Different Trip Planning Personalities

[SanDiegoDayTripper]

I completely agree with the poster who said that planning makes it easier to be flexible. With all that knowledge, it makes it easier to make quick decisions if necessary. My husband thought I had gone off the deep end when I asked him to look at the dining guide this summer to pick out a few restaurants that looked good. And the payoff...

Regarding getting into table-service places without an ADR: I just called yesterday to try to move back a few ADRs that we have at Boma and Ohana. We are going the first week of December, and already everything is booked until 8:45 pm or so. I stuck with my original times. Happy to have my planning this summer validated.

Some may call me an over-planner *cough-my husband-cough*, but when plans need to change, or someone gets a whim, I'll be able to offer several alternatives with confidence.

 

[WI_DisneyFan]

But a question, we last went to Disney in 2004. I've never made ADR's and never will because I don't know where we will be & when we'll be hungry. With all the ADR talk, is it now necessary to make ADR's or you have to end up eating hot dogs?

We ate at Alfredo's last time, might have had to wait awhile, but there's things to see while waiting. Is that a thing of the past, is it impossible to eat at a sitdown restuarant without having made ADR's?

This really depends on who you ask. Personally, I think if you are flexible on when/where you want to eat, you’ll have no problems. Last year during free-dining, my DW and I were able to make reservations either the night before, or the morning of for most of our meals. We had three ADR’s going in for the places that we really wanted to try. But otherwise we just winged it the rest of the week. Of course, if you want to try one of the really popular places (such as Le Cellier), you might have trouble.

Now, you could probably ask 100 people and 50 of them would tell you that if you don’t have all of your meals planned at least a month and half out, then you are up the creek. But the other 50 would tell you what I’m telling you, that if you are flexible you definitely won’t have to live on hot dogs all week.

 

[Karnak]

... stayed til 7ish where we snagged another bus back to the resort without waiting, ran upstairs to get our coats and long pants, ran back down, snagged another bus without waiting ...

LOL That's the whole reason for making general plans in the first place. If you had done so, you would not have had to make that unnecessary bus trip back to your resort to get your coats and pants. You would have stowed them in a park locker when you first entered the park in the AM and saved all that time.

Enjoy. (And enjoy making general plans ahead of time.)

 

[WaltD4Me]

Planning is great...I LOVE planning, but flexibility is definitely the key!

And there is a flip side to the non-planning thing too.

A friend of mine went a few months ago with her family and did little if any planning and they missed SO much! After they got back, I was asking..."did you see this?" ... "did you see that?" and after talking, I was wondering actually what they DID actually do and see. -- For example, no kidding, they totally MISSED ADVENTURELAND! She has 2 little boys and when I asked what they thought of Pirates of the Caribbean she just looked at me..."Pirates of the Carribean? Huh? Where was that?! The boys would have LOVED that!"

So yeah, overplanning isn't good, but NO planning proably isn't the best way to go either!

 

[javaonline]

I'm glad you had a great time, but, for every story like your's, there are three or four just the opposite.
"Well, we went to Disney and just did whatever". "Oh, did you see this", "Uhm, no". "Hey did you get to eat at this great restaurant?" "No, we tried, but they were all filled up, so instead we ate a hot dog." "So how many rides did you do?" "Only a couple of the big ones, and a handful of the smaller ones, because the lines were so long." "Gee, that's too bad, we did every ride we wanted to four or five times." "Hey, how many autographs did your kids get?" "Just a couple, we never did know where to find most of the characters". "Wow, that's a shame. My kids filled up their entire books", etc...

Don't knock planning. I agree that you need to be flexible, but I also think that the better prepared you are, the easier it is to be more flexible.
And besides, for most of us on these boards, planning the trip is half of the fun.

Case in point...the youth pastor at our church took his two boys to disney a couple of years ago. When I told him we were planning, he said I should reconsider. He said it was the worst time he's ever had on vacation. I began to ask him questions, and he said that it was their first time going, and they had NO plan whatsoever.....they just showed up whenever they felt like it.

With only a tiny amount of planning and learning about the parks, you can have a more enjoyable trip.