I was only at DL for a quick afternoon a few yrs ago & didn't really see much. I don't want to miss anything this time.
I love planning & I do like a basic guideline but I'm not super super rigid.
I understand what you are saying & I appreciate your input but (and I mean no offense here) I think that it might be easier for someone who is very familiar with DL to say that you can kindof fly by the seat of your pants but for me, without the experience that I have with WDW, I want to have as much info as I can before I leave. I want to be able to sketch out a basic idea of the things I want to experience since I don't have that much time & I'm not sure when I will be able to get back again.
Once I get to DL, I will definitely be open to the experience & to seeing how things go but in preparation of my trip, I hope to get together as much info as possible! Plus, for me, it's exciting to learn all I can about Disneyland, it really helps pass the time until I get to go!!!
My thoughts EXACTLY about helping to get a layout for what we'll be doing on what days, AND to help pass the time! Park hopping every day sounds good, but my parents will be with us and my mom can't do TOO much since she has physical limitations.
Thanks so much for the link to past years' hours. That is REALLY helpful!
Two princesses in one thread! Wow!
I did not mean to imply that you do not need to plan for DLR and that you should do everything by the seat of your pants.
What I meant is that if you had the full schedule right now there is not much you could do with it.
For example, at WDW you get the schedule 6 months in advance. That allows you to:
1. Choose which parks on which day based on operating hours, entertainment, and either using EMH or avoiding EMH parks
2. Plan your dining based on your park choice
3. Do all kind of special things like Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue or a fireworks cruise or a pirate cruise or a host of other special touches.
At DLR you cannot make ADR's six months in advance and even if you could the competition for dining ressies would be so low it would be overkill. Even with the current DLR policy of dining ressies 2 months in advance there are still plenty of slots - often still just a few days before your trip. DLR vets have a whole different mindset about dining and do not make dining ressies for the most part. At WDW you are competing with tens of thousands of people on vacation and from out of town. At DLR you are competing mostly with locals on day trips. The bulk of the people do not care about getting a dining ressie and are fine with counter service options - or they bring their own sandwiches.
As for choosing parks, there is just no need to figure that out this far in advance. You can totally do that a week or a day ahead of time if you really want to. And then be as rigid or flexible as you want. The reason is that unlike WDW a park choice at DLR can easily be changed. Parkhopping takes a grand total of 1 minute gate to gate. It is faster to get to some parts of DCA from DL Main Street than it is to get to other places inside DL like Toontown and Critter Country.
By all means make dining ressies, but I would recommend once you get to DLR you avoid treating them as unchangeable parts of your day and instead treat them as "the default plan until we see a better option and change our mind". At WDW many folks build their entire vacation around ADRs. And then treat them as 100% unchangeable. Part of the reason for this is that parkhopping at WDW is harder to do and more expensive and because getting last minute ADRs can be impossible or inconvenient. At DLR you do not need to do this and if you do it will tie you down to specific parks on specific days at specific times and I predict it will limit your vacation experience.
One of the great things about DLR over WDW is it does lend itself more to an unstructured day. By all means make a plan - I do that myself and sometimes drive my family crazy - but then once I am there I try not to be the plan enforcer. I tell everyone in the morning what dining reservations we have that day and what shows we should see and when, and then everyone either chooses to follow those "default plans" or the events of the day takes us in another direction and we just drop the original plan.
You cannot do everything at DLR the way I just described as if everything is unplanned and unstructured. For example dining reservations for World of Color do need to be made ahead of time if you want that and you do need to stick with it. Dessert reservations for Fantasmic are that way too. In high demand exactly one month ahead of time. You need to jump on those at 8AM Pacific Time one month in advance. Magic Mornings only happen on certain days and you need to do MM on MM days. So I do tell my family which things are unchangeable and they understand that and we work those in.
But when it comes to park touring, it might turn out that we missed a show or ride the previous day for some reason - maybe we decided to shop extra long or someone did not feel well or the weather was unusually cool or hot or whatever - so the next day we can very fluidly decide to change plans and make our way back to something we missed the previous day - even if it means spending the morning at DCA when we had originally planned to go to DL that morning. If we built that morning around a lunch dining res at DL it might force us away from DCA and back to DL even though we missed something at DCA the previous day. When the time comes we can fluidly decide to go to DCA and skip the lunch at DL or do the DL lunch and postpone DCA until the afternoon. What we do
not do is treat the lunch ressie at DL as absolute such that it forces us to not choose DCA that day when otherwise we would switch to DCA.
I hope that clarifies what I mean a little better. You should plan for DLR but you can easily do that a month ahead of time and not miss anything. And once you do plan I would recommend a more flexible, fluid plan than called for at WDW - because the parks or so close you can easily change your mind with little impact.
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) threads saved for those things I need to refer to or study up on prior to leaving.
