I need help!

[A10560]

Please help me with my planning. I at am a complete loss of were to start. We are going the end of March and staying at Baylake Tower(dvc). I need help with planning our outings to the park. I have a ds 4 and a ds 2. What I am wanting to figure out is what days do I go to what parks? When are the parades and were are the character meals. We are not a breakfast family so would prefer something else. I have so many questions and what seems like so little time! We are not doing the dining plan and have yet to figure out how many days we want to spend at the park. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sdesimone]

The best thing you can do is to read the big fat book The Unoffical Guide from cover to cover. It has given me the best idea, tips and even tear out itineraries in the back. They have statisticians study crowd patterns, etc to give you the best plan of attack.

The best thing I got out of the book was to wake up early and get to the park before it even opens(up to an hour before!) and you will walk into every ride in the first 30 minutes..but after that the park gets super crowded and that is when you go back to your hotel and relax. The go back in the late afternoon when most are leaving the park.

Also, wear comfortable sneakers that are well broken in. You will walk more than you ever have and you want to be able to keep it up for the entire vacation. Flips flops, sandals and crocs - leave them home!

 

[bjscheel]

Click on the Dining link towards the top of this page and you can learn about the character meals. In MK there is Cinderella's Royal Table at the Castle, Pooh and Friends at Crystal Palace. In Epcot there are princesses at Akershus. In AK there are Mickey and Friends at Tusker House. The Contemporary has Chef Mickey's, the Grand Floridian has 1900 Park Fair.

To pick my park days, I avoided all EMH parks and Fantasmic. I wanted to avoid MK on the weekend, but that didn't work out because I am avoiding Epcot on the last weekend of Food & Wine. Just trying to stay away from things that will attract crowds. Normally I like to start and end the trip with MK.

Other than that, hang around the Disboards from now until then and you will learn a lot!

 

[crash2000]

first off ignore everything you read here, these peeps are hard core disney fans!!!!

we went, read a few books , and this site, the only advice i have is we planned the days to the parks by the days they had extended hours...

we didn't use park hoppers, why would you need to ?

we did our trip in this order:

epcot ( was told it would be boring, it was great)
animal kingdom
hollywood studios
magic kingdom ( did the left side of the map on day 1)
magic kingdom ( did the right side of the map day 2 )

went at my daughters (5 yr old) pace, took lots of breaks, ate at the parks, booked only 3 ADR...

just go with the flow, and stop worrying !

 

[Daddy_of_Princesses]

I agree with Crash. Do some planning, but try not to figure out what you will be doing every minute of every day. When we went a few years ago, I knew what parks I was going to on which days, and had dining reservations with characters scheduled. I kept a high level plan of what rides I wanted to hit, and just went with the flow. Once we got to MK we didn't get back to any other parks, so I would save that one for last. Of course that depends on your kids interests.

As someone else mentioned, use the links at the top of this page. But here are a couple other sites you may want to check out.

http://allears.net/index.html

http://www.mousesavers.com/

 

[ZoZo]

I'd recommend starting with a good guide book (my favorite is the Unofficial Guide). It gives you a great framework to plan your trip.

These chat boards can be very overwhelming, and it can take a lot of time to find the information you need. I find the chat boards helpful when asking a specific question (i.e. "What's your favorite CS restaurant at MK?") if you're new. To me, a guide book can give you a good foundation, and then you can "fill in the blanks" using this chat board.

Good luck, and try not to stress too much!

 

[J Le]

Another vote for the Unofficial Guide - I used this extensively when planning our May '08 trip which included my two nephews 5 and 3 at the time. I found it really useful for planning around the "scary" stuff and finding the rides that worked for all of us (grandma, me the aunt, brother, sis-in-law and of course the two boys). The touring plans really helped - even though I was only using maybe a quarter of what was there. And hey - I enjoy the authors' sense of humor. If you buy the book you get a discount on the website membership which I'm not really using.

It kills my commando planning self to say this but downtime is key to enjoying the uptime with the kids.

This site is amazing! I've learned more here in the past week than in a month going to all the websites. Have a question - get an answer.

Good luck and I hope you and family have a great time!