Mistakes Made On First Trip

[18sprint]

First trip were the usual mistakes, but the biggest was not doing enough research before going. 2nd mistake was not taking a camera....who takes a camera to an amusement park? Fortunately, my wife did.
Now that we have umtween trips under our belts, the mistake list gets smaller:
1) Doing a special event like the Christmas or Halloween party on arrival day.
2) Making too many ADRs. It works better for us to only plan the ones that you have to make or you absolutely don't want to miss.
3) Thinking that we can do 'rope drop till close. So now, if we go early, we leave and go back to the resort for pool time and/or resting. Then we feel much better to take on the night. Or, we don't head to any park before 1 or 2pm.
4) Not utilizing fastpass. We have a basic plan of where we think we may be each day, so we get our 'must do' fastpasses and set them up for a time later in the day. If our plans change, we have had a lot of luck changing out fastpasses on the fly and everything still works out.
5) Getting a flight out too early. That 7:00am flight may look good but if you're utilizing the magic express, remember they will be picking you up at your resort 3 hrs prior to your flight. So, if you want to use ME and resort baggage check services, they don't open till 5:00am. Plan accordingly.

 

[18sprint]

Thought of another one that bit us in the past. If you are taking someone who hasn't been to WDW in a while or ever, avoid the temptation to 'oversell' or build up what to expect out of their trip. We made this mistake with a cousin of my who had not been to WDW since it opened. Even though we warned her what prices would be, specifically food, all we heard from the first day on was how ridiculous everything was costing. Then it was complaining about the rides and attractions. None of it was up to the hype that we said it was. So now, if we are hosting a rookie, we'll still warn them about pricing, but everything else will be experienced without our prior input. Then they can make their own judgements.

 

[disneyfantotheend]

Trying to fit everything in and not taking our time and REALY enjoying what it was we were doing. I mean sure, we loved everything, but it would have been more fun not to be thinking about what was next while we enjoyed what we were doing.

DISCLAIMER: It took me about 3 trips to slow down. I finally learned after 8 that we will never do everything. LOL

 

[JustCallMeMommy]

We had too many dining reservations at resorts. It turns out that we don't really like leaving the fun of the theme park! Now, we limit our meals to the park we are in that day's park or a easy-to-get-to resort (so on a MK day, we limit it to MK and the monorail loop; Epcot or HS days, we limit to the park or the Epcot resorts). On longer trips, we might plan a resort hopping day where we have an ADR somewhere else.

We also each brought a little bit of warm clothing, but we didn't want to travel with big coats. We didn't anticipate the close-to-freezing days and how much colder it seems when you are outside and sometimes getting wet. We ended up buying a few more articles of warm clothing on that trip.

I had planned to my normal obsessive amount before our first family trip, so we were pretty organized and prepared otherwise.