This is going to get wordy but I think worth it..
Yes you are and it really changed when we stopped going the same way. In fact I can comfortably say there would be nothing that could interfere except maybe a phased closing crowd that would impact any trip no matter how short we plan it. Let me share a little insight into the series of events and change of thought that helped achieve this new love for disney and complete change how I vacation now.
Disney is not an obsession for me. I took a few trips with family before I was 10 (first 10 years of WDW opening, basically up to when captain eo first came out). Then I didn't go again until I bought my daughter who was 10 at at time in 2005. For me that trip was very very very unplanned and a little spontaneous because I spent those years working with dotcoms and it wasn't the startup culture it is today. It was long hours especially after the bust so I had a little warning but not a disney planning amount of warning. I bascially picked a hotel and hoped for the best. I viewed that trip as being there was the magic, I didn't need to add anything to make it more magical. Father/daughter in disney having a great time together. Hurricane Katrina almost got in the way but in turn it actually caused the place to be completely empty. We lucked out and everything was walk on, do it all you want, walk into any restaurant and we took advantage of our week. We never saw a crowd until our final saturday and we were there a solid week.
I got hit by the recession pretty bad, found myself out of work for 3 years but recovered fast with a new startup. This also meant a lot a hours and a couple more years before the company grew the employees enough to be able to take off. After missing any family vacations and barely any entertainment except maybe a year holiday splurge and 1 or 2 movies I once again found myself in a spot where I was told I was taking 2 weeks off, there was a bonus for a vacation and my last day in the office was tommorow. So at the end of sept 2014, my daugher who was out of high school and doing college online said why not disney. That night we booked a room, after work the next day we packed and caught a train the next morning. There was no flights available for a couple days so we decided the slower train gave us more time. less than 48 hours I went from no clue when I could vacation to we're on our way to disney with only a room reservation. Someone else was paying so discounts did not matter but I did call up to try to find something (nothing was there). By the time we arrived I had purchased tickets with my mobile phone and we checked in. Very first day my daughter gets run over by a wheelchair and within 2 days she was having trouble just getting to the resort dining options. We took a couple days off for her to rest, I extended the 1 week trip to 2 and started to really learn disney while sitting in the smoking section at the resort with some coffee. I was there so much that I knew every grounds keeper, baggage handler and lifeguard by name.
What I learned in that forced downtime was how to do disney different. I was discovering every night near midnight I could pull out the
mde app and find an impossible ADR for lunch or dinner the next day. That would dictate what park we did the next day. For a few more days we made use of a wheelchair to give her the best possible recovery. Her mom was a nurse so I was comfortable consulting with her over the phone that it didn't sound like we should use a doctor but don't wait more than a couple days. Luckily we didn't need one and we had a great trip. Fastpass wasn't so easy to get but this is when we started to close the place down jumping into the hardest to get into ride right before they didnb't let anyone. We found the lines reasonable, the park stayed open for us and we did it all. We also started to focus on being there, looking up and smelling the roses. my daughter ankle restricted some things but we didn't care, we were standing at disney and enjoyed what we could. never rushed, never missing anything, really loving what we did more than any other time in the past.. what I discovered is how to be a local. The goal shouldn't be the whole park, it should be a couple no matter what you can achieve and what ever else you add to it is a bonus. Just sitting down in the central hub with ice cream and coffee is amazing if you let yourself do that. We also made use of the
MNSSHP a few times. We've never done a non-summer trip so we were loving a ticketed event, trick or treating in MK together and something we'll never forget..
This was also the first time we did a tour. The crowds were massive, my daughter had limited mobility for most of the trip but she was better. I discovered this new tour, the VIP Ultimate thrills tour. It was pricey but it hit all the we want to do it 1 more time rides. I booked it about a week before we left and it really helped calm my daughter down that she ruined the trip. It let her rest in the room taking advantage to call all her course work for the entire trip done. We ended out trip with a final day of riding everything, vip escorted for a fraction of the full price of a vip tour guide. We still see and talk to the vip tour guides when we see them in the park to this day. This fit us really well and we know if it turns out to be an impossible to ride our favorites trip, that tour is there to try to book and get the good rides only having to deal with epcot ourselves..
We had such a great time that a month later when it was really halloween and since I had time to meet and talk about crowds with all the staff a few days, we decided this was also going to be year we enjoy christmas time. we were back less than 60 days later but only booked it 3 weeks before we left for the week after thanksgiving. Using what I knew about not planning or how to plan as it's happening, we planned it in about an hour. "what is both of our must dos, the list wasnt' that long, we just experienced it different and we had lower needs and more holiday rose smelling to do." We decided to try a new hotel (now our favorite), from that we came up with about 3 adrs that were must do, 3 more than were would likes, and reasonable fastpasses and 3 weeks later after a family thanksgiving at home with the rest of the family, we headed down... The big change on this trip aside from just booking some adrs and fastpasses if we focused the first 4 days to get the must dos out of the way. basically 1 day at each park and the rest of the week we would wing. We plan to continue this trend with the exception that the larger ADR meals we want to push to later in the week when we're a little more tired and ready to sit and eat larger meals.
The trip was great, the holidays were wonderful, we did more than we expected again and never felt rushed. If anything it might have been too much time to fast because we were coming off 12 days there and doing 9 more. We were a little disneyed out and didn't plan to head down in 2015 at all. What changed that was a year long discussion my daughter and I had about how she was thinking she might want to do a disney career. She has heavy anxiety and WDW is her happy place, this sounded good and we looped in her medical care to evaluate the best way to try this out and get her expectations that working is not visiting and living in the area is not vacationing. A friend decided she wanted to take her first trip to WDW (and florida) while this was happening so we ended up saying we're coming too, found a deal that worked for her (free food) and booked our part. Something happened and financially she couldnt' make it but we decided to keep our trip but this time to explore where we might want to live and go around the park looking at it from "do I want to work here" eyes. I won't go into more details, my trip report in my signature was that trip if you want to read what we did and how we did it. I was an up and down trip with some illness, heat exhaustion and my daughter who vacationed the whole summer being ready to be home. It'll offer some insight into how we visit and pivot/plan as we go.
To close, by ignoring some of what we know, being there is the special thing to happen, and changing how we enjoy the place it's now come full circle and our next trip just over a month from now is the apartment hunt for what we hope is a march(easter week) move. I keep the same job (at nyc payrates), she can explore her career, we have a much lower total cost of living and we get to have the theme parks as our neighbors. What's not exciting about that especially with the park wars going on and new things coming. This is our next evolution in how we visit disney by living closer to save money and vacationing elsewhere. Basically flipping our lives around instead of trying to live in a way we can afford to get down to florida more. Mind you it's easier for us because I keep the same job, at the same pay, and florida costs less than nyc to live in so we actually save money just by moving.
rotfl
to book FP+ 60 days out. Days, emails, and phone calls later, they ended up helping us by just refunding the ticket since there was no way to upgrade it to a 6-day ticket without going to the park. So then we just bought new tickets. 
I'm doing my best, but I'm not sure im going to make it! 
