Go with the flow or plan plan plan?!

[DisneyMom2000000]

I am an over planner by nature. I love planning Disney trips.

That said, how much planning do you do?

Do you plan which parks you'll visit which day?

Do you plan which rides you'll do, in which order?

You you plan out where and when you'll eat?

Or... do you go with the flow?!

 

[mcd2745]

In general...plan, plan, plan before you arrive. However, then be willing to be flexible once you are there.

Personally, I like to plan out which park on each day along with a dinner reservation in or around the park we'll be at each day to minimize time spent/lost traveling between the parks & resorts. Now with FP+, we'll try to make our 3 selections for early in the day and then add others subject to their availability.

 

[WayTooExcited]

There are folks who don't know they have to plan and those are the ones who hate Disney World. I say plan to an extent (except for I can't follow my own advice and even plan bathroom breaks), but if things don't go your way, don't freak out and go with the flow. It's not like if something goes wrong there's not 1,000 other things to do.

 

[wench]

I plan everything.
Yes
Yes
Yes
I save going with the flow for DLR.

 

[DisneyMom2000000]

Ok. So I'd like to go further into my planning and start planning rides in which order. Do you use Touring Plans, or just grab a map and write it out yourself??

 

[piglet1979]

I am an over planner by nature. I love planning Disney trips.

That said, how much planning do you do?

Do you plan which parks you'll visit which day?

Do you plan which rides you'll do, in which order?

You you plan out where and when you'll eat?

Or... do you go with the flow?!

I am a planner and so is my husband. We plan what park on which day and the rides we want to go on. Not so much the order but we will plan the order of the lands in MK. This also will depend on the FP's we get. We do plan dinner because we always do a table service every night. We do not plan lunch but will have a plan on where we want to eat and about the time we want to but it may change. We do set the time that we will leave the park for a break in the middle of the day and stick to that.

One year we had a spreadsheet of every ride in the the different parks. we listed the approx. wait times, indoor or outdoor, FP eligible and color coded it Red, Yellow or Green depending on if we wanted to go on the ride. REd was we did not want to ride, yellow was we were ok either way and green we had to do the ride.

 

[piglet1979]

Ok. So I'd like to go further into my planning and start planning rides in which order. Do you use Touring Plans, or just grab a map and write it out yourself??

We have used touring plans. It helps a lot but we don't always follow it. This last trip I did not use a fastpass for Peter Pan and it had me doing it later in the afternoon. I knew I would be waiting in line so we went there first for the shorter line. Sometimes when we were on the way to the next ride on the list we came across one without a lie so we would do it then. It is a nice general list to go by but you might need some flexibility with it too.

 

[DisneyMom2000000]

I am a planner and so is my husband. We plan what park on which day and the rides we want to go on. Not so much the order but we will plan the order of the lands in MK. This also will depend on the FP's we get. We do plan dinner because we always do a table service every night. We do not plan lunch but will have a plan on where we want to eat and about the time we want to but it may change. We do set the time that we will leave the park for a break in the middle of the day and stick to that.

One year we had a spreadsheet of every ride in the the different parks. we listed the approx. wait times, indoor or outdoor, FP eligible and color coded it Red, Yellow or Green depending on if we wanted to go on the ride. REd was we did not want to ride, yellow was we were ok either way and green we had to do the ride.

Cool! Do you know where you got the spreadsheet? I'd like to do that.

 

[Tomh]

I am an over planner by nature. I love planning Disney trips.

That said, how much planning do you do?

Do you plan which parks you'll visit which day?

Do you plan which rides you'll do, in which order?

You you plan out where and when you'll eat?

Or... do you go with the flow?!

How about a little bit of both?

I DO plan which park on which day, seems the only way to get ADR's.

I DO plan my 3 FP+ rides, and try to arrange them so that we wind up where we want to be for our lunch.

I DO plan table service meals. Counter service, we may have an idea of where we want to eat each day, but nothing set in stone as far as that goes.

Even with all of that planning, I am perfectly fine changing things up. Generally we don't mess with the ADR's but rides can and sometimes do get changed on the fly, counter service is often changed as we go. Being flexible is the key to having a really enjoyable trip I think.

 

[PSUGuy]

I make a calendar in Word which includes which park we'll hit on a given day, the FP+ selections, any reservation numbers for ADRs and any shows scheduled, we go during Food & Wine so there's a concert nightly. We tend to do only 3 table service meals in a 10 day WDW vacation. We have a routine as to which rides in which order but we'll put something we've neglected over the years on the calendar. That done, we'll be flexible when actually in the parks. If something catches our eye, we'll linger even if it throws our routine off. In short, make general plans, try to do the things you really want to do then go with the flow.

Bill From PA

 

[AngiTN]

I am an over planner by nature. I love planning Disney trips.

1. That said, how much planning do you do?

2. Do you plan which parks you'll visit which day?

3. Do you plan which rides you'll do, in which order?

4. You you plan out where and when you'll eat?

5. Or... do you go with the flow?!

1. Some, more than avg, less than some
2. Yes, question is, do we stick to it. No, we don't. Like with ADR, with a few exceptions, I can change our FP that morning if we change our minds on parks. We do this about half our park days
3. No
4. Yes, that morning on the bus we pick our ADR
5. Yes, sometimes

 

[SonicSunglasses]

I do a moderate amount of planning. My wife requires a wheelchair to do the parks due to MS, so planning isn't an optional step.
We pick a park for the day but don't plan the rides out beyond which FPs we really want. I stagger the times so we're not racing from one end of the park to another, allowing us to take a leisurely pace.
We usually pick an ADR ahead of time, but not always.

My goal is to provide just enough structure to the day that we can see and do the things we want, but not so much that we're locked into a rigid, fun-killing itinerary.

 

[jeepwreck]

I always plan as much as I can before we go.

Disney now is kinda set up that way that you need to make your food reservations and fast passes prior to your trip. which I like a lot I get to pick which parks we are in on what days

Do you plan which parks you'll visit which day? Yes

Do you plan which rides you'll do, in which order? only with the fast passes other wise its up to us on which ones we want and also the crowds

You you plan out where and when you'll eat? yes because all the good places he reservations good up quickly

 

[Micca]

There are two types of plans for every guest at WDW: Plan #1 includes at least a skeletal schedule of best park days/FP+/and ADRs. Plan #2 is for guests who
plan to stand in long lines and enjoy fewer attractions, late meals, and missed opportunities.

 

[BrianL]

I plan the park(s) for each day and ADRs if I want to eat somewhere specific. Toss in FP+ when the time comes, but other than that I don't do a "touring plan" with ride to ride specifics. I just go with what I want to do.

 

[Oneanne]

I usually start with ADR's on about half of the days of the trip: that and EMH determine which park on which day, and then I do my FP+ early and leave the afternoons/evenings open. When I get there I'm totally go-with-the-flow and will explore and change things up as I go along. Was just there a couple weeks ago and couldn't get MDE to work on my phone because I still had the old version: I couldn't get the ap store to open up without signing a new terms of agreement, which seemed to be buried in the OS upgrade... something I didn't want to do while on vacation. So I decided to go old school, and asked the Concierge if she could print out my plans - she did and I loved the format and loved using it... but then again I'm the one who walks in to the meeting with a paper pad, not my laptop .

 

[lizabu]

What I do is pick the park I'm going to be at. Then I pick my must dos. I will choose fast passes and even use touring plans to make sure I do my must dos in the most efficient manner possible and then I leave the rest of the entire day wide open to do what we want when we want. Some parks are easier than others. At animal kingdom I have only 4 must dos. At magic kingdom I have like 12.

 

[Smbmoyers]

I have touring plans made for the first 5 days of our visit. The last two I've made jingle bell jingle bam reservations and a adr or two along with fast pass plus. I'm looking forward to a good balance

 

[Bob Dolewhip]

Because of the ADRs and fast passes I think planning is essential. I would love to just go and be spontaneous but it's just an awful waste of time. Last time we went we spent too much time on "what do you want to do next?" And criss crossing the park. This time I looked at a gosh darn map and we are going to go in an order that makes sense. I planned my ADRs and fast passes this way.

 

[Accident]

That said, how much planning do you do?

an adr or two, some fastpasses for each day. that's about it.

Do you plan which parks you'll visit which day?

not really, we know we'll hit the 4 parks hard to get must dos done right at the start of the trip from there it's whatever we feel like doing at the moment.

Do you plan which rides you'll do, in which order?

no, I wait to see what direction the crowd is going and go the opposite way. 80% of the people will all leave the hub heading the same way and I pivot anytime I see the mass crowd that seems ot be touring the park together even though they don't know it to.[/quote]

You you plan out where and when you'll eat?

not until we're hungry and know what we want, exceptions being the couple adrs we planned ahead of time.

Or... do you go with the flow?!

I wouldn't call it that. I make smart when I see it happening in front of my choices for where the crowd isn't, I eat when I'm hungry, I loiter in areas I like to just hang out. going with the flow to me sounds like your just following the crowd around and that's not much fun to me. I'm very well researched, I know whats changed, what's new, what snack I never heard of, what's about to close, what's rumored to be closing, what's about to refurb.. I just don't have a plan that says walk here, do that, fastpass this, eat there, etc etc. we go where the mood takes us with smart educated choices when we see where the crowds aren't.