Please look over my plans-First Time

ashleyr409

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Joined
Jul 12, 2016
Messages
520
Good morning,

Today was my day to book Fastpass. I was and still am super nervous. This will be my family first Disney Vacation. We are going June 1-June 8 2 adults kids will be 15,12,6. We are staying at B Resort Hotel and Spa. TIA for reading my post. Please help if you can. I know that it can't be perfect but I just want to make sure I did it correctly.

Sunday June 2 Park Hours: 9am-10pm
SPLASH 10:15-11:15
BUZZ 11:15-12:15
BTMR 12:35-1:35
AFTERNOON BREAK
OHANA DINNER@3:30PM COME BACK DINNER AND STAY TILL CLOSE

Monday June 3 Park Hours 8-9 (8-9)EMH
RD FOP
NAVI RIVER 9:00-10:00
TUSKER ROL 10:15-12:15
EVEREST 12:30-1:30
DINOSAUR 1:45-2:45
AFTERNOON BREAK
COME BACK AND CLOSE(TRY TO GET KALI RIVER)

Tuesday June 4 Park Hours: 9-11 (9pm-11pm)EMH
FEA 9:20-10:20
MISSION SPACE 10:30-11:30
SPACESHIP EARTH 11:40-12:40
TRY TO GET FP FOR SOARIN
AFTERNOON BREAK
COME BACK AROUND 5 UNTIL CLOSE

Wednesday June 5 Park Hours 9-12 (10-12)EMH
OHANA BREAKFAST @10:20
SPACE MOUNTAIN 1:00-2:00
PETER PAN 2:25-3:25
MEET MICKEY AND MINNIE 3:50-4:50 Should I change this to something else
EDIT: SDMT 4:15-5:15
WILL DO MEET MICKEY BEFORE OR AFTER STANBY LINE

AFTERNOON BREAK
COME BACK TO CLOSE

Thursday June 6 Park Hours 9-9
RD TSM, ALIEN SAUCER
LUNCH @SCI FI 11:25
SDD 1:05-2:05
ToT 2:05-3:05
RnR 3:05-4:05
AFTERNOON BREAK COME BACK FOR FANTASMIC

Friday June 7 Park Hours 9-9
FOP 9:35-10:35
KILIMANJARO SAFARIS 10:45-11:45
FESTIVAL OF LION KING 12:30-12:45 Should I change this

 
Last edited:
I think it looks like a pretty good plan. Most importantly, you have a plan. Now you can relax. Don't be nervous. No plan is perfect and no plan will withstand contact with Disney. Be ready to change on the fly based on ride closures, family member preferences, and weather. By ready, I mean mentally
 
looks good to me. if you are wanting to RD any headliner get to the park about 45 minutes before the park opens

and also do not stress if you can not do everything because you can not do everything

and most of all have fun
 
Your plan looks good. You know how many people go for their first time and don't even book fastpass or don't book it right away thinking they will get to it eventually and then don't get the rides they want. You are way ahead of the game compared to some!

As far as your FP for Meet Mickey and Minnie, it's a cute family picture to have. I like character meets, but you could always get a FP for Jungle Cruise or Buzz if you don't want to do another character meet. Personally, I think the lion king show is the best on property and the theater does fill up so if you think your crowd will be interested I'd keep the FP. Just be prepared to have the kids want to stay in the park longer than that. With kids those ages, that is a lot of afternoon breaks. I would consider using Uber/Lyft to get back and forth between the resort when you are doing so many breaks or you will lose tons of time on your trip sitting in a bus going back and forth.
 

Great planning.

As far as Lion king. I would change it to Everest or the Kali Rapids since you were looking for that earlier.

Any fastpasses available for SDMT

Also you will want to do TEST TRACK
 
Great planning.

As far as Lion king. I would change it to Everest or the Kali Rapids since you were looking for that earlier.

Any fastpasses available for SDMT

Also you will want to do TEST TRACK

I totally forgot SDMT will look now.
YES for Test Track
 
I think your plan looks good — you’ve built in plenty of down time (which is always my struggle whenever we go!). For Epcot, you should be able to get Soarin’ after your first 3 FP’s bc it’s still early enough in the day. Just use that refresh method and search in smaller groups to find overlapping times and it should be relatively easy. Test Track is another Epcot ride that is on my family’s don’t miss list! It’s my seven year old DD’s favorite ride as well as my husbands. So if you’re able to snag that or go later in the evening or go during dinner time when the standby wait times typically drop. Also, the Soarin’ standby times go way down at the end of the day (although that’s when you’ll likely be wanting to watch the fireworks) but it’s good to know in case you aren’t able to snag a FP. For AK, we personally love the Festival of the Lion King show (it’s our favorite at Disney) and FP it every year. But we also love musical shows — so totally could be a personal preference thing. We’ve done Kali too and I’ve always managed to score an extra FP after using my first 3 for it so you may have success doing that too. For MK, meeting Minnie and Mickey is a really neat experience and one that I personally wouldn’t skip as it’s your first trip! Regardless, your plans look awesome and you’re going to have an amazing time! (I’m jealous as we just returned on Sunday from our annual trip.) Enjoy!!
 
We just got back from our first trip! (At least, first for me and the girls, and my wife hand't been in 30-some yrs.) I'd reiterate the advice to not freak out.* But if you're like me, you're enjoying the planning and looking for hard data, so here are some thoughts!

Monday June 3 Park Hours 8-9 (8-9)EMH
RD FOP
NAVI RIVER 9:00-10:00
TUSKER ROL 10:15-12:15
It might be impossible, but I'd encourage you to make every effort to FP FoP (even though you have one on your last day) and RD Navi River. Navi seems to almost always be a very easy RD (we waited 30' when arriving 10' after start of EMH; if we'd been earlier it would have been walk-on), and FoP even at RD seems to be an arduous multi-hour experience. You'd lose the chance to do other things with your time and start the day with a tense and unpleasant ordeal. But if you can't get the FP, then never mind I said that!! it will be great. And it's true you'll want to do FoP more than once—IMO the best ride in Disney World right now. We started our trip with it, and it was a truly magical thing to do first.

I heartily support lunch at Tusker, though I would warn to show up early for ROL or your prioritized seating might be gone.
I also heartily support the afternoon breaks. We actually only went back to our resort two days, once to nap and explore the resort and pool, and once to change into full-on princess cosplay with wigs and all. We're paying enough for hotel amenities that it's nice to enjoy them. But even if you're feeling better than you thought and want to ride out the afternoon in park, take the pace easy and use it to check out some of the more restful activities—explore Tom Sawyer's Island, do the Gorilla or Maharajah trails, sit and marvel at an EPCOT pavilion.
Philosophical sidebar: This is about what makes Disney different from other theme parks. If the point is to race from roller coaster to roller coaster, then for one thing there are places with bigger and scarier coasters, and for another you'll be run off your feet. The point of Disney is "Imagineering," which means immersive detail. It's to spend time saying "Oh look at that, I can't believe they thought of that." The inlaid murals under Cinderella's castle, the fake layer of dust on the cooling pipes running through the FoP queue. Everybody, I'm sure, has their own style of "doing Disney" and their own pace, but for us, especially for a first trip, we needed a pace that let us explore, marvel, and rest, even in the parks. That often meant that each FP actually took the hour allotted to it, what with getting there, getting through the gift shop, and getting to the next thing with a bathroom break on the way. All that is to say, maybe a trip back to the hotel in the afternoon will be needed for that restful experience, but maybe it will put enough pressure on the remainder of the day that it's a net loss. Don't be afraid to decide on the fly—or to put the 6-yr-old in a stroller (or Mom or Dad in a wheelchair!).

BUZZ 11:15-12:15
Buzz was a very fun ride and I'm glad we did it. It's exactly the sort of ride, though, that you can often snag a "4th FP" for, and wait times are usually under an hour anyway. You might try to poach a Space Mtn FP out of it instead (unless your party isn't that into coasters. It was my eldest's favorite ride at WDW!). (By the way, if you haven't read https://www.mousehacking.com/blog/disney-world-fastpass-strategy yet, especially the stuff at the bottom about "tap & grab," do so. I found that the notion that you could modify a high-demand FP to an earlier time was unlikely—no, you can't budge your FoP's time even day-of, though I was surprised to score Tower of Terror and even Slinky Dog as post-3rd FPs. But most of all, don't despair if the FPs you got weren't exactly what you wanted; keep checking especially in this first week after FP day; I saw some movement.)

MEET MICKEY AND MINNIE 3:50-4:50 Should I change this to something else
That depends a lot on how your party feels about character meetings. One of my daughters was absolutely freaked out by these big-headed monsters and by personal attention, and the other could take it or leave it. I'd point out that you'll meet (probably) Mickey, Goofy, & Daisy at Tusker House. We also rounded out our character quota easily with Snow White, Dopey, Grumpy, and THE EVIL QUEEN at Storybook Dining w Snow White, and the whole star-studded cast at Cinderella's Royal Table. Personally I wouldn't burn a FP or more than 30' in line on a character meeting on my first trip, but that's just my priorities. I notice your plan doesn't include Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Maybe you couldn't snag the FP (and maybe you won't be able to), but if you could that's what I'd put there. Don't get me wrong, it's not that awesome, and I wouldn't stand in line 4 hours for it, but it strikes the perfect balance of "cute dark ride" with "mildly thrilling coaster." Your first day has Early Morning Magic, which I found the most painless way of getting access to 7DMT plus Peter Pan et al. It would be quite a chunk of change for 5, but I didn't regret it. (Granted, I only had two "Disney adults"!)

FESTIVAL OF LION KING 12:30-12:45 Should I change this
Well, don't skip seeing the show, for sure! Believe the hype—acrobats, fire jugglers, aerialists, great singers. (Also, we did the Nemo musical which I'd heard poo-poohed, perhaps because it's not as awesome as Lion King. But it was also well worth catching; if there were no Lion King everyone would be singing the praises of Nemo. Two very different approaches.) But it's true that shows can be a "waste" of a Fastpass. They don't usually get you any better seating and it doesn't (significantly) affect your wait; everybody has to wait until the previous show finishes. The catch is that you wait in a shorter line, and this is a popular show. We showed up maybe 20' before show time and only barely got in, taking some of the last seats in the theater. You do not want to miss getting in and have to wait until the next one. But yeah, for Indy in particular and shows in general my advice would be "Don't waste the FP, show up 30' early, and aim for a less-popular show time," UNLESS it's a very high-traffic day. I'm no expert but in June you ought to be lower traffic than our Spring Break experience. So maybe, if your family are coaster lovers, you want to turn this into a second Everest?

* One point of view that helped us keep things in perspective was the question, "What would it take to 'ruin the trip?'" It's conceivable—a hurricane shuts down FL, somebody breaks a leg, etc. But missing a FP, a ride being down, a rude CM—these things don't have to "ruin" the day or the trip. Let them be disappointments, but don't let them overcloud the experience.
 
I don't think I would book a FP in the first hour the park is open, but I would keep the one in Epcot because FEA is hard to get. Maybe that first MK day you can change that one?
Festival of the Lion King is the BEST, so if you give up that FP, don't miss it. :)
 
Looks great! I agree with the above poster. You don't need FP usually for the first hour of park opening unless its something like FOP, SDMT or SDD. I went as Magic Kingdom was opening (not even RD) and got on HM, BTRM, PoC, and JC all in an hour before my CP reservation. Fine to keep just for convenience and maybe even arriving in park and watching the show at the castle and heading over to BTRM towards the end of the hour around 10:00am.

Hope that helps!
 
We just got back from our first trip! (At least, first for me and the girls, and my wife hand't been in 30-some yrs.) I'd reiterate the advice to not freak out.* But if you're like me, you're enjoying the planning and looking for hard data, so here are some thoughts!


It might be impossible, but I'd encourage you to make every effort to FP FoP (even though you have one on your last day) and RD Navi River. Navi seems to almost always be a very easy RD (we waited 30' when arriving 10' after start of EMH; if we'd been earlier it would have been walk-on), and FoP even at RD seems to be an arduous multi-hour experience. You'd lose the chance to do other things with your time and start the day with a tense and unpleasant ordeal. But if you can't get the FP, then never mind I said that!! it will be great. And it's true you'll want to do FoP more than once—IMO the best ride in Disney World right now. We started our trip with it, and it was a truly magical thing to do first.

I heartily support lunch at Tusker, though I would warn to show up early for ROL or your prioritized seating might be gone.
I also heartily support the afternoon breaks. We actually only went back to our resort two days, once to nap and explore the resort and pool, and once to change into full-on princess cosplay with wigs and all. We're paying enough for hotel amenities that it's nice to enjoy them. But even if you're feeling better than you thought and want to ride out the afternoon in park, take the pace easy and use it to check out some of the more restful activities—explore Tom Sawyer's Island, do the Gorilla or Maharajah trails, sit and marvel at an EPCOT pavilion.
Philosophical sidebar: This is about what makes Disney different from other theme parks. If the point is to race from roller coaster to roller coaster, then for one thing there are places with bigger and scarier coasters, and for another you'll be run off your feet. The point of Disney is "Imagineering," which means immersive detail. It's to spend time saying "Oh look at that, I can't believe they thought of that." The inlaid murals under Cinderella's castle, the fake layer of dust on the cooling pipes running through the FoP queue. Everybody, I'm sure, has their own style of "doing Disney" and their own pace, but for us, especially for a first trip, we needed a pace that let us explore, marvel, and rest, even in the parks. That often meant that each FP actually took the hour allotted to it, what with getting there, getting through the gift shop, and getting to the next thing with a bathroom break on the way. All that is to say, maybe a trip back to the hotel in the afternoon will be needed for that restful experience, but maybe it will put enough pressure on the remainder of the day that it's a net loss. Don't be afraid to decide on the fly—or to put the 6-yr-old in a stroller (or Mom or Dad in a wheelchair!).


Buzz was a very fun ride and I'm glad we did it. It's exactly the sort of ride, though, that you can often snag a "4th FP" for, and wait times are usually under an hour anyway. You might try to poach a Space Mtn FP out of it instead (unless your party isn't that into coasters. It was my eldest's favorite ride at WDW!). (By the way, if you haven't read https://www.mousehacking.com/blog/disney-world-fastpass-strategy yet, especially the stuff at the bottom about "tap & grab," do so. I found that the notion that you could modify a high-demand FP to an earlier time was unlikely—no, you can't budge your FoP's time even day-of, though I was surprised to score Tower of Terror and even Slinky Dog as post-3rd FPs. But most of all, don't despair if the FPs you got weren't exactly what you wanted; keep checking especially in this first week after FP day; I saw some movement.)


That depends a lot on how your party feels about character meetings. One of my daughters was absolutely freaked out by these big-headed monsters and by personal attention, and the other could take it or leave it. I'd point out that you'll meet (probably) Mickey, Goofy, & Daisy at Tusker House. We also rounded out our character quota easily with Snow White, Dopey, Grumpy, and THE EVIL QUEEN at Storybook Dining w Snow White, and the whole star-studded cast at Cinderella's Royal Table. Personally I wouldn't burn a FP or more than 30' in line on a character meeting on my first trip, but that's just my priorities. I notice your plan doesn't include Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Maybe you couldn't snag the FP (and maybe you won't be able to), but if you could that's what I'd put there. Don't get me wrong, it's not that awesome, and I wouldn't stand in line 4 hours for it, but it strikes the perfect balance of "cute dark ride" with "mildly thrilling coaster." Your first day has Early Morning Magic, which I found the most painless way of getting access to 7DMT plus Peter Pan et al. It would be quite a chunk of change for 5, but I didn't regret it. (Granted, I only had two "Disney adults"!)


Well, don't skip seeing the show, for sure! Believe the hype—acrobats, fire jugglers, aerialists, great singers. (Also, we did the Nemo musical which I'd heard poo-poohed, perhaps because it's not as awesome as Lion King. But it was also well worth catching; if there were no Lion King everyone would be singing the praises of Nemo. Two very different approaches.) But it's true that shows can be a "waste" of a Fastpass. They don't usually get you any better seating and it doesn't (significantly) affect your wait; everybody has to wait until the previous show finishes. The catch is that you wait in a shorter line, and this is a popular show. We showed up maybe 20' before show time and only barely got in, taking some of the last seats in the theater. You do not want to miss getting in and have to wait until the next one. But yeah, for Indy in particular and shows in general my advice would be "Don't waste the FP, show up 30' early, and aim for a less-popular show time," UNLESS it's a very high-traffic day. I'm no expert but in June you ought to be lower traffic than our Spring Break experience. So maybe, if your family are coaster lovers, you want to turn this into a second Everest?

* One point of view that helped us keep things in perspective was the question, "What would it take to 'ruin the trip?'" It's conceivable—a hurricane shuts down FL, somebody breaks a leg, etc. But missing a FP, a ride being down, a rude CM—these things don't have to "ruin" the day or the trip. Let them be disappointments, but don't let them overcloud the experience.


Thank you so much for this. I truly appreciate this.
 
Looks great! I agree with the above poster. You don't need FP usually for the first hour of park opening unless its something like FOP, SDMT or SDD. I went as Magic Kingdom was opening (not even RD) and got on HM, BTRM, PoC, and JC all in an hour before my CP reservation. Fine to keep just for convenience and maybe even arriving in park and watching the show at the castle and heading over to BTRM towards the end of the hour around 10:00am.

Hope that helps!

If I was able to change my first day, how would you change it?
 
I don't think I would book a FP in the first hour the park is open, but I would keep the one in Epcot because FEA is hard to get. Maybe that first MK day you can change that one?
Festival of the Lion King is the BEST, so if you give up that FP, don't miss it. :)

I can change BTMR TO 12:40 AFTER BUZZ what do you think? And leave open the first hour
 
One caution that I would have. You have a lot of late nights followed by early mornings. When you include travel time to and from the resort that will make for some short nights. Afternoon breaks will help but I know our family would get pretty cranky after a few of those days. (Myself included).

If your family is good with the short nights then you will have a great time.
 
One caution that I would have. You have a lot of late nights followed by early mornings. When you include travel time to and from the resort that will make for some short nights. Afternoon breaks will help but I know our family would get pretty cranky after a few of those days. (Myself included).

If your family is good with the short nights then you will have a great time.
Oh yeah, one thing I would not have guessed is how long getting from "final attraction" to bed took (and vice versa!). You're off-site. Are you driving? That means at MK you have to ferry or bus across the lagoon to the parking lot. I was there one night witnessing that process take hours—like, twos of hours—as people just kept pouring on to the ferries. Without exaggeration it might be two hours from the end of fireworks until you're in bed. Ways to mitigate that might include Ubering—but don't make the mistake we did: Magic Kingdom is the one park where Uber can't come right to the gates. They come to the TTC at the parking lot. The workaround is to walk to the Contemporary and Uber from there. But it might be surge pricing at park close.

Anyway, it's hard to pass up any fireworks (especially Happily Ever After), but if you have any, like, "EMH until midnight" nights I wouldn't feel compelled to use every minute. And I'd de-emphasize rope drop. If you aim for a less-popular ride, you can often "rope drop" by showing up right at park opening (or, like us, 10' later) and still have 30' wait or less. Your trip is 6 days, the same length as ours, and I can tell you every minute of sleep counted.
 
I can change BTMR TO 12:40 AFTER BUZZ what do you think? And leave open the first hour
I think it's up to you about what your priorties are. If those 3 rides are priorities, go for it! The hesitation I see in changing anything is you want that afternoon break before ohana. Keep the BTRM and jump on 2 rides before that one or just hang out at the castle, watch the opening show with Mickey and shop. Depends how rushed you want to feel to get on ride after ride or if you want to enjoy just walking around. Most crowds will be new fantasyland in line for SDMT or SM in tomorrowland.
 
Oh yeah, one thing I would not have guessed is how long getting from "final attraction" to bed took (and vice versa!). You're off-site. Are you driving? That means at MK you have to ferry or bus across the lagoon to the parking lot. I was there one night witnessing that process take hours—like, twos of hours—as people just kept pouring on to the ferries. Without exaggeration it might be two hours from the end of fireworks until you're in bed. Ways to mitigate that might include Ubering—but don't make the mistake we did: Magic Kingdom is the one park where Uber can't come right to the gates. They come to the TTC at the parking lot. The workaround is to walk to the Contemporary and Uber from there. But it might be surge pricing at park close.

Anyway, it's hard to pass up any fireworks (especially Happily Ever After), but if you have any, like, "EMH until midnight" nights I wouldn't feel compelled to use every minute. And I'd de-emphasize rope drop. If you aim for a less-popular ride, you can often "rope drop" by showing up right at park opening (or, like us, 10' later) and still have 30' wait or less. Your trip is 6 days, the same length as ours, and I can tell you every minute of sleep counted.

We are staying at a Disney Spring hotel. We are thinking about using the buses or just uber.
 
Also, you can delete the fp for BTRM and save it for when you return to the park after dinner for SDMT or another ride because rides will have heavy lines later in the evening.
 


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