I am not sure what the silver plan is, since we book all of our trips independently.
With illuminations, people start securing spots to sit hours in advance, I am deadly serious. A HUGE faux paux is to try and manuever your way in to a spot where someone has staked out hours before. This always happens to us. We always let the kids have a seat, but their poor planning parents will not make us move from where we are. I know that sounds harsh, sorry.
Is there a certain spot where the silver plan allows you to sit? If so, it would probably be in your best interest to make a ressie for this. And you know what if you show up fine, if not fine too.
It all depends too on how crowded the parks are. We have usually always gone on the really down times, and found the illuminations crowds big, so with us going Spring Break this year, we made PS at Rose and Crown for Illuminations viewing because we are expecting huge crowds.
I have found that a loose touring plan is our best bet. I certainly don't want to follow a strict plan "go to Test Track, then immediately go to...." or something similar. Those are way too much work, and too stressful on everyone. We have seen people with charts that the dad is barking orders to the rest of the family where they are going next "darn it!". No one has fun on that kind of trip. We have also talked to people that have no plan whatsoever and just kind of wander around. Both of these kinds of plans make for those who come home and wonder what the big deal is at Disney, and why did they just spend all that money there?
What we do, is plan what park we want to go to on what day, although we usually end up at Epcot for dinner on most days. We use Fast Pass ALOT. Make it your friend, lol. It is invaluable! Many people still don't understand it, and will give those going thru the FP line dirty looks. I stopped explaining it to people awhile ago. We would waste so much time trying to explain to a family that they were free and anyone could use them. Hubbie just told me to stop as it was wasting alot of our time and people still were hesitant to use them. Another, 'Oh well, better for us deal" lol.
As for Priority seating, we made the mistake several years back of thinking we were just going to wing it on our trip and eat whenever and wherever we ended up, after all it is vacation and who wants to be stuck having to be somewhere at a certain time? Big mistake, since we don't usually do counter service for dinner. If place would even take our name, we had huge long waits with hungry and not happy kids. We learned that PS is a must, even if you make them the morning you decide what park you are going to be in that night. We have often just called from our hotel room, sometimes late in the afternoon for dinner PS. We have even used our cell phones in the park to do this in the late afternoons. I know there are places in each park you can do this also, which we have used.
You definately want your trip to be as fun and stress free as possible. If I have given you just one tip to use, wonderful.
I just hate it when people plan and plan to do Disney, save for years, come home and tell me what a stressful bad trip they had. If they had just done a little planning, things would have been different. We have had family members who know we go often, plan a trip then come home and tell us they still don't understand what the big deal is. When we aske them if they went on this or that, or saw this show, or went to this park, the answer is inevetibly no, since all they did was wait in lines all the time they were there. Many people don't even go to AK or MGM, thinking that MK and Epcot is all the Disney offers.
I am sorry for the length and preachiness of this post. I only meant to offer some tips.
Have fun!
