Pack more or laundry day?

[Mom2Ben02]

Ok, we are getting down to the wire (2.5 weeks) and I started packing. We are in Chicago and will NOT be using shorts anytime soon, so did all the warm weather clothes. There are 3 of us - me, DH & DS 15 months. We are renting a car, making a stop at Walmart for the "essentials" - diapers, milk, water, etc, etc. Should I pack enough for all of us for the eight days, or buy some laundry detergent and wash partway through? I feel like I have so much already, and still don't have any sweats/jeans/etc packed!

My gut tells me to pack for 4 days, wash halfway through and wash again on our last (non-park) day, since I don't really like to come home to laundry and our plane doesn't leave till 5pm. But, again, this is my vacation...

ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! I am way too stressed about the small stuff!!

 

[BevS97]

I would take less and wash - the laundrys are all near the pools, so the kids can swim while you wash which makes it pretty painless.

 

[DisneyMom5]

I would pack for 5 days, so you have something to wear while you wash, and, after washing, will have enough clothes to wear till you leave. Make sense? I wrote down what we would wear each day while there, and it made me realize that I needed one more outfit for each person or we'd be naked the day I am planning on doing laundry! LOL
I am fighting the urge to over pack. You might want one extra outfit for your son, if he gets dirty easy.
Happy packing, and warm up the parks for us, we're there in a month!

 

[BrerMama]

Not sure where you're staying but I've read a lot of reports recently that laundry is at least $2/load to dry. For my family of 5, I'd be doing multiple loads if I choose to have a laundry day. I decided it was worth it to just buy more cheap t-shirts (At the Disney Store they are 2/$7 sometimes for kids sizes) and not do laundry. I'd rather make an investment in clothes and have new stuff to wear for awhile than waste time and money doing laundry. If you're staying in a DVC resort, you can do laundry for free, though. So you need to balance time and money with your needs.

 

[MissMagnolia]

I guess I differ from some of the others. When I am on vacation I am NOT doing laundry!! I would rather take an extra suitcase than spend any of my vacation time cleaning clothes. On the other hand, my DH would say, wash while at WDW. So, we leave on 1/10, we are already packed (with the exception of some daily bathroom items), and we are NOT doing laundry.

To squish more clothes in the suitcases I bought some of those travel "space saver" bags. It is amazing how they compact the clothes.

1.For myself, DH, DD (8 months), and DS (3 years) I have one big suitcase with my clothes (8 outfits, pjs, one extra pair of shoes), my DD's clothes (10 outfits), 1/2 of my DS's clothes, Baby Bjorn carrier, lifevest (for the pools), swim diapers, other diapers, and my bathroom bag.

2.My DH has a carry-on bag with his clothes.

3.Carry-on bag for books, etc.

4.Diaper bag that will double as my purse

and that is it!! I think we did great!!

 

[safetymom]

I would opt to do laundry sometime during your trip. I always do while sitting at the pool. It is different than doing it at home so it doesn't feel like work in the middle of my vacation.

The other thing to keep in mind is the weight of your suitcases. If it has been awhile since you have flown I suggest checking out the airlines website to get the current weight limit of suitcases. They have gotten very good at charging high fees for overweight luggage.

 

[tink&cinderella]

I am in the same position!!

Have thought of doing laundry - found tide laundry tablets. We will be gone for 15 days - Disney and the 7 day cruise. My worry with packing a lot is that my 19 months old is very busy and will (hopefully) be in the stroller - I say hopefully as she has recently figured out how to get out of her 5 point harness and stands up int he darn thing. My 5 year old will be taking her carry on and that leaves me to push the stroller, carry my diaper bag, watch the 5 year old, while DH lugs the suitcases and the other carry on - so I guess I need to do laundry - like it or not.

Last year I went with just my then 4 year old daughter and I had 2 suitcases and 2 carry on's when we left. We came home with 3 suitcases and 2 carry ons. LOL - yup the Disney shopping bug got me. Likely we will inherit another suitcase/bag on route.

Does anyone know what kind of change the machine's take??? ie; quarters??? and how long a wash and dry cycle takes?? What time does the laundry room open or is it open all the time??? I am an early bird so coud do it before the gang wakes up and not waste valuable park time.

Any thoughts??

Tink&Cinderella

 

[CEDmom]

I did laundry during at WDW trip in May and our DL trip a few weeks ago. It's DH, DD(4) and myself. With a car seat for the plane (DD is really small and still uses a 5-pt harness), a stroller, 1 carryon bag and 2 checked bags we had all we could manage w/o adding extra clothes. I got a pop-up hamper from Target before our May trip which made getting the clothes to/from the laundry room easy. For both trips I bought 4 changes of clothes of DH and I and 5 for DD. I also took a travel size spray bottle of Frebreeze which I used on jeans so they could be worn more than once.

 

[Tinkerbelle739]

We stayed at POR in Oct for 10 days and we did our laundry half way through. At POR the laundry facilities are near a quiet pool so we did the parks all day and then hit the pool/laundry at about 9 pm and finished around 11pm. We were tired but we had clean clothes for the remainder of the trip and the kids got to swim in the pool late at night, oohh, that was fun! Dont plan an early morning if you do decide to do late night laundry/swim the night before. Enjoy your trip.

Wishing everyone a "magical" day!

 

[crisi]

We did a lot of laundry when staying in a room with a washer and dryer....but I wouldn't take time out of my vacation to do laundry it it wasn't so convienent. For eight days, I think I'd pack more. When you start talking two weeks - well, I don't have that many clothes!

Laundry takes a lot of time to run through - with a fifteen month old, you likely won't spend much time in the pools. You could wash while he naps, I suppose - though my kids were never hotel room nappers, so we needed to do all our napping on the bus/monorail/boat.

Consider wearing some of your clothes two or three times - I never wash jeans after just one wearing...(shirts I have to wash each time I wear them).

 

[bobcat]

The dryers take a long time to dry, usually two cycles, so doing laundry can be expensive. I take the wisk laundry tabs and a couple of dryer sheets and a roll of quarters as well as a collapsible laundry hamper.

 

[2d_star_to_the_right]

We are a family of 6 and did laundry 1/2way through on our last trip for the first time and I didn't find the time it took to be worth it. Getting a wahing machine at POR was a pain- they seemed to be busy most of the day, then the dryers had little heat so at 2$ a load for a wash and then dry it got to be pretty expensive.

We did haul our own quarters and laundry soap to help out. The machines at the Polynesian were worse in that there were few washers to the volume of dryers.

If you do laundry I would plan on it taking roughly 2 hours from start to finish and early am hours seemed the easiest to get the washer.

just thoughts
(this year I am hauling that extra bag!)

 

[chager]

We did laundary half way through our trip in June. We had to though becuase we had to change our clothes 2 -3 times a day due to the heat and humidity. If you are going to do laundary I suggest you pick a dryer that someone just finished with so it is warm. That way your clothes won't take as long to dry. You are also getting the most for your money becuase the dryer won't have to warm up so part of the time wont be spent waiting for it to heat up. (Also a good energy saver at home ) Have a super trip! I can't wait till we get to go back!
Carolyn

 

[DisneyMom5]

When I have gone to local laundromats in the past, I have always divided my clothes between several dryers to help it dry better and more quickly.
Are the dryers at WDW the same type of dryers as commercial, and, no matter what, would it be smart to divide one wash load between 2 or more dryers? I want to same money, but I will NEED to save time.

 

[Schmeck]

We've done laundry during our WDW trips, and I've had the best time talking to other guests doing their laundry! No, it's not the highlight of my trip but I actually do enjoy the break, LOL!

We drive down, so I always pack detergent, fabric softener, and quarters. Don't know if I would haul all that onto an airplane!

The dryers are pretty crappy there, and I've used the ones at AKL, CBR, and POR. They take forever, there aren't enough to go around, and usually they've been full of clothes that have dried and no one's come back for. I've taken other peoples' clothing out of dryers, but not washers - I don't exactly fold their clothes, but I try not to wrinkle it all up either!

The main reason I do laundry at WDW is that we don't have a lot of clothing to begin with, and it's easier to pack 5-6 days worth of stuff instead of 10-12 days!

 

[Teri Zolman]

We were just there right before Christmas. I wasn't going to do laundry. But because it was so cold we had to wear our jeans and cold weather clothes more. I ended up doing laundry the third day at Pop Century. I would say it took about and hour and a half. The dryers were great. Several times people had time left and shared it with the next person. This also gave me some quiet alone time. I took travel size soap and put several fabric softner sheet in a ziplock bag just in case. Also they have a change machine if you do not want to lug quarters around. I vote for doing laundry.

 

[welovedis]

I vote for doing laundry. I actually don't mind doing it and enjoy wearing some of my favorite things on our trips.

I do take my own quarters, detergent (Tide tabs) & fab soft sheets along. The night before I plan on doing the laundry I sort everything into 2 clean garbage bags-lights & darks, & put them in a wheeled suitcase along with my book or whatever I am going to take along. That morning I get up early, like I always do at home, and head off to the laundry room. When all the loads are done I fold everything into the suitcase and pull it back with me.

As far as the dryers, I do seperate my items from 1 washload into 2 dryer-loads, it just makes it quicker. I have been really lucky to always find at least 1 dryer that is malfunctioning-but in a good way--they didn't need coins to run, just press start & it works. I usually try all the dryers (just press start or whatever to turn it on) and see if any of them start up on their own. Someone told me about this once at CBR and it happened again at ASMO and again at CSR this summer. I do report it to the maintence staff I saw and they would comment that it had been like that for a long time. Weird!

 

[LeahA]

My vote is to pack more. Last year while staying at the Hilton DD, I didn't realize before we left that the laundry room was closed for renovations, the year before there was no problem, so I didn't ask. We got down there after packing light and ran out of clean underwear and socks. I had to run out and buy some for the entire family. I wish I would've checked, but from now on, I'm packing a little extra.

Leah

 

[Oh Kay!]

Since you will be driving, it might be better to pack more clothing. Doing laundry at WDW has not been fun for me; as others have mentioned, the machines tend to be unreliable.

However, you should still prepare yourself to do a load or two. In our case, when we went last month, I packed enough clothes to last us 8 days, although we were staying 6 days. On the flight down to MCO, my DS got sick and his parka got ruined. The temperature for the following days ranged from 35 to 60; he needed his parka. Guess how I spent the first morning at the YC?

 

[dmonroe]

We usually do laundy one day or night.

When we're in a Home Away from Home, we usually come in throw a load in the washer, move it to the dryer, then go to bed. We "fluff" them up the next morning!

When we were at BWI, dh went early one morning (ds is a VERY early riser!) and did a couple of loads before the parks were even open!

This time at POR, we did laundry on our non-park day. That was easy, since we weren't in a hurry to get anywhere.

Either way, it only takes about 1 1/2-2 hours. Not too bad in the big scheme of things. Anyway, I like coming home with mostly clean clothes--less laundry for me after vacation.