How Good Was Your Itinerary?

[XStAnt]

Many people on these boards plan itineraries for trips to the World. I am curious as to how close you were able to stick to your plans. I'm sure many veterans are fairly good at making realistic/accurate plans, but I'm wondering if you had problems with the plan on your first trip.

Were you over/under ambitious in what you could do?

Did unexpected things come up?

Did children get too tired (or not tired enough for a pm break)?

I'm just wondering how good we are with our planning.



PS This is my 200 post to the DIS Man, this site is addictive

 

[Joyciemc]

What a good idea for a thread!

We followed our plan for the most part, with just a few PS changes. The one thing that was different was the low crowd levels.. we got things done quicker than I anticipated so we park hopped more than I had planned in the itinerary.

 

[jann1033]

Originally posted by XStAnt
Many people on these boards plan itineraries for trips to the World. I am curious as to how close you were able to stick to your plans. I'm sure many veterans are fairly good at making realistic/accurate plans, but I'm wondering if you had problems with the plan on your first trip.

Were you over/under ambitious in what you could do?

Did unexpected things come up?

Did children get too tired (or not tired enough for a pm break)?

I'm just wondering how good we are with our planning.



PS This is my 200 post to the DIS Man, this site is addictive

you got the addictive thing right but fun too! we follow the park days and the meals pretty much as planned but not always the evenings. like we might plan on going to dtd and just stay at the resort instead, usually depending on the ratio of foot pain to desire to go

 

[onecoolmama]

We had a 4 day itinerary. I swear, it was 36 degrees the weekend we went and we walked onto every single ride! We finished all of the attractions we "had" to do in two and a half days! We had a day and a half of extra time, so we fooled around in the Drew Carey voice over things and we caught some shows and we had a ton of time to do all of our favorite rides again and again. Now, we are going for 12 days, but we are taking our kids..so I will let you know when I get back!

 

[msteddom]

My itenerary went as planned for about half a day Everything worked out well though and we got to do everything we wanted to, just in a different order than I had originally planned.


Melissa

 

[DrTomorrow]

We've learned over the years that the later in the day it is, the less we stick to our schedule. Almost every morning we go to the planned destination: theme park, water park, whatever. We're pretty good about eating lunch where planned. But then it get's fuzzier. Sometimes the place we had a PS for dinner doesn't sound good, we want to do something different that night, or as jann1033 said, foot pain may make staying at the resort sound real good.

 

[PrincessDana]

We would've done a better job with sticking to our plan if only the weather had cooperated .

Other than when the weather threw a big ol' kink in our plans, we pretty much stuck with it and I was so glad that I had a plan before we left!!

My coworkers joked that no matter what time of day it was while I was on vacation, they knew exactly where I was and what I was doing.

I'm doing better for this next trip and just trying to have a "general" daily plan.

 

[monalsw]

we had 13 days and i had planned at least which park and which restuarant for most days. i tried to allow each park equal time, so we could show dh, who only went for part of the trip, the highlights. but...

first day was mk and ohana's, which went well. second day was mgm, and it was overrun by cheerleaders. we left quickly and headed to ak, which he liked much more (we all did!).

all told, over 13 days, we spent at least part of 9 days in the mk! we are 2 adults, a 14 yo and a 4 yo! epcot and ak got good time, but mgm only got 2 half days!

we are going back for 11 days soon and i have only the restuarants picked. probably won't do an itinerary, since we were just there in february and know where we want to go. only planning specifically to see chubby checker at epcot during f&W fest; the rest is winging it!

 

[XStAnt]

Lisa,

It's a shame you didn't get to spend more time in MGM. For two adults and a 14 yo I think it's a great park (andI'm sure the 4 yo liked many things as well). Hopefully next time you will get to spend more time there.

Even though your itinerary was a "bust" it sounds like you had plenty of time with 13 days. I'm jealous you're able to stay for so long

 

[BornABrook]

I planned out a pretty detailed itinerary for my first and so far only trip to Disney World in Sept. 1999 with my parents. It started out pretty well, but we did hit some unexpected snags.

Our first day was at Epcot. Everything there worked out exactly as I’d planned it up until the point when we were going to take the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom to see the night time parade and fireworks. The monorail was down, with no estimated time for when it would be back up, so we had to take the bus back. Had we been thinking straight, we would have taken the bus to some place closer and then hopped on a Magic Kingdom bus, but we rode the bus all the way back to our own resort (All Star Movies) and then took a bus to the Magic Kingdom. I’d planned on our getting there earlier enough to get a decent spot but with all the riding around on the bus, plus the time spent waiting for the busses, we ended up getting there shortly after it had started going by the beginning of Main Street. My step-dad who is tall was the only one of us who was able to see the parade because, by the time we got there, we had to stand behind crowds of people. I saw the tops of some of the stuff, but the only way I saw the rest of it was through the digital camera pictures my step-dad took. I was a little disappointed because that was the only day during our stay that they were having it. We did enjoy the fireworks show, though. So I guess the moral of the story is that, if you plan to hop parks to see a parade, allow a lot more time than you think you’ll need if it’s really important to you to catch it.

The other snag, of a sort, in my plans hit later that night when I realized my scratchy throat from earlier that evening was more than just a scratchy throat and was turning into a cold. I don’t know if I caught it on the plane flight or what. I don’t normally get sick, and I haven’t had a cold in probably close to three years now. So that was pretty bad timing. My mom caught it from me the next day, and that had a pretty big affect on our trip because we left the parks early on a few days because we weren’t feeling well and didn’t have anywhere near as much energy as we would have otherwise.

For the most part the itineraries worked pretty well when we followed them, though. My MGM itinerary in particular worked perfectly, better than I had dared to hope. I was concerned that, since all the shows were on a specific schedule, that we’d get off track and start missing things. But everything worked like clockwork and even though I had nearly every attraction on my itinerary I was able to hit all of them.

Brook

 

[Alice28]

We did pretty good at sticking to our plan. The only thing that really changed was cancelling Hoop Dee Doo and going to Cape May Cafe instead. We hit all of the parks we planned to, hit almost all of the attractions we intended to. My two year old was crankier than I thought he would be, and made some things difficult- like walking the Pangani Trail at AK- we practically ran through it and then we went to the dino dig while the rest of the party walked the tiger trail. We did all the parks pretty much how we planned it out and stuck with all of our PS's except for the above one, and one I made at the Bistro for our last night.

Good thread!

 

[kdibattista]

I need to say first of all that it is DH and I only (we don't have kids yet) and we normally go offseason so lines are minimal.

With that said, we have always been able to stick with our itinerary and see everything we want to. We normally pick out what park and what meals and that's it. We have been there so many times that we no longer feel the need to rush around to see everything. This December will be different however because we are bringing my mom, dad, 2 sisters and brother along. I am planning for EVERYBODY and I'm getting a little nervous.

 

[goofy4tink]

I do make a plan of attack each visit. But it is pretty loose. I usually plan what park for what day and any ps's. I don't plan what attractions at a particular time. We did pretty well this past August. Well, at least until the rains came anyway!! That did throw a monkey wrench into things. But my plans have worked out pretty well in the past and I like knowing about where and what we'll be doing.

 

[w8ting4pooh]

Our itinerary was in spreadsheet and was broken down ride by ride. LOL. We planned around EE days and eride nights. After our first EE day (having a terrible time with crowds despite arriving before opening), I went back to the room and rearranged all the days and PS to avoid EE days! Everything was fantastic after that!

 

[Ursula]

We ended up only doing about half the things on our itinerary. Everything took pretty much twice as long as I expected, especially the bus rides back and forth to the parks. The other problem was the heat. It was a lot hotter and more humid than we expected and really had to take a longer afternoon break everyday than I thought we would. In fact the evening we had planned to visit the World Showcase and see Illuminations we were just too wiped out from the heat to even go out.

So now I have to plan another trip to go back and see all the things we missed

 

[jwsqrdplus2]

I planned which park, which day and a few PSs (just some of the more popular places that I knew DDs would want to go). Originally I had MK on Mon and MGM on Wed. After reading so much here, I switched those two, and I am glad I did!! I also had a mental plan of attack for each park that worked pretty well, and we were able to stick to our itinerary. Our biggest problem was that some shows that DD4.5 wanted to see and just about ALL of the parades hit nap time, so we missed those. But we can see them in the future when DDs are older.

Thanks to my "mental" itinerary (from researching the DIS!) and FP, we (me, DH, DD4.5, and DD 22 months) were able to hit every attraction (some more than once) in Fantasyland in less than 3 hours. It also helped that crowds were pretty reasonable when we were there.

 

[onecoolmama]

I agree about the EE days. What I do, and it seems to work well, go to the EE park at 8 and stay until 12 go back to the resort eat lunch sleep , then change parks. I always get more done that way!

 

[luvmarypoppins]

I am the trip planner of the family and as you can see I love mary poppins so everything must be perfect in every way. O.k. I must admit this august we had to deal with so much rain, a ds with asthma who did very well and 2 of the ds are teens so that is also considered, "we want our independence."

I consult the family at least 2 months out to ask for restraunt suggestions and what they really want to see and do. I make all PS before we go. Ony 1 good meal a day. The heat was also a concern. I think you have to know when enough is enough. We wanted to stay at MGM and DH was really losing it, after embarrasing us all we decided to go back to the Poly instead of putting up with a grumpy dad. The only thing I missed this trip was illuminations but we have seen it many times before. DH and one ds went. I stayed back at the hotel with the other 2.

In the summer you really must get to the parks early and cut out before the heat gets to you. We usually saw by 2-3 we about had it.

I share the calendar of events with everyone and I am happy to say that all went according to plan. Next year I will definetely work on getting one ds out of bed a little sooner. But on the ee days we did get there before the regular guests were allowed to enter so that was just on the boarderline of my plan.

I feel without a plan you really cant make the most of your time in the world and we are all paying big bucks to enjoy the magic.