Meeting family, need planning tips!

[chrissyb2411]

Hi Disney world, its been a couple years! My SIL has been saying she would like to take her 14 year old to WDW before he's too old to want to go. We have been 3 times, so she thought we might like to go with them, sure why not.

DH is not a huge fan, and as of now does not plan on going. So, it will be 2 adults, 3 kids 14, 12, 9. We have always stayed at mods, floated the idea of offsite, decided on site. Considered a family suite, or 2 rooms at a value resort. But, we have landed on going for a mod with a single room for the 5 of us. We know it will be cozy. I do have some questions on logistics.

-SIL will be staying 5 nights, we are going to plan on 7. We will keep the same room so no issues here.
- we plan on doing universal for 2 days, and just 2 days in wdw for SIL, 4 for us. I'm thinking the best way to do this is book the room seperate from the tickets and connecting them. But, I do frequently get pin codes and if I get a package discount code this is going to be a problem. If I book the room with a 2 day ticket for everyone can I add on days for the kids and I once there, or will I need to buy new tickets?

-they are coming from Colorado, us from NH. We plan to use magic express? Can you split a Magic express reservation? How do you manage that?

- magic bands - will disney ship them to 2 different addresses, or will they arrive early enough that I will have time to ship theirs to them if they will arrive earlier than us?

Are there any other things I should consider/ plan for when planning a trip where we are meeting family from another location?

Thanks for any advice!

 

[tobikaye]

If I book the room with a 2 day ticket for everyone can I add on days for the kids and I once there, or will I need to buy new tickets?

You can add days to the tickets, but you have to do this onsite. So, you would not be able to make FP+ for those days in advance. It will be easier if you do room and tickets separately.

-they are coming from Colorado, us from NH. We plan to use magic express? Can you split a Magic express reservation? How do you manage that?

Each person on the reservation gets 1 trip MCO to resort and 1 trip resort to MCO. You can call and just tell them which person is on which flight. I actually did this online (https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/airport-transportation-reservation/) last year for my cousin. I did my flight from Ohio and then went back in separately and did her flight from Illinois. I then called DME directly ((866) 599-0951) and requested 2 luggage tags for each of us since we both flew Southwest.

They only mailed the luggage tags to my house so I would have had to express them to my cousin, but we got lucky and she was visiting after they arrived and I was able to just give them to her.

- magic bands - will disney ship them to 2 different addresses, or will they arrive early enough that I will have time to ship theirs to them if they will arrive earlier than us?

No, you cannot have them mailed to two different addresses. I think these have usually arrived about 3 weeks before on both of my 2017 trips. They do not mail out until about 30 days. So, you would need to either mail theirs to them directly or give them to them at the hotel. Since you would also have the luggage tags, you could wait until they both arrive and express ship them to your SIL.

Are there any other things I should consider/ plan for when planning a trip where we are meeting family from another location?

The only issue we had on the January trip was that my cousin and I both brought a few of the same items to share so we had double of some items and we thought the other would bring something so we had none of other things. For our June trip, there were 7 of us, but in 2 different rooms so it was not as big of an issue.