Type-A Trip Planners: Let's be friends!

[aharbin88]

Hi y'all!

I'm planning my first trip to the World, and I need help! This is not my first time GOING, just my first time PLANNING, btw.

We are going during the Christmas season 2010, in either November or December. The group will consist of me, DH, our 2 DDs (ages 3 and 15 months at travel time), MIL, FIL, SIL, and her 4 kids (ages 10, 8, 6, and 5 at travel time).

We recently bought into DVC, and we plan to stay at our home resort, SSR.

Now, what I need to know is: How do I know which parks to schedule which days? I know I should avoid EMH since we'll have PH passes, but apart from that, it seems like a shot in the dark. I suppose I should base my park days on ADRs, but it's almost a chicken or the egg argument. Should I pick my park days, and make ADRs accordingly, or should I make ADRs, and then go to whichever park the ADRs take us to that day.

So, can y'all fill me in on how you get started in planning? I feel that if I could just get myself started, I could do it all, but looking at a blank slate is making me feel overwhelmed.

I should also mention that I HEART spreadsheets, planning notebooks, Post-its, color-coded lists, highlighters, and any other organizational tool you can think of. If you can recommend a tool that you found helpful, I would greatly appreciate it!

 

[koolaidmoms]

Hi y'all!

I'm planning my first trip to the World, and I need help! This is not my first time GOING, just my first time PLANNING, btw.

We are going during the Christmas season 2010, in either November or December. The group will consist of me, DH, our 2 DDs (ages 3 and 15 months at travel time), MIL, FIL, SIL, and her 4 kids (ages 10, 8, 6, and 5 at travel time).

We recently bought into DVC, and we plan to stay at our home resort, SSR.

Now, what I need to know is: How do I know which parks to schedule which days? I know I should avoid EMH since we'll have PH passes, but apart from that, it seems like a shot in the dark. I suppose I should base my park days on ADRs, but it's almost a chicken or the egg argument. Should I pick my park days, and make ADRs accordingly, or should I make ADRs, and then go to whichever park the ADRs take us to that day.

So, can y'all fill me in on how you get started in planning? I feel that if I could just get myself started, I could do it all, but looking at a blank slate is making me feel overwhelmed.

I should also mention that I HEART spreadsheets, planning notebooks, Post-its, color-coded lists, highlighters, and any other organizational tool you can think of. If you can recommend a tool that you found helpful, I would greatly appreciate it!

I plan parks first as I don't want to be stuck in MK on a 9 day when the better parks to be in are AK or EP.

I make a spreadsheet with all the park hours and the days we are going to be there. I also list EMH, parade times, special shows (Fant., Ill, Wishes, etc.). Then I look at crowd calendars and what they rate as best park/worst park. From that I choose my parks.

The I choose my ADRs based on what park we will be in or what resort we may wish to visit.

I also laminate all my information on 4x6 cards before we leave (I am even making an extra set for DSIL and DBIL who are going with us this time).

I also have a three ring binder with all my travel information, park information, printed maps and complete itinerary.

Yeah, I love this stuff.

 

[Disney Commando]

You have alot of people in your party, so this is a big burden The 1st thing you need to do is homework. Printout all the rides,shows, resturants, prades in all the parks from this year (Nov, Dec), and see what everyone wants to do. Remember alot of shows and key attractions will be at night, MK would be a hard ticket. Write everything down and split it up into parks.

You have alot of time to plan so keep checking news & forums to get upto date info. You have a big group, it's going to be hard to make everyone happy.

The last 4 trips I got to plan came out awesome Our next trip is in the works for the 1st week of Dec. 2010 and I'm already planning. We just got back 11/08/09 from last trip. 8 days 7am - midnite everyday

As far as ADR's it's anyone's guess since you can book them before the park info is listed. If you have Park Hoppers & Extra Magic Hours this is when they would fall into play.

Also since you have young children, strollers are a must, this way when they bomb out you can go see the sights at the Boardwalk & DTD.

 

[Tomh]

I plan which park which day first. It's pretty hard to get any real planning done until the park hours for your dates are released, but there are some things you can do.

First off, decide if you want to take advantage of any of the EMH hours, morning, or evening. We always go to at least one evening EMH at MK, as there is just something special about being in the park late at night.

Next, decide if you want to see Fantasmic. Fantasmic is only shown certain nights. If you want to see it, then obviously, you need to visit DHS on a night that Fantasmic is showing. If you do NOT want to see it, then I would plan DHS for a day when Fantasmic is NOT showing, as there are likely to be significantly lower crowds. Also decide if your party wants to see Spectro Magic, which also shows only on selected days.

Having this information available will make it a lot easier to decide what parks to do on what days.

Now, I do a bit of "parallel processing." I figure out how many days we'll be in parks, and how many days I want to spend in each park. For example, this past August, we spent 10 1/2 days in the parks: 1 day in AK (evening EMH), 1 day in DHS (a Fantasmic day), 4 days in Epcot, and 4 days in MK (2 Spectro days, and one evening EMH), plus 1/2 day in MK for MNSSHP.

With that done, I opened up a new spread sheet, then made 5 rows for MK, 4 for Epcot, 1 for AK, 1 for DHS, and 1 for the day we spent at the resort and DTD. I then created columns, first for breakfast, lunch, and supper, then under each meal a name, CS, and TS column. Finally, at the end a Total column, again broken down into CS and TS.

Now for each park / day, I filled in where we would eat for each meal, and how many credits it would use from our dining plan, and then a running total in the totals column.

When I was done, I knew which restaurants we were going to eat in each park day. When park hours / schedules were released, I just matched up my park days to the park hours / schedules so we could see and do everything we wanted to.

At that point, I knew where I wanted to eat on each day, and simply needed to look at times for shows / parades, etc. and schedule my ADR's so that we wouldn't miss anything.

I know my explanation sounds really complicated, but it really just works it's self out, one step at a time.

 

[aharbin88]

Ok, so it sounds like I need to plan my park days first.

I think we are going to avoid EMH altogether, unless someone wants to do it by themselves. Our PH passes will allow that to happen, as most of the group can go back to the hotel and whoever wants to do EMH can do so. Since we have small children, we don't want to plan on keeping them out too late.

I don't know the group's feelings on Fantasmic, so I will look into that. I personally want to see Spectro, so I am going to try to make that happen. We will be attending MVMCP one night, so that means at least 2 MK days.

So, should I look at this year's park hours as a guide? Do they ever match up to the next year's? Also, are park hours typically released before the 180 day ADR window? My fear is planning on dinner at Le Cellier on Tuesday, and then finding out there are no openings for dinner at Le Cellier on Tuesday. Or finding out that Tuesday is an EMH day that we were hoping to avoid.

Also, can everyone weigh in on TourGuide Mike and/or Unofficial Guide's Touring Plans? Are they worth it? Is the crowd level information released before the 180 window? Can I look at this year's info to plan next year's week?

Ack!

 

[letthewookiewin]

I'm planning a trip for December 2010 and I am using this years calendar to pick what park to do on what day. Then I am doing are our ADR's according to that. I know they will more than likely change, but that's fine. My biggest problem is that my in laws might come with us. They are not sure yet. I am making different plans based on if they come or not. Most of our dinner ADR's have us going over to EPCOT for dinner. If my mil is with us, she will most likely be in a ECV, and I'm not sure if she will want to park hop over to EPCOT for dinner most nights. Also, I'm not sure how many days we're going to stay or which dining plan we are doing. I have several ADR plans based on different lengths of stay, different dining plan, and which resort we are staying at. Last time I looked I had close to 20 different ADR scedules. Now I'll have to do several more in case my in laws come with us.

 

[WelovMickey!]

Have you checked out this thread yet?
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2173185

It's fabulous

 

[aharbin88]

Have you checked out this thread yet?
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2173185

It's fabulous

I hadn't seen that! Thank you, thank you, thank you!