Touring by removing what you DON'T want to do

[JeremyGNJ]

I found a way to make my tour planning a lot less stressful. I put all of the attractions from each park on an excel sheet. I sat down with the family and we together rated all attractions as one of these:

Must Do - This is why we're going to Disney, no way we're missing it
Want to Do - We're going to do this!
Don't Care - No big deal if we miss it
No Interest - We wouldn't do it even if there was no line

Armed with this information, I immediately remove the "Don't Care" and "No Interest" from the list. We might end up visiting some attractions in the "Don't care" list, but there's no reason to plan for them.

This reduced my touring plan to:
MK: 22 Attractions
Epcot: 11 attractions
DHS: 8 attractions
AK: 7 attractions

With this narrowed down list, picking FP+'s are super easy, and making a general plan to hit them all is no big deal (2 days at MK and 1 at each other park).

 

[DHSbutcher]

That's the way to do it! I did that last year planning our first disneyland trip my comparing what was the same here, what he had to do and see, and what not. It made it so much easier! We did this with menus as well and it help us plan where we wanted to eat. My mom and I are pretty picky eaters so it helped us tremendously and gave us a set of "options" we could hit up and know that the menu would have enough for us to choose from. Were wdw locals so we go about here a bit different.

 

[BeckityBobbidyBoo!]

I did the same!
1- I have to ride/see this
2- I want to ride/see this, but I'll be ok if I don't
3-Meh, it doesn't matter
4-No way!

Surveying the family was interesting and has made the list of attractions we must do very manageable.

 

[MattRyan]

I did the same...

Magic Kingdom
18 Attractions
4 Entertainment (Festival of Fantasy, MSEP, Celebrate the Magic, Wishes!)
Total 22

Epcot
11 Attractions
1 Entertainment (Illuminations)
Total 12

Animal Kingdom
9 Attractions
3 Entertainment (Festival of the Lion King, Flights of Wonder, Finding Nemo)
Total 12

Hollywood Studios
8 Attractions
2 Entertainment (Beauty and the Beast, Fantasmic!)
Total 10

 

[Jupiter]

I did this when I had to plan a trip for my kids that I wasn't going on. It does make it much easier.

 

[mlktwins]

This is what we are doing for this (our 2nd trip). We went for 8 days commando style our first trip 2 years ago. This trip will be more relaxed as we know what we do and don't want to do. I'm really happy how the planning is turning out .

I also did an excel spreadsheet -- made a row for everything to do at each park, put in columns for ride, show, meet and greet, put columns in for high, medium, low, no priority, and a notes column. My boys loved helping to fill it out. I also have the restaurants we want to eat at for each park marked on the bottom of the spreadsheet.

 

[wisblue]

That is exactly what I did years ago when our kids were old enough to know what they liked and didn't like.

We were always able to do the "must dos" and the "like to dos" at least once on the trip and also did a lot of the "OK, if we have time" items. Taking the unanimous "no way" things off the list makes the parks seem less intimidating.

I was always able to assure the group that I would find a way to do everything they wanted to do sometime during the trip and they followed me from there.

 

[mom2AidanAndEli]

We actually did this with the customizable maps on Disney's site. We went through the list and highlighted the must do/really want to do and ordered the maps. It was fun to see them and how much we really could skip. I think once we all talked about it, it was easier, too. In the past, we'd just do things because they were there and you were "supposed to". When we discussed ahead of time and everyone spoke up, it was easy to see what we could cut out!

 

[dramadrew]

I tried doing this with my DH, but he insisted that we're doing everything. At least I know my priority list when that falls through.

 

[Mom2Stitch]

Wonderful idea and it can really cut down on the stress and worry, thank you!

 

[MomofKatie]

We tried this a few times, but the 3 of us have VASTLY different must-dos and must-misses. DD would be crushed if she couldn't shop for hours in the World Showcase, but hates ITTBAB. DH thinks TOT is awful, but loves ITTBAB. I love TOT, but think shopping for more than a few minutes is a bore (and too expensive). We end up splitting up for some things and doing some together. Luckily, DD is a teen, so we can let her go off on her own when she wants.

 

[myadventurebook]

This is exactly what I've done when touring with BF since we started going on trips together. I'll put must do's in red and want-to-do's in green or something like that. I just leave off the things we aren't interested in.

I also usually give myself a list of what rides have the highest wait times/which ones have the lowest/etc and where they are in relation to each other so I know exactly what order to do things in if I get confused. I also plan out which QS to go to ahead of time if we don't have ADRs so we don't have to waste time choosing one. I'm a mega-planner (to say the least). Usually, though, it's not too hard to plan because it's just BF and I, and we're pretty easy-going.

It's going to be a bit more complicated next trip as I'm hoping to bring the whole fam-damily along. Most of them haven't been to WDW since 2002, so it'll be a bit hard to prioritize, especially since a couple of them will only be coming for a few days. I might be asking a lot of questions when the time comes to plan that trip... I don't know how you guys who have big families do it!