People who plan vs people who don't plan

[loves to dive]

I'm in the go with the flow sorta camp. We are the ones that everyone hates who go often so we know that you can never get everything done so don't try and we know we will most likely (The big man willing and the creek don't rise) be back again. I do book my resort reservations about 3 or 4 months out and tend to change those at least once before we arrive. I book only one ADR in advance, tea at the GF and that is normally about 3 or 4 weeks before we go. I might book our first and second day FPs about 2 weeks before we go and sometimes I don't, I just wait until the night before. Just about the only time we know in advance what park we want to be at on any given day is the day I have my tea ADRs, that is going to be MK. We always have park hoppers so we tend to do a lot of hopping around.

Any time I go on any vacation I do some sort of advance research, not necessarily planning just seeing what is available. I do read reviews of hotels when we go other places, from a lot of different sources so I get a good mix. If we are going diving, I get on the scubaboards (like the disboards for divers) and research dive operators in the area and ask questions about dive sites, etc. I'll use those boards to decide a final destination as well, we might know we want to go to say Hawaii but don't know what is the best island for diving, so I'll get on the boards for that (it's the big island by the way if you want to see manta rays). If we want to go anywhere we've never been, I'll just look up what is in the area, that sort of thing. If it's a totally new place, I'll buy a out of way places to go book, just to get an idea of what is there. Other than hotel and dive operator if we are diving, I never plan or book anything else but I know what is available. I've found if we plan, it never goes as planned and we set ourselves up for disappointment, if we don't plan too much anything that happens is special.

 

[Shellyb84]

Planning is a lot of the fun for me. I make our FP+ and ADRs and plan the parks we're going to, usually based around EMH. However, in between FP+ times we just kind of go with the flow for other attractions. I have a loose plan for the other things we want to do but that changes depending on where we're at in the park or wait times. And sometimes we'll skip things in order to just have some more time to relax at the resort, depending on how everyone is feeling. It's possible to have a plan without being super rigid about it.

 

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

I feel like at least currently, WDW is hell for both planners and nonplanners

I mean, I like to plan everything to the last detail and wdw is making me lose my mind. They want me to know and schedule ADRs 180 days before...but then change park hours at the last minute. Attractions, shows and parties that will be happening during my stay (MNSSHP, RoL, AK night hours etc) are still not fully released or confirmed, so I have to plan a Plan A, B, C and D just in case. It's really vexing. And I'm still bracing for when my FP+ window opens.

I guess I more look at it that Disney doesn't allow you to plan any earlier than 180 days. They don't make you plan that early.

If they didn't limit people, guests would book dining a couple years in advance, "just in case" they wanted that particular meal on that particular day.

 

[supersnoop]

After all the planning, the hardest part was throwing some of it out the window. But you have to be prepared to do that. Sometimes you just have to be flexible and realize that the planning allowed you to be flexible. The first time, it felt like I was throwing away a whole lot of work, but you just have to come to tempt a with that.

Also frustrating is when the plan works out *too* well. Sometimes we get through three rides at rope drop, burn two fast passes, hit another ride standby, and still have 45 minutes before the next item on my plan. Sure, we just hit six attractions in 75 minutes, but everyone wants to know, "now what?"

 

[Disneymom1126]

The whole post was funny...but the "magical disney day" had me literally laughing out loud

Either way, I don't give a magical disney day what you think you are entitled to!"

 

[Pmlocke]

My wife and I travel to WDW every year. We do some planning such as hotel reservations, dining reservations and that is about all we do. We do not have a need to get on any one ride or our vacation is ruined. If the line is less than 20 minutes when we walk by, we go on it. I want to be sure that I can eat when I want, where I want which is the reason for the reservation planning we do. It is easy for us as we are in our 60's, we travel sans kids and we have been there so many times we know the layout. I can understand the need to do planning for first timers or those with children but I have seen first hand the results of over planning. People getting into a line for a ride and then screaming "we gotta go" because they have ten minutes to cross the Magic Kingdom to get to their fast pass reservation. I have seen kids being dragged because the parents did not account for the time it takes to get to a location in the parks, or didn't account for time for those kids who got distracted by a parade, a character walking by, the cool stuff in a window display, etc. Again, I understand. People with children can only travel at peak times or take their kids out of school which is really frowned upon these days. But if they were to realize that maybe you won't be able to see and experiance everything, their trip would be a little nicer. I know what many of your are saying right now, at these prices I want to see everything. My wife and I see something new everytime we go down. It can't be helped. What are the options here, race around and try to do it all or plan a slow, easy approach and enjoy what you are doing? Again, my opinion and I don't want to offend anyone. May your time at the World be a pleasant, magical experiance and may you all have the opportunity to return again soon.

 

[mkla2015]

I'm a planner... I plan everything- Disney and non-Disney. For our Disney trips, I plan about 11 months in advance- spreadsheets, research, reading everything humanly possible. Then I'm making reservations, ADRs, FP+... I do it all! I even make daily agendas with times of where to be, where to go, what to ride, when to eat, etc.

Then we get to Disney and my agendas go flying out of the window!! My plans never stick! Most of the FPs will stay and most of the ADRs will stay but everything else gets thrown out and we just go with the flow. If we want to stop to see something, we do it. If we want to go to change parks midday, we do it. Will I keep planning even though I know my plans won't stick? Absolutely!!

 

[niffer5150]

i do the planning for fp+, general itinerary like park for the day and stuff we hope to ride at some point, and restaurants but only because i have to. honestly, i'd rather not plan much of anything. i pick our fp but sometimes we blow them off because i loathe time where we sit around and wait to ride something and i won't do it if we are having fun. i refuse to do detailed planning like what rides we ride in what order. with the time difference, i can never predict how every one is going to feel and it's not a vacation if it starts feeling really forced. there's just too many variables to make a detailed plan, have it be successful, AND have everyone happy.

 

[disneyseniors]

I do a little of both. I love to look at the various WDW sites and plan and dream

However, our last trip in November, 2015, I decided to try "minimal planning". For us that meant no dining plan. We booked only our must do restaurants for 3 sit down dinners. That was enough for us. We found that we never even made it to our TS reservations at the tail end of our trips because we were either l: too tired to get to the reservation, or2: weren't really hungry at that time and for that restaurant. So we wasted our TS dining plan meals each time.
That worked out great for us, and we found we really looked forward to our planned ts dates, instead of dreading trying to make one each day. The cost for us was much less and we found we ate much less too. It's just husband and me so we sometimes split meals, snacked, and ate when we were actually hungry.
Both our wallets and weight scales appreciated that
We only booked 4 park days with fp+'s, out of our 9 1/2 days at wDW. We stuck to that and hit only the fp's that we really wanted to go to. Most times we ended up wasting our last one, or two. I wish they wouldn't make you choose 3 fp's when you only want two. I always felt guilty taking one away from someone who really wanted to ride dumbo!
All our fp's were in the am. Then we went to the resort and rested and then we decided where we wanted to go for the evening. Totally spontaneous! Sometimes we went to DS, or to another park. We did this without fp's made and if we found something we wanted to ride, we waited in line. We don't have smart phones and can't use the new app, so it's kiosks or nothing for us. We never had to wait a very long time for what we wanted to do, as we had already done all the popular ones with fp's before.

This plan totally worked for us. Less planning and structure. Only 4 planned days with room to do what we wanted for the other 5 days. We went to Universal one day (loved it), resort hopped, and to DS 2 or 3 times (rode the big balloon).

I don't think you can go without some planning at WDW anymore, but you can make it work for your way of touring.

 

[North of Mouse]

We prefer 'winging it', but some things the last several years are necessary to plan with all the changes and crowds.
Now, we do make a very few TS ressies (4 for 10 days) and do FP's for the parks (which we sometimes don't keep) but we enjoy doing our own thing. (and, no, we aren't newbies that stand in the middle of the walkway with our maps) We've been going for years, so know exactly what/where we want to go as we decide.