This is cathug10's mom. I appreciate some of the advice given to her.
Her psychiatrist has told her to take challenges. She needs positive support and encouragement. She's travelled with me around Europe, including Romania. We've been across the US. This is the first holiday we are planning together.
It's somewhat overwhelming, with such a large amount of hotels and experiences to choose. This has Cat a bit paniced because of this. Her triggers are criticism, dirty areas, rudeness, poor manners and crowds.
So, we needed practical info - best clean places to stay and eat, best times (like early morning), quiet areas for a break. A nap will be necessary during the hot afternoon.
We live in a small town in Ireland. She's trying new things all the time. She needs to hear good stuff!
I get it now. Thank you for coming on and explaining. This makes a big difference in the type of advice that you'll receive.
Is she expected to make decisions about hotels and restaurants or will she just be saying if she likes your decisions or not? It would probably help her a LOT for you to at least narrow down her choices and list the pros and cons of each. We'll gladly help you with that if you'd like. If you list things like budget (max per night), how many beds you need, can you handle double or do you need queen size beds, do you need your room door to open on a hallway or can it open to the outside, does she do better with bright or mute colours or is there no difference, does noise bother her, can she handle transportation that's like public busses, is there anything in particular that scares her (clowns, large icons, etc), is there anything specific about the pool that's important to you (slide, sprawling vs more contained, availability of a plain pool with no features, etc) or anything else you can think of. The more detail you give us, the better we can help you narrow down your choices.
We've had no problems with cleanliness in any of the restaurants. For TS restaurants I'd recommend for first seating ADRs because the restaurant is almost guaranteed to be running on time at that point and because they tend to not be filled when you're first arriving so they're quieter. For QS restaurants try to eat outside of the peak dining periods. We rarely encounter lines by entering the QS location for lunch by 11:20 and for dinner by 4:30. We tend to eat breakfast in our room using groceries ordered from Garden Grocer so that we're not as rushed in the morning.
I would HIGHLY recommend a touring plan service. I really like easywdw.com but I know that others like other services. There are 2 ways in which these kinds of sites help. The first is that they tell you which parks will be least crowded on a daily basis and the IMO the better sites give reasons why. The reason this is important is that crowds happen between attractions and at bus stops and you're much less likely to be caught in a crowd in the least crowded park compared to the most crowded park. The second is that they tell you the best time to be at each attraction in order to minimize lines and waits at attractions. As you can imagine, this is invaluable. They include all sorts of strategies including how to maximize fastpasses. Building touring plans can also help a lot because your daughter can have a sense of what to expect every day and even as the day goes along she'll know what's coming up. This is huge. Another benefit I've found with detailed touring plans is that in addition to figuring out ahead of time which attractions we want to see, I also look at which locations we should eat at and I include heading to that location in my plan so that I can be sure we'll get that at a time when there won't be lines. If your daughter's particular about what she eats that also means looking over menus to be sure that there will be options she'll like at your chosen location so that you don't have to search for something on the fly. The detailed touring plan also includes the time to leave the park. It helps prevent the "just one more thing" scenario so many of us are prone to fall into. We leave for a break before our autistic daughter is overwhelmed rather than waiting until she's already struggling. The plan encourages this and being as obsessive compulsive as my daughter and I are, we definitely follow the plan.
WDW really is in general a pretty clean place. Obviously you'll find dirt and people will make messes as it's a huge place with lots of people but they do a pretty good job in general. They've actually done studies of things like how far apart the trash cans should be so that people won't toss trash on the ground. They take really good care to ensure it's clean. If you find something that's not clean (my experience is that it's most likely to be a room at checkin not being properly cleaned but that's pretty rare too) then just tell a CM and they'll get somebody on it.
Rude people and poor manners unfortunately you can't do anything about. They're all over the world as you know. Practicing responses to the behaviour is the best thing you can really do and using tried coping strategies when it upsets her. We've encountered mostly really nice people at WDW but there will always be those who are just plain rude unfortunately. But really, in all of our trips I can't actually remember more than a handful of negative people that we've run across but I do remember a lot of really nice and friendly people. We've got a lot of great stories of super people we've come across.
Does she have any trouble with things like noise, unexpected things happening, speed, flashing lights, anything? That'll help to identify if there are any attractions she should avoid. Does she really like any of these things? Does she like the Fantasyland type rides or is she more into the Tower of Terror and Rock'n Roller Coaster type thrill rides? Just trying to get an idea of how to even direct you for attractions you'll really want to go to vs ones you'll want to avoid.
