Pre-planning, how much time did you spend?

lugnut33

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Jan 17, 2008
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For those that have gone, or have a trip coming up, how much time did you have to spend pre-planning? Was that more or less than you have in the past?

For us, we went over Thanksgiving and I have to say that I spent way way more time pre-planning due to all the new changes. If you include all the time I spent on the Dis getting answers and trying to follow all the new things going on to make sure our trip fantastic, I probably spent 80+ hours.

For prior trips I had gotten to the point where I barely had to do any planning for a trip. Make the reservation, show up, and have a great time.

I also spent a lot more time while on vacation trying to adjust plans for FP+. One time we hopped on the WDW RR and took an entire loop around while I fiddled with our FP+ appointments.
 
Tons more time.

We're 40 something days out, and since we decided to book about 2 months ago, I've been crunching the numbers for our packages (and switching a couple times), making ADRs (and switching them) and most significantly, researching (and booking) FP+ and deciding how to make it work best for us. With all of this, I've been doing something related to planning our Disney trip almost every day. I blame some of it on the ability to easily change ADRs that on our last trip required a phone call, this trip I can watch times every day and have been able to bump our times up 10-15 minutes sometimes more to get more desirable times. Most of the time has been spent figuring out what the hell Disney is going to be doing when were there, and how we want to use our FP+. They've been switched multiples times already (usually for a complete park change) and I'm sure they'll be moved more before we leave.

On our past trips we did the same amount of package and resort research, but past that we booked our ADRs and roughly decided where we'd be each day but never really stuck to it. Other than that, it was go and enjoy.
 
I love planning it's half of my fun!!!! I had a March trip I just had to cancel and move to June! I am reading all the June items. I am a Disney travel agent so I have been reading my info from then as well during all the changes with the bands and Fp+
 
For our 2012 trip, I probably spent about 6 hours researching, booking stuff and making some personalized tourplans.

For my May trip with my sister, I spent about 3 hours doing the same.

For our upcoming trip, I spent 2 hours booking dining/special activities packages at 180 days out (ended up having to call because of glitches on the site). I spent 2 hours talking to IT/GS early on over our UTC tix and linking. I spent 2 hours setting up our FP+s and have probably spent another 2 hours since trying to make changes. I've made three sets of tourplans, probably 3 hours, constantly having to trash them and remake them as Disney has changed stuff (originally planned on FP-, originally no tiers, then no FP- in AK, now maybe no FP- anywhere?)

Add in the fact that I now DAILY check this site, Josh's site and WDWMagic just to keep up with the changes happening that could impact my trip, and I have spent at least 20 hours actively planning. But, hey, we're still 24 days out. :worried:
 

We've averaged a trip a year since 1999, usually of more than 7 park days each, next Oct we're going for 9. For all trips I spend more hours in planning than the number of hours we're actually in Fl., and since we book BoardWalk using rented DVC points I start less than a month after we return from a trip, I book 11 months out.

As for all the new MB, FP+ stuff, I might have spent an extra 8 hours customizing the bands and adding FP+ times.

Bill From PA
 
MONTHS! :cloud9:

I have been so excited about this trip I can hardly contain myself. I read these boards every night and spent a good part of my days trying to map out a plan of attack for each park, booking my ADRS, reading reviews on restaurants, and trying to understand everything.

I just feel like when you are spending this much money on a vacation :eek: I want it to be maximized to the best of my ability. After all, this trip cost more than my first (or second) car!!! :rotfl:
 
I also enjoy the planning, so I don't think of it as a negative. But, I don't know what some of you are spending time on (80 hours?), and maybe some of it has to do with having more complicated travel plans and groups. I estimate that I spent about 1-2 more hours than I would have otherwise. Almost all of this is because the FP+ system is tedious when it comes to selecting FP+ attractions and sliding reservations into preferred times.

Our upcoming trip is December 27 (arriving late afternoon) and leaving on January 1. I booked the DVC reservation at the 11 month mark and made our flight reservations as soon as Southwest's schedule opened up to cover our travel days (I booked those with Rapid Rewards points). I also made a dinner reservation for BOG for Monday, December 30 when that became available. All of that obviously had nothing to do with FP+ or MBs.

Even before I had any idea that we would have FP+ available, I was looking at some of the planning websites (Touring Plans and easy WDW) to sketch out which days we would spend at which parks to maximize our chances of doing what we want to do, including taking advantage of AM EMH. That plan involved our usual approach of starting at one park, taking a break in the middle of the day, and hopping to a different park later. I did more of this than I usually would because of the Christmas season, which I expect to be even busier than Easter Week, with which I have more and more recent experience.

I also got a head start learning about FP+ because one of my daughters participated in a test when she took a trip in August to visit her CM sister.

As our 60 day window approached I gave my daughter who is going with me on this trip a list of what I proposed for FP+ each day and she agreed with it. When the window opened, I went through the process of making the FP+ selections by selecting options for morning times and then changing them to the late afternoon and evening times that we wanted. This was by far the most tedious part of the process, and I hope that Disney can come up with a way to make this quicker. But, the whole thing took me about an hour.

The one complication I encountered was because we both have APs, and I had made FP+ reservations for a short trip of 3 days with my wife in early November. That is where I ran into the 7 day limit for APs, so I cancelled the FP+ for one of the days in November (when I figured, correctly as it turned out, that we wouldn't need FPs) so I could schedule the 5th day of the December trip.

The process of customizing MB's took about 2 minutes. The only challenge was getting my daughter to pick a color.

All in all, I probably spent 1-2 hours more on planning than I might have otherwise. But, the tradeoff for that is knowing that I have 15 PM FPs lined up that we wouldn't be able to get otherwise on very busy days. The fact that we made our reservations before tiering is an added bonus, but I would have been happy even with tiers because of the crowds at that time of the year. I am willing to trade the one or two FPs that we might have used in the morning for 3 later in the day. Barring some unforeseen issues, it is nice knowing that we are guaranteed at least one ride on all of our favorites on this short trip.
 
... Almost all of this is because the FP+ system is tedious when it comes to selecting FP+ attractions and sliding reservations into preferred times...

THIS! ^^^ Double or triple the time if wrestling with the stupid app is considered "planning". :(
 
I spend very little time pre-planning and it won't change for my trip in February. We are doing two days in the parks and will probably try to hit all 4 over those two days. We might decide which parks to do on which days ahead of time based on EMH but it is more likely we will just decide on the first day which parks to do that day. In that case we will just not grab any FP+ and tour standby or grab some that are left for one of the parks we will be in. I see no reason to spend any more time planning now that FP+ is here then I did before. I also really don't care that FP- is gone or that I will have to wait in some lines. I like the flexibility of not having to predetermine anything until I get there. I also don't have any ADRs for those two park days and won't make any unless it is an hour or two in the future.
 
I spent more time planning this year than ever before. Some of that was because of the additional FP+ component but mostly because this year we stayed 17 days and between what parks to visit when, what ADR's to make, what FP+ to schedule, avoiding crowds, balancing late nights with early mornings, etc..... it became almost a hobby of sorts.

Didn't track the number of hours but I do know that the closer we got the more hours I spent because park hours would change and so would FP+, some previously hoped for ADR's might become available, and just the fact that there is always a reason to tweak the schedule, right?

And then once we were there, there were plenty of reasons to change things around. The entire process can be enjoyable for some and probably a dread for others.

The result? Here:

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Hardly none, last trip, we planned like 2 hours worth....those were character meals for the granddaughters ( no dining plans for us... room only booking)

Up coming trip to BLT, less than last trip, it's only the wife and I and as far as I'm concerned anymore, the NO is the only parks I'm visiting....other are of no interest....after 50 trips, most years 2 trips....We know what we want, where we eat and what kind of fun to have....no planning s necessary anymore..
 
I spend very little time pre-planning and it won't change for my trip in February. We are doing two days in the parks and will probably try to hit all 4 over those two days. We might decide which parks to do on which days ahead of time based on EMH but it is more likely we will just decide on the first day which parks to do that day. In that case we will just not grab any FP+ and tour standby or grab some that are left for one of the parks we will be in. I see no reason to spend any more time planning now that FP+ is here then I did before. I also really don't care that FP- is gone or that I will have to wait in some lines. I like the flexibility of not having to predetermine anything until I get there. I also don't have any ADRs for those two park days and won't make any unless it is an hour or two in the future.
I agree, everybody should just tour like you. It would make the parks perfect.
 
Honestly, I've planned less for our upcoming Feb/March trip simply because Disney keeps changing things so much that it seems worthless to even try. I haven't even purchased tickets because I'm not sure how much time out of our 12 day trip I even want to spend at WDW. I have a reservation at Pop and at SoG and haven't yet decided where we'll be staying. I'm leaning toward SoG with more time away from WDW. Ordinarily, I could tell you exactly how many days until our trip and we'd have one ADR per day. Right now I'm feeling pretty meh toward Disney and not really wanting to give them my money.
 
My boyfriend and I were tossing around the idea of going to Disney world in June. And me being the impatient person I am, wanted to go as soon as possible which would be Jan 2014. So I have been planning and saving since June\July of this year.

I've never been the type to plan a vacation like a year or more in advance
 
I didn't have FP+ the last time but I spent a lot of time prep planning. But I'm a nut lol. I enjoy the pre planning. It's part of my fun. I'm trying to save money for a short trip in April. I'll have to wait and see how much I have to do than. Lol.

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards
 
Hours, days, weeks and months...It's to the point where I need a calendar/plan book for my vacation. LOL!! Where's the spontaneity?????
29 trips to Disney World and counting...next stop POFQ March 2014:love:
 


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