Travelling as a big group (extended family)

[trivial]

For those who have travelled to Disney World with extended or multiple families, what advice would you give? Please give as many tips as you can think of.

I will be planning our trip of 10-15 people, but will leave it up to the individual groups to decide how closely they want to follow my itinerary, although we all plan to at least be at the same park each day, and eat dinner together. I've been told that touring the parks together as one big group could be difficult, but I suspect that's what most of the family will want to do the majority of the time. Any comments or suggestions?

 

[Bob P]

We often go with a group of nine, and to keep our sanity we have our ADRs but during the day we split up and agree to meet at a certain time for meals. If everyone is in the same frame of mind we will sometimes stay together all day, but we find there is less chance for friction when you give the subgroups some space!

 

[SalandJeff]

We are going with a large group of 15-19 in October. We do have families who are arriving/leaving on different days. I made ADRs for most nights for all of us. We are all also going to MNNSHP.

For the other days, I sketched out an itinerary of what we are planning to do. Some days we may all go to the same park, but will probably split up once there because we have different age groups and it is too difficult to move around the parks with a large group. On some days, we will have totally different plans because not everyone wants to go to all the parks, etc.

You need to be somewhat flexible, plan some things and ADRs, but let people go their own way whenever they choose. You cannot go to WDW with that large a group and expect to dash around and get as much done as you would on our own. Try to relax things as much as possible so no one gets on anyone else's nerves! Have fun!