Short notice trip planning issues

[Elliemay2]

My daughter's cheer team won a bid to compete at DW in May. This is a short notice trip and our first time staying offsite. We are going to stay at the BW in DS. We have been to DW twice. OCT2015 and DEC2016. Both times we stayed on site and had free dining. We still have our magic bands from those trips. Are they usable for our fast passes or should I even mess with it? We are required to buy our 3 day hopper tickets from Varsity Cheer so we cannot do a magic your way package. We will not know competition schedule until 1 week before so...if you have any ideas on how we should do a fast pass strategy, that would be a great help. As for food, we normally have the food plan and eat like royalty, but they only offer us $15 counter service vouchers. I think we will not get them and just eat counter service. Me and 2 of my kids will not eat a full meal, the only two that will is my husband and older son. Thoughts? I'm a planner and this last minute stuff has got me flustered. What has changed since Christmas that is a MUST SEE? Thanks!

 

[glassslippergirl]

I'm not sure how it works buying tickets from the source you'll use, but when I buy from a secondary vendor, I get a code for each ticket that I can link to my MDE account. Your old MBs should work.

If I were in your situation, I'd make FPs for what I want when I want as soon as my window opens. Then, when you find out the cheer schedule, change the ones you need to change. Chances are, some of your plans will work out, and others will need to change.

If you can't finalize FPs, you really can't make ADRs either, so CS seems like a good option in park. Remember that staying offsite and (presumably) having a car gives you access to less expensive off site options, too.

 

[lovethattink]

You can use your magic bands.

 

[Elliemay2]

Thank you!

 

[lovethattink]

Thank you!

Just a note on the magic band. The batteries expire, but the rfid chip keeps working. I have old bands that get us in the parks with no problem, but the ride pictures don't pick up automatically.

 

[Elliemay2]

Well, We just found out that we will not get to make our fast passes until we pick up our tickets when we arrive. URGH! So...no 30 day FP selections.

 

[monkeybug]

Just to offer some encouragement, I'm a huge planner-- I'm on here today researching and planning for a trip that is 7 months away--but due to weird circumstances our last trip was planned 5 days in advance, and it was actually really freakin' awesome! We also went in May (the first week) and I got pre-park BOG (which allowed us to ride 7DMT with no wait), Cali Grill, Ohana, a walk up lunch at Sci-Fi, and pretty much every fast pass we needed. I would still prefer to plan, but I was amazed that within a 24 hour period pretty much every "difficult" reservation was available at some point. Maybe I just got insanely lucky, but it was actually easier to get some things at the last minute than it had been months in advance before we changed our dates.

 

[danikoski]

Get the my Disney Experience app on your phone. Mom and I just recently had a trip where we couldn't get fast passes until the day before. The app made it work amazingly well, and we got the rides we wanted at HS, MK, and AK. I did book ADRs in advance. I also used Touring Plans to snag a BOG dinner a week before.

 

[danikoski]

We also did the PPO BOG and it rocked. We had like a 15 minute wait for Peter Pan and walk on for it's a small world. And this was after some dilly dallying by my mom.

 

[danikoski]

We also did PPO for Akershus to get on FEA...You potentially could do rope drop...We then used our Fast Pass tier 1 for Soarin

 

[Elliemay2]

Great ideas everyone!!!!

 

[danikoski]

Just to offer some encouragement, I'm a huge planner-- I'm on here today researching and planning for a trip that is 7 months away--but due to weird circumstances our last trip was planned 5 days in advance, and it was actually really freakin' awesome! We also went in May (the first week) and I got pre-park BOG (which allowed us to ride 7DMT with no wait), Cali Grill, Ohana, a walk up lunch at Sci-Fi, and pretty much every fast pass we needed. I would still prefer to plan, but I was amazed that within a 24 hour period pretty much every "difficult" reservation was available at some point. Maybe I just got insanely lucky, but it was actually easier to get some things at the last minute than it had been months in advance before we changed our dates.

Had the same experience in February. Made me realize maybe I don't have to be quite as obsessive about planning as I thought

 

[dreiwhit]

Well, We just found out that we will not get to make our fast passes until we pick up our tickets when we arrive. URGH! So...no 30 day FP selections.

Just a little encouragement. On our first trip last year (last week of Feb - 1st week of March), I had gone three weeks before to my local military ITT office to get Disney tickets. But, they only carried 1 day tickets - they would have to order the 5 day tickets we wanted and couldn't guarantee they would arrive in time.

So, they directed me to buy the tickets at the Shades of Green when we got down there. I bought them at SoG the day before we started touring the parks, so we couldn't set up FPs until the night before we toured our first park. We did manage to get all the FPs we wanted.

So don't despair - it can be done!

BTW, we only had about 4 weeks to completely plan this trip, since it was a last minute kind of trip. We (mostly my wife), did manage to get the planning done and had a great trip!

 

[Spork24]

I just got back from a last minute trip this past weekend. We got to do everything that was A high priority for us, but did miss out on a couple of things that we wouldn't have had we had 60+ days to plan.

I recommend using a different mindset for this trip. Consider it a bonus trip and just be excited to be there. Consider doing more than 1/2 headliners a day a bonus and it may improve your enjoyment of the trip as a whole.

 

[Elliemay2]

You all are making me feel better. I am normally an over planner. This will b an adjustment. We will not know our first day's competition schedule until a week prior. The following days will depend on how they do the first day. We could compete Friday only, Friday and Sat, Friday and Sunday, or all 3 days. We will not know the times of the next day until they announce it the day before. We could plan for "what if's", but we may just have to relax and go with it.