel's cafe and swiped out one more to share as a night time snack, and got fruit as a side to have as part of breakfast the next morning (along with our breakfast bars that we brought along).
  
• Dress in layers in colder months, as morning temps to afternoon temps swing a lot.
  
• Rather than a hamper, I just brought a garbage bag and kept our dirty laundry in that. When the week was over, I threw the whole thing in one suitcase and put our still clean stuff and toiletries in the other suitcase and we were all packed.
  
• This one's kinda hokey, but I only used the hotel provided lotion (the stuff in the blue bottles at Wilderness Lodge) when we were there. It had a new smell that I liked. I brought extras home, and when I miss Disney, I put a little of that lotion on, and the smells bring me back! (also good if I'm having a bad day... it puts me in a better mood!)
  
• I brought extra napkins home, and every once in a while, I'll sneak one in DD's lunch. Like last week, I snuck one in her lunch, and I wrote on the back "This time next year, we'll be at Mickey's house!" She came home and was SO excited!
  
• At the end of our trip, I swiped out our extra snacks at our hotel's gift shop for 4-packs of fruit snacks. We had enough left over that we gave one pack to each of DD's classmates when we got back, as souvenier snacks (we took her out of school for a week for our trip).
  
• Airborne, Emergen-C, vitamins, etc - We took one of these (we used Emergen-C) every day we were there, beginning the evening we got there, especially after being on a plane for 4 hours! Because we paid big bucks for our trip and we weren't gonna feel crummy for one minute of it! I threw a packet in everyone's OJ every morning, and we barely even noticed.
  
• JOURNAL! We brought our laptop and every morning over tea, while DH and DD were getting ready, I wrote diary entry type things in a simple word document. I talked about what parks we went to the day before, what rides we rode, what the weather was like, what we ate, DD's reactions to attractions, shows, etc. I also wrote what we had planned for the day ahead. I only did it for the first 4 days of our 7 day trip, and REALLY wish I had kept it up. We all love to read it now, and I tried to fill in the blanks for the last 3 days when we got back. The info is there, but the writing isn't the same, you know?
  
• In case DD got lost, we took a pic of her every day before we left our hotel. It served as a record of what she was wearing, etc. I also had a dogtag made with my and DH's cell phone numbers on the back. She wore it as a necklace (it was Princess and the frog) under her shirt. We didn't have to use those things, but we just wanted to be sure that she had the info on her.
  
• We went in January, and ended up bringing all our cold weather gear with us. (we had originally planned to leave them in our friend-who-took-us-to-the-airport's car, but didn't want to clutter it up, so we just brought it with) It ended up SNOWING our first day there, and being colder at WDW than in Juno Alaska! We were among the VERY few that were prepared for the cold weather and it didn't bother us one bit - we're from the midwest and had left 8" of snow at home! We were also fortunate to have system jackets, the kind where the lining zips out and can be used as a lighter jacket. As the week went on and it warmed up, we used less and less layers. Our last day, we went out in only t-shirts!
  

That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure if I looked through my notes from last year, I'd come up with more.

 

[elvisveyron]

A practically perfect vacation called when whole family enjoy during this time. I think vacation is a best activity that you can do from your busy schedule.