Does this Itinerary looks too ambitious?

[MSLRAC]

Thanks everyone for the comments.

I am starting to think about character breakfast then signature dinner at night.

I know my kids act well at restaurants when we eat, but I am a little intimidated taking my kids to signature dining every night. How kid friendly are restaurants like artist point, Le cellier, Narcoosee?

Also, Maybe maybe doing signature dinner one day then character show the next day may make more sense timewise.

I am sorry I did not post where we are staying. We are staying at POLY.

I hope you have a great trip and that all this dining stuff works out for you.

As for the signatures, I can speak from experience that Flying Fish, LeCellier, Narcoossee's, Citricos and Cali Grill are all very kid friendly. We've never eaten at Artist's Point but I would imagine that it is as well.

As far as eating habits, we eat healthy at home, but it is much more difficult to do at Disney - we do not salt anything at home, yet Disney's food is full of sodium, so, just because your kids are eating soup, they are still ingesting large amounts of sodium. Grilled chicken and steaks are also full of sodium too. I bet there is more sodium in Disney's soups, than in hotdogs. My dad is a chef, and I can assure you it is very nearly impossible to separate a chef from his/her salt. That being said, you can make substitutions and ask for food to be cooked differently, and in some cases they will, which again, takes up more precious time, as you are waiting for your food to come out. We've also not ordered desserts more times than I can count, and we have very sensible portion control, but that's not the norm for what a lot of what I see in the parks, especially when it comes to the DxDP.

I am not trying to convince anyone based on opinion, but experience in having done it. So, you won't hear me say that it's too much food and you'll be rolling to the restaurants, since no one is forcing you to eat that amount of food. I speak from experience though...not sure if everyone else on this thread has eaten this way, but for years, we have been eating 2-3 TS meals per day at Disney. We've eaten pretty much everywhere, multiple times, and eating 3 TS meals per day is a lot of time in restaurants and transportation to restaurants, and I find most first timers don't know to even consider these factors. Eating patterns and quantity of food aside, eating 3 TS meals per day, will chew up tons of park time, and with 2 young children, and only 5 days, I feel based on tons of experience, that this plan is too ambitious for the short trip that the OP has planned.

YMMV, Tiger

Sorry but I don't monitor our sodium intake at home as it's never been a problem and I am not going to do it on vacation. A week of higher than normal sodium intake is not going to hurt us IMO.

I understand that you speak from experience but so do I...we did 3 TS meals a day and we did not lose that much park time (food quality and all that aside). At most we lost 2-2.5 hours a day but we got in 9-10 hours and that was more than enough. It was actually nice to sit down at lunch and take in our morning as we refueled for our afternoons.

But honestly, the OP has 2 kids and 5 days so 3 TS meals or not, they will not see it all and they will not ride it all. That's the beauty of Disney, you always feel a need to go back.

Last 5 day trip I took (plus 2 half days on travel days), we did DTD the night we arrived and ate at Wolfgang Puck's.

Day 1. MK: Crystal Palace for Breakfast, The Palace for lunch and Tony's for Dinner.
Day 2. Epcot: Ohana's for breakfast, Chefs for Lunch and the Garden Grill for dinner.
Day 3. Seaworld: We did Chef Mickeys for breakfast and Coral Reef for dinner when we got back.
Day 4: Animal Kingdom: Tusker House for breakfast, Pizzafari for lunch, and Yak and Yeti for dinner. Ordered a pizza in the room around 10 as my cousin didn't like his dinner.
Day 5. HS: Cape May for breakfast. Sci Fi for Lunch and Mama Melrose for dinner.

The day we left, we ate at 1900 Park Fare and grabbed QS at MK before we left for lunch before we hit the road. 2 QS I think the whole week.

This upcoming trip will be all TS. We spend the entire day, open to close in the parks so I love TS just for the break in the heat it gives us and the chance to sit down. So my answer to your question is yes, it is doable. We rode every ride we wanted to at the parks. We may not have seen everything in the world showcase (I think we spent 4 hours there) or caught all the parades/shows but we did plenty. I think there are tons of places in MK or on the monorail/Epcot you could hop to on your MK/Epcot days.

I think it is doable too...but what do I know? lol

 

[Tiger926]

Sorry but I don't monitor our sodium intake at home as it's never been a problem and I am not going to do it on vacation. A week of higher than normal sodium intake is not going to hurt us IMO.

I understand that you speak from experience but so do I...we did 3 TS meals a day and we did not lose that much park time (food quality and all that aside). At most we lost 2-2.5 hours a day but we got in 9-10 hours and that was more than enough. It was actually nice to sit down at lunch and take in our morning as we refueled for our afternoons.

But honestly, the OP has 2 kids and 5 days so 3 TS meals or not, they will not see it all and they will not ride it all. That's the beauty of Disney, you always feel a need to go back.

But that's the whole point of this thread...the OP has two very young kids, and only 5 days, so the point of her posting was to see if the itinerary was too busy based on her actual vacation. I based my comments on her schedule, and so despite the fact that I find eating 3 TS meals per day to be too busy during a 17 day trip (that's been our longest trip yet) with very experienced park goers, I can't imagine doing it for only 5 days, and being a first timer, plus, you got the MK expansion, which has really crowded up that park, so park time may be very precious for her. That is what I based my answer on.

I truly hope the OP is able to utilize all of the info in this thread for her trip!

Tiger

 

[Niki in NJ]

I had a feeling you were staying at Poly! It will be much easier making your ADR's in and around your resort.

I was looking over your ADR's again and just had a few more suggestions (some maybe already mentioned by others).

I wouldn't eat at the same restaurant twice.

I like the idea of heading to AKL to eat after the morning in AK. We are doing the same in June. I would just make sure you think you can get to AK when the park opens to make sure you have enough time. If you have the ADR at Tusker House for before the park opens, that would be perfect .. this way you will be done eating breakfast by the time rope drops and won't have any lines.

The day you are in MK, I would eat in MK so that you can finish anything you didn't get to do in the morning. The hour or so inside eating will be a nice refreshing break from the heat before heading back in the afternoon to do any rides or attractions you didn't get to do yet.

The day you are in Epcot you may not need to have 3 TS meals if you want to eat some items from the countries. You might want to skip lunch and eat some snacks in the countries. If this isn't your style, then Le Cellier sounds great. If you eat lunch in Epcot, it would be good if you had an ADR at a restaurant that you could view Illuminations from (or that had a patio you could just walk out to) like Rose and Crown or La Hacienda. It would just allow you more time.

Remember that you could always share at any of the restaurants if you aren't hungry enough for the full meal. There will probably be a few lunches where we will share lunch so we only use 1 TS credit instead of 1 TS each. We will use the "extra" TS credits on signature restaurants. Speaking of signatures, Narcoossee's will definitely be fine for kids. Don't worry too much about whether a place is "kid friendly" - this is Disney! We are two adults without kids, and we never expect any restaurant, signature or not, to be without kids in the dining room.

Finally, don't stress too much about this - whatever you decide for your family will be the best choice!