Anyone else's Disney World "expertise" cause them problems?

[PSUGuy]

I won't be able to make ADR's 180+10 days out? I never heard this before. I currently have a BLT reservation by renting through a DVC member. This new info is getting me worried. Can you please explain in detail what I need to do to get the "real" reservation number. TIA

Never had a problem with this. My DVC owner sends along to me the ressie details, ressie number with our names as guests, her name as the owner, and at 180 plus 10 we're booking ADRs for the whole trip, usually 8 - 9 days, next Oct., 10. We've also been able to add room requests etc to the ressie once we have the reservation in hand.

Bill From PA

 

[skojo]

Never had a problem with this. My DVC owner sends along to me the ressie details, ressie number with our names as guests, her name as the owner, and at 180 plus 10 we're booking ADRs for the whole trip, usually 8 - 9 days, next Oct., 10. We've also been able to add room requests etc to the ressie once we have the reservation in hand.

Bill From PA

Phew, thanks!

 

[FrostMommy]

I do find myself (an admitted planning junky) planning things way too much. We were at WDW just before Christmas and we had a blast. I will say now that we have done most things at WDW I would like to take a slower pace through all the parks instead of racing from one FP to another, or to dinner, or to fireworks, or the transportation, etc etc. Our kids are teens now and still LOVE all things Disney, I know I'm looking ahead to time when they don't want to or can't go to Disney because of their own lives. I'm hoping DW and I can take a couple of trips to WDW to do things a bit more leisurely. At least times and things we haven't done before like the Food and Wine Event at EPCOT. Being a planner is good and bad, though I fear once a planner always a planner!

My husband is more of a "wing-it" kind of guy, but has learned that, especially on a trip to Disney, not planning sometimes means not actually getting to do the fun stuff you may want to. On our last trip, I reserved Fastpasses, but was very open to dropping them if everyone was feeling like doing something else at that time. We missed plenty of "hard to get" Fastpasses, including Anna and Elsa, but we have a great time. Every morning, I would tell all my crew what was on the agenda, and we talked about what we wanted to change or not change. Even going to another park was fine, but I liked having the Fastpasses there as a backup. We did go on a cruise with my mother-in-law, who was fairly adamant about not having a plan, but then ended up pestering us about what the upcoming activity was going to be pretty frequently. I found in that situation it was more stressful to have unplanned times.

 

[maloned]

I don't think there's anything wrong with being a planner. It's only enhanced our experience. I would rather miss out on something out of choice then out of lack of knowledge. Planning and knowledge isn't the issue, it's expectations. We need to manage our expectations. Things could change, it can rain, crowds can be larger then expected, attractions can close. We purposely plan extra rest-time to make room for the unknown. I find the planning process to be enjoyable. The anticipation lowers my everyday-life stresses. But once our plans our set, we then refocus and know that we have to take-it-easy. Whatever happens happens. We've done spontaneous trips as well. We know that we won't get to dine at our favorite places or ride all our favorite attractions, but that's because we manage our expectations and our prior knowledge helps us make better choices on those last-minute trips.

 

[TiffanyA]

My family makes fun of me for the amount of planning I do and thought I put into this. It's actually way way less than the planners here on disboards, I just check crowd calendars, make my FP+ based on that and book ADRs. Of course when we get there, they are really HAPPY I've planned so they don't have to wait in super long lines for everything and THANK ME.

Example: this time was my first time going from Epcot to Hollywood Studios through the Boardwalk Area. We usually park, but it was December, last year of the Osborne lights and the HS lot was closed. I watched several videos and studied several maps before to be sure I knew where to go. My sister was totally laughing at me for doing it, but when we started our walk to HS, she got freaked out because she thought there would be more signage. She continued freaking out while I considered which one of the splits in the path to go down and was like, "You're freaking me out, we might get lost! Don't you know where to go?" I retorted, "If you're so afraid, then you should have looked at the maps too! Now just shut up and trust me." I got them to HS just fine. If I didn't do these things, we'd be able to do far less. I got thanked several times for figuring out this shortcut and studying it, among other things (Thanks Dis!).

 

[abinormal]

My in-laws joined us for our first MK day. They were joking about my planning and research. But they were singing a different tune when we'd done everything we planned on without waiting more than ten minutes and were out of the park by 3.

 

[Jetku]

Life has gotten in the way so i haven't been on the boards too often lately, however I want to thank Jackie for mentioning this thread on the latest DIS Unplugged episode. Really made me smile on my way to work this morning!

 

[Jompyjax]

For me the planning helps build the anticipation for the trip. For my trip last year I had a great time researching and building touring plans before the trip (my sister thought I was crazy), but that doesn't mean we used them while we were there. Sure we had FP+ and a couple of ADR booked, but aside from that the most planning we did each day was decide where we wanted to head first thing upon arriving at the park