Hi Travelmom! You must be so excited! I remember our first trip in '89 to WDW. My DH ran me to DEATH back and forth across the parks following the plans. I will admit, we didn't wait in line very much, but by the fourth day, I didn't really care where we were, and I was exhausted. I can't imagine trying to do that with our kids. I don't know how old your kids are, but that can really be a consideration when following some of the "plans".
So..here is my advise after more than 20 more trips with 2 kids who are now 13 and 17 and most of those have been very successfull at avoiding the lines and crowds.
First, unless you are going President's weekend in February, you should have fairly low crowds which is good. You mentioned touring plans, so I am wondering if you have been on that site to find out the best park for each day and the parks to avoid. If not, and you are interested, let me know. That is where I start. Then I plan my meals around that. Then we just look at the hours for the parks and if they have extra magic hours. We aren't early risers, but if you are, you might want to take advantage of that. We tend to stay for the late hours since our kids are older. You didn't mention if you are staying on property, but you need to be to take advantage of the EMH. Once we get to the parks, we generally "go left" or straight to the back of the park(like back to Big thunder Mtn.) because everyone else tends to go right towards Buzz lightyear and it may take them a little while to get there. Also you want to get fast passes to the most favorite rides in the parks, like Buzz, Big Thunder, Space Mtn, Pooh, Peter Pan.These are in Magic Kingdom.Any good guide book will explain fast passes to you. Basically a sign above the ride will show the wait time and also the fast pass return time, like (you can return between 12:00-2:00) if you put your ticket in the fast pass machine beside the ride(it will spit out a fast pass for each ticket you put in) Then you go do something else, return during that time and walk right up to the "fast pass line" and usually just walk right on the ride with no wait. Also on the ticket it will tell you a time when you can get another fast pass, like 1:40 or so for the above one so you could go to Pooh and get one and then when you come out of Buzz you could just scoot down to Pooh and walk on.
Anyway...we don't carry around a "plan" anymore. I would read a good guide book about all of the rides and attractions to see what they are about and if you think your kids will like them, ask us lots of questions, maybe make a list of DO NOT MISS to keep with you. We just start in the park and ride, if something has too long a line, we pass it and hope to catch it later if we can't fast pass it right then.
Hope that's not too confusing
