Impromptu Trip- What's the Fastest You've Planned?

[cluvsdisney]

My sister and I went down for a weekend once on one day's notice but this was a long time ago before ADRs (it was priority seating back then) and fast pass. We had to split our stay between the Beach and Yacht Club but otherwise it was great.

 

[loves to dive]

Oh, and I plan on going sometime in late Dec/early Jan. this year, haven't booked a darn thing, not even a room yet since we have to work around DS college finals and DH has to decide what he wants to do about Christmas. We try to go away somewhere for it since it's such a pain to deal with which family to spend it with. If he doesn't want to go somewhere, DS and I will do until 23rd or 24th and be home for it.

 

[Praying Colonel]

About 5 weeks. On Jul 10 my employer told me they were sending me to Orlando for training the week of Aug 17. DW and I decided to tack on a couple of days before and after and do a combined business trip/WDW vacation.

We were basically OK on ADRs and FP+. I did a lot of checking the WDW site, but we eventually got the ADRs we wanted, including BOG breakfast and lunch. We were able to book on multiple days and then cancelled after we made our plans and knew the ones we wouldn't be using. For FP+, we got what we wanted except for 7DMT on our last day (8/22). That one never came open, but we had a BOG breakfast ADR & we were able to ride 7DMT a couple of times before the RD crowd got there.

In July one of my nieces decided she and her husband were going to WDW on 2 weeks notice and asked me to help them plan it. Now that one was stressful, but again we were able to get them planned out with room, ADR, touring plans and FP+, and she said they had a great time.

 

[buzznina]

We are AP holders and this was before FP+. I called on a Tuesday for a reservation starting that Friday, I was looking at ASMU and ended up getting a great deal on CSR for the same price.

 

[MataHari22]

The shortest time for me, was about 75 days out. That was my trip in 2013. Couple days before I left, they sent an email saying that I would have magic bands waiting at the hotel, and that I could make FP+. My 2014 trip, was a bit over 3 months, I think. This year, I'm back to planning a little over 6 months out.

 

[DisneyMandC]

We are AP holders and this was before FP+. I called on a Tuesday for a reservation starting that Friday, I was looking at ASMU and ended up getting a great deal on CSR for the same price.

Wow. Now that's impressive haha.

 

[Accident]

Just out of curiosity, what's the fastest my fellow DISers have ever planned a Disney trip? And I mean an actual trip, not a "we went to Disney for the day!" type

My shortest was booked middle of the night 09/19/2014, Arrived the morning of 09/21/2014. Was originally a 8 day trip and we extended it to 11 days by the time we left.

So what's the fastest you've gone from zero to "we're going to Disney!"? How did you manage to do on FP+ and ADRs in terms of getting what you want? And yes, I know how many of you feel that it's impossible to do an impromptu trip anymore because of FP and ADRs! We don't need to see Anna and Elsa or eat at CRT, just a nice weekend getaway with maybe a Space Mountain and Tower of Terror ride thrown in

There is a couple things like meal plan and pre-purchasing memory maker that you actually need 3 days prior to arrival which we didn't have. Table Service was initially a problem but once we got the hang of walking up early in the day to see if we could get a time to walk in later in the evening for dinner it got much easier. We also started to discover which restaurants have a while waiting bar, all of which you can purchase a full meal from and never have a reservation. That was plan B when we didn't want quick service yet again. We also discovered that about 11pm up to about midnight a lot of adrs would suddenly be available so we did a lot of next day planning based on where we could get table service for lunch or dinner the night before.

Fastpass we never got the main rides, and the system really wanted to always give us a character greeting. Being an adult only trip, most days we went without fastpass so some child could get the fastpass for their favorite character. I didn't find not having fast passes to be a problem. We started to discover new tricks like my daughter is a late riser and I was getting up late but much earlier than her. I would grab some coffee and go check out the bus lines. We could guess which park was swamped and that would not be our afternoon park. After dinner we would do similar and guess what park was better for evenings. This is when the 1/2 day park strategy really worked out. Afternoon park was when we just wanted to be there and if we could get into anything or see some shows/afternoon parades we were happy. Evening is when we go after the rides and evening entertainment. When needed we would also just change parks if one was really really crowded and we had the luxury of enough time at WDW to do that and not miss anything. I think our longest ride wait was about 15 minutes for 7DMT and we used the get in liine right before the park closes strategy so 10 of it was after the park was closed and no rides were opened for new riders. We also were able to do single lines and took advantage of broken rides when we knew there was more than 1 track and not fully closed down (but the line left).

If your somewhat flexible on where you are, where you eat and jumping around and between parks then last second no time to plan isn't a bad trip. We did and saw everything we wanted plus some extras on this one and will do it again! In our case we like it better, there is a lot of short notice things that many have to keep reworking their plans over and over.

EDITED TO ADD:

Another main downside is at the time there was not many good discounts, this is the trip i'm kicking myself for not getting 1 of us an AP and then seeing what was available and using the limited discounts + getting TIW. We would have saved a lot of money even though park tickets costed more for 1 person.

This year i'm seeing a lot more spontaneous discounts for rooms and things which for us is a great thing! There's more than a few times we almost booked and ran to the airport

 

[Boski]

Our trip this year we put together about 42 days out. To top it off we managed to get 7DMT FPs for our MK day.

 

[DisneyMandC]

My shortest was booked middle of the night 09/19/2014, Arrived the morning of 09/21/2014. Was originally a 8 day trip and we extended it to 11 days by the time we left.



There is a couple things like meal plan and pre-purchasing memory maker that you actually need 3 days prior to arrival which we didn't have. Table Service was initially a problem but once we got the hang of walking up early in the day to see if we could get a time to walk in later in the evening for dinner it got much easier. We also started to discover which restaurants have a while waiting bar, all of which you can purchase a full meal from and never have a reservation. That was plan B when we didn't want quick service yet again. We also discovered that about 11pm up to about midnight a lot of adrs would suddenly be available so we did a lot of next day planning based on where we could get table service for lunch or dinner the night before.

Fastpass we never got the main rides, and the system really wanted to always give us a character greeting. Being an adult only trip, most days we went without fastpass so some child could get the fastpass for their favorite character. I didn't find not having fast passes to be a problem. We started to discover new tricks like my daughter is a late riser and I was getting up late but much earlier than her. I would grab some coffee and go check out the bus lines. We could guess which park was swamped and that would not be our afternoon park. After dinner we would do similar and guess what park was better for evenings. This is when the 1/2 day park strategy really worked out. Afternoon park was when we just wanted to be there and if we could get into anything or see some shows/afternoon parades we were happy. Evening is when we go after the rides and evening entertainment. When needed we would also just change parks if one was really really crowded and we had the luxury of enough time at WDW to do that and not miss anything. I think our longest ride wait was about 15 minutes for 7DMT and we used the get in liine right before the park closes strategy so 10 of it was after the park was closed and no rides were opened for new riders. We also were able to do single lines and took advantage of broken rides when we knew there was more than 1 track and not fully closed down (but the line left).

If your somewhat flexible on where you are, where you eat and jumping around and between parks then last second no time to plan isn't a bad trip. We did and saw everything we wanted plus some extras on this one and will do it again! In our case we like it better, there is a lot of short notice things that many have to keep reworking their plans over and over.

EDITED TO ADD:

Another main downside is at the time there was not many good discounts, this is the trip i'm kicking myself for not getting 1 of us an AP and then seeing what was available and using the limited discounts + getting TIW. We would have saved a lot of money even though park tickets costed more for 1 person.

This year i'm seeing a lot more spontaneous discounts for rooms and things which for us is a great thing! There's more than a few times we almost booked and ran to the airport

Awesome, thank you for all of these tips! Yes, there have been some great discounts for this year. When I looked earlier and saw I could get flights for both of us for $360, plus three nights at ASMU, three days of tickets, and the DDP for $1300... oh, the temptation was strong. I've been hanging out over on the budget board though and working on getting disney gift card deals. I have a couple hundred saved up, so maybe I can get down there in April for a one year anniversary trip with some good airfare deals!

 

[scrapquitler]

Just out of curiosity, what's the fastest my fellow DISers have ever planned a Disney trip? And I mean an actual trip, not a "we went to Disney for the day!" type (though I am very jealous of those of you who have that opportunity!). I got an email this morning about some really low fares for Southwest from our airport (we can get a direct flight to Orlando) and I thought about how nice it would be to just book a cheap flight and a couple days at Disney and hop down there for a three or four day weekend. Not sure that it will happen for us any time soon, but I figured it might be nice to keep my eyes on my email and see when I could cash in some Southwest points to fly down there!

So what's the fastest you've gone from zero to "we're going to Disney!"? How did you manage to do on FP+ and ADRs in terms of getting what you want? And yes, I know how many of you feel that it's impossible to do an impromptu trip anymore because of FP and ADRs! We don't need to see Anna and Elsa or eat at CRT, just a nice weekend getaway with maybe a Space Mountain and Tower of Terror ride thrown in

We went to my college roommates wedding in MD in 1994, and planned to spend the rest of the week in the DC area doing tourist things. Sitting at the wedding reception, my husband says to me "how about we go to Disney for the week instead?" so the next morning we checked out of our hotel and drove to Disney. This of course was before FP and we didn't eat at any table service restaurants all week (and we still almost never do).

The vast majority of our trips are planned only 4-6 weeks ahead of time because of my DHs work schedule always being uncertain. We are okay with impromptu, sure, you can't get the most popular FP+ at the last minute, but we aren't interested in having a FP for fireworks, parades or A&E. We've always had good luck riding the busiest rides even without FP+ very close to closing during PM EMH. And if we miss riding something, we are okay with that as well. And like I said before, we don't usually do table service meals anyway, so that is irrelevant for us.

I just booked our FP+ for our trip during Jersey Week (I couldn't do them until now because we also visited last week, and I couldn't hold that many days worth of FP at once). I got Toy Story, Fantasmic, 7Dwarves, Soarin', Test Track, Rock N Roller Coaster...there weren't any FP+ that I couldn't get and wanted.

 

[DisneyMandC]

We went to my college roommates wedding in MD in 1994, and planned to spend the rest of the week in the DC area doing tourist things. Sitting at the wedding reception, my husband says to me "how about we go to Disney for the week instead?" so the next morning we checked out of our hotel and drove to Disney. This of course was before FP and we didn't eat at any table service restaurants all week (and we still almost never do).

The vast majority of our trips are planned only 4-6 weeks ahead of time because of my DHs work schedule always being uncertain. We are okay with impromptu, sure, you can't get the most popular FP+ at the last minute, but we aren't interested in having a FP for fireworks, parades or A&E. We've always had good luck riding the busiest rides even without FP+ very close to closing during PM EMH. And if we miss riding something, we are okay with that as well. And like I said before, we don't usually do table service meals anyway, so that is irrelevant for us.

Now that is the definition of impromptu! How cool!! I would love to do something like that!

Yes, FP for fireworks, parades, and characters in general don't matter to us. The only thing we would miss is table service, but I still wonder if we couldn't go in non-peak and still be ok. Obviously I doubt we'd be getting into dinner at BOG or anything, but I know DH wouldn't want to eat quick service all week.

 

[PanamaMike]

Jan 1, 2000.

As I watched the Millennium fireworks my city was putting on I thought "I wonder what the new fireworks show at Epcot is like."

5 days later I was in my car driving to WDW for a two week stay.

 

[Alice K]

I booked a trip to Disneyland on Saturday just gone (at 3am), I set off on Friday; I live in England. To be fair the flights were booked a couple of months ago, my original plans had fallen through. So it's just hotel and park tickets I booked last minute.

At the same time I booked a trip to Disneyland Paris, in three week's time.

 

[scrapquitler]

Now that is the definition of impromptu! How cool!! I would love to do something like that!

Yes, FP for fireworks, parades, and characters in general don't matter to us. The only thing we would miss is table service, but I still wonder if we couldn't go in non-peak and still be ok. Obviously I doubt we'd be getting into dinner at BOG or anything, but I know DH wouldn't want to eat quick service all week.

Unless you are going during free dining or Christmas/Easter week, I think you'd get some ADRs somewhere at the last minute. They wouldn't be at peak times or at the most popular places, but I'm sure you wouldn't starve.

 

[amy1115]

Started planning our upcoming November trip about 70 days out. For us that is "spur of the moment" lol. We already have a family trip planned for May, and this is an anniversary trip for just my husband and I. The only main issue has been that we are going during free dining and pretty much every ADR we wanted was already booked up. I am still holding out hope of snagging a BOG ADR though. Staying offsite so can't book FP+ yet.

 

[DISNEY CHICKIE]

I just booked at the beginning of September for the week of Dec. 13th for my son and I (annual Mom-Son trip - until next year when my 5 year old daughter joins us!). We originally planned for the week prior, but the People Mover is down for refurb that week and we cannot have that during our vacay so we pushed it out a week. Usually we are booked months ahead of time, but we just could not decide if we wanted to do Halloween or Christmas time. We did MNSSHP last year and it was seriously the best time ever! But we decided that we wanted to go during Christmas time this year since we have never been during that time. We are usually quick service eaters, so the ADR's really are not a priority, except for BOG lunch - we have to have that (YUM!) and we were lucky to score a lunch ressie in the middle of our stay (we seriously stalked the MDE app for that one!). We are also trying Le Cellier for the first time and we were also able to grab a lunch ressie there as well. We are all about our FP+ picks as opposed to dining ressies and we get to pick our FP's beginning of October! We prefer to visit during low crowd times as my son and I are all about the rides and we don't mind the heat. I know it is going to be more crowded during the week we decided on, but to see all the decorations, doing our first MVMCP (just bought tickets last night!) and to be able to see the Osborne lights before they are gone will so be worth it!

 

[kay1864]

Two days, for a friend. FP+ was still relatively new, so we got most of the FPs he wanted for his family of 4. Bought tickets, did RideMax, got FPs, all in the space of about half an hour.

 

[Oneanne]

So jealous! My email from Southwest earlier had some great rates for mid-November, so of course I went on the Disney website to check out prices for then. I really wish we could do it, because it would be fantastic deal. But considering we're about to throw down a good portion of our bank account at closing for this house, I know it's not a smart move! I'm hoping maybe I can talk DH into a quick trip in spring if some good airfare prices come up.

Ha ha... "I'll just take a look..." what famous last words those are! Seems like everytime I go on Disney.com to "just look", a trip happens. Booking this one was really strange (probably partly because I was ill ). I actually didn't find any hotel availability on Disney, but went out to Expedia and they had everything I was interested in, so I did an air/hotel bundle and even got my preferred non-stop flights. I had just had my Visa shut down due to fraud, so I was paying with Visa gift cards and had to call, and the Expedia Rep did an excellent job figuring it out. I dread anytime I have to call Disney because none of the agents ever seem to be able to answer the question. I only ended up saving about $40 bundling, but I figure that's a couple QS meals so I'm good with it. I have an AP this year because I knew I would have two trips (May and December), so some how this extra trip feels free, even though it did cost me a nice chunk of change.

 

[BarbieGal457]

Nine days - and that was to go to MK for NYE last year! We had planned to be in Florida about 2 months earlier but decided to make the trip to WDW for overnight VERY last minute. It ended up being a blast! We got FPs for everything we wanted, including 7DMT, lunch at BOG (but I believe at that point it was still where you registered for lunch on a separate "FP" website for it) and were in MK by 8am that day. We ended the day with 6 FPs, a spur-of-the-moment ADR for dinner at Tony's (not my favorite but it was glorious at 8:30pm), and an awesome viewing spot from New Fantasyland. We also never really hit crowds because we are so go-with-the-flow that whenever we saw huge ones coming at us, we just went the other way.

Now I'm currently planning for one the first full week of December so I guess about 70-80 days out, which is my second shortest planning period thus far.

 

[lovin'fl]

We are DVC member so we have to book early to get availability...BUT...if one stalks the availability tracker on our member website there is always random availability popping up from cancellations. However, the shortest WDW trip I have planned has been 4 months out (my upcoming Halloween weekend trip). I've had no trouble planning. Got cheap-ish airfare. Booked 2 ADRs (though not sure we'll do them since it's F&W). Made FP+. Bought MNSSHP tickets. Once my teens are all off to college, maybe DH and I can grab more last minute trips in the off seasons.