Scrap your plans and start over?

[EdmondD]

I've got my beautiful, carefully crafted agenda for our trip in May 2017, with numerous considerations for each day. For example, RoL on our AK day (it will be ready by then, right???) means a later start the following day so our 6yo gets enough sleep and thus that impacts what we do on that day and he's going to do the Pirate Adventure Cruise from the Beach Club, which only runs a few times a week, etc. etc.

And while we don't put as much emphasis on ADRs or where we eat as some do, there are a few places we've never gotten to that are on our list for this trip (Sci Fi and Sanaa, to name two).

I know very well that as the time gets closer the announcement of EMHs or EMM (if that's still happening) or some other unforseen thing like a park closing early for a private event may lead me to change a day, which creates a domino effect and a change of each day and potential loss of ADRs and all that jazz. I've told my wife many times as we've talked about the schedule, this is all subject to change.

So I'm curious...how many of you have decided you had to scrap your plans and go back to the drawing board at some point? And how did it go?

 

[SA mom]

We only travel about every 2 years and generally do not make plans until the EMH are released. EMH drives our whole schedule. We did have a shake up of schedule in November of 2010 when Fantasmic was scheduled sporadically within a month of the trip. We had to change parks to see Fantasmic and that did not coincide with EMH. It was the one time we did not have park hoppers. We will never go hopperless again.

 

[Disneylover99]

I constantly change/tweak plans leading up to a trip. It's always doable. Sometimes it has a domino effect on a few things, but being flexible helps.

Occasionally we scrap our plans the day before or day of, when we are there. Change parks, fp's, ADR's, etc... Just go with the flow.

 

[busymommy2pink]

I always have our "goal" plan. We book about a year in advance. We are also going may 2017. I will finalize and move stuff around when EMH are released. But generally keep it the way it is for the most part. We like to have a pool day in the middle, so we always choose a park to do late the night before. Sometimes we want to sleep in, so those are days we will do Epcot world showcase "rope drop" at 11am lol. I just keep a list of the must do dining and tweak as the vacation gets closer. Last year they pulled a fast one on me and wanted to end at AK instead of MK, so sadly, I cancelled my 7DMT, splash and jungle cruise fast passes from two months before and we went to AK. My family relies on me to guide the vacation and have no idea what goes into planning it lol. We have a general idea of when to avoid certain parks, especially MK.

 

[micksn]

Made all our plans months ago, we now have 2 x 8.00 breakfast reservations at MK which now opens at 8.00, Rivers of Light will not be running and we have 2 x FP's for Jungle book (I imagine we will only use one of those!) The Hulk is still not in soft opening (I'm watching on a daily basis) Celebrate the magic is dark during August, We had a breakfast planned in Sunshine Seasons which is now closed for breakfast. Coronado Springs was rumoured to start a refurbishment last October (I booked in September)
We're still very excited and looking forward to all of our experiences. Can't wait to see The tree of life at night, experience the new Soarin and FEA, see the star wars fireworks at HS and Kong at Universal. We have some restaurants that are new to us and some that we love to return to, looking forward to Royal pacific at Universal and our first stay at Coronado! Now we just have to hope the weather isn't a total washout
Less than 2 weeks and we'll be there!

 

[DisneyFive]

The most I've had to do is swap a day or two. Never started over from scratch. Sometimes I start out with a few completely different schedules though, and run it by my wife and kids and we all choose our favorite together.

Dan

 

[scrapquitler]

We don't schedule so many things that we find a domino effect if something changes. At most, we have something like a MVMCP scheduled that is set in stone, the rest we plan is very flexible.

 

[loves to dive]

We don't make plans other than the dates we are going to be there and where we are staying. Other than that we are totally open and go with the flow type of people. We make FPs the night before and I've been known to change those when something I've scheduled for later has a short line so I'm standing in line cancelling and switching. We make ADRs morning of or during the day on MDE while walking around. The only exceptions are I always book an ADR for tea at the GF in advance and during F&W I book any F&W special meals or seminars I might want in advance and then work my days around those.

 

[Jadyreen1282]

Occasionally we swap days to change adrs and such. This year I swapped things around to accommodate mnsshp.

 

[TigerlilyAJ]

I tweaked our two DLR trips, but that was not chock-a-block with daily ADRs like this first, and possibly only, WDW trip is for us. I feel like if we need to change something, it really could create a domino effect, so I'm living in fear of 9am December openings becoming 8am, so that all my highly pursued PPO character meals need to be revised. Already I made a rookie mistake of one of those PPO meals (Akershus) coming the day after our MVMCP, when we'll probably need a later start after staying out late for our younger kids. And I'm still trying for a Fantasmic H&V dinner package, which could change things.

 

[SaintsManiac]

We are so far out (473 days to be exact ) and we've debated and changed and moved dates, etc. I think we are finally settled on where to stay and we are definitely settled on when to go. We change plans a lot! We were changing things up until 2 weeks or so before we left last time. We hopped at the last minute on the trip. We canceled ADRs the day before. We don't like to have a strict itinerary.