WDW for the non planner

[Mheato]

Hi All! I am content to have a plan on a spreadsheet and save it as the wallpaper on my phone We will be going over Easter where crowd levels are expected to be maxed out but my wife doesn't want to plan too much. We have both been but its been ages and its our first time as a family so basically we are first timers. Shes fine with making ADR's and it seems like she will go along with my recommended park for the day(using crowd calendars). I think she will be ok with pre selecting our FPs also but a broader touring plan she wont want to do for sure.

Is having our park selected and a FP plan enough to let us "wing it" the rest of the way? Trying to balance out her desire to be spontaneous with the need for a plan. Has anyone had a similar experience and any things that worked well for you? My back up plan is it have a full plan for day two and let us wing it on day one and have to wait all day haha!

 

[jenrose66]

Hi All! I am content to have a plan on a spreadsheet and save it as the wallpaper on my phone We will be going over Easter where crowd levels are expected to be maxed out but my wife doesn't want to plan too much. We have both been but its been ages and its our first time as a family so basically we are first timers. Shes fine with making ADR's and it seems like she will go along with my recommended park for the day(using crowd calendars). I think she will be ok with pre selecting our FPs also but a broader touring plan she wont want to do for sure.

Is having our park selected and a FP plan enough to let us "wing it" the rest of the way? Trying to balance out her desire to be spontaneous with the need for a plan. Has anyone had a similar experience and any things that worked well for you? My back up plan is it have a full plan for day two and let us wing it on day one and have to wait all day haha!

I'm not a huge planner, plus even when I go to the trouble of making a plan, things with kids change. I have gone one time after the roll out of FP+. I'm pretty sure I used all three FP's every day, but I'm not positive about it. We are mostly wing it people. I have been to WDW during the July 4th holiday twice, but it was 10 years ago, so I'm sure crowds have gotten heavier since then...but when we went during those times, we had NO PLAN! They were great trips and I didn't leave feeling like I missed out on anything.

I think the most constricting thing at Disney is ADR's. I have pretty much given up on sit down meals because I don't want to let a meal steer my entire day. I am perfectly happy eating QS and snacking thru the parks in between my rides

 

[larryz]

If you plan on doing the park-opening rope-drop, you'll have a better chance of getting more rides in earlier in the day.

 

[tabistar]

We plan the park we'll be in each day, ADRs, and FPs and that's it. With kids, it's hard to get more structured than that. It's worked great for us and dh and I are both type A plan everything-ers.

 

[GPC0321]

I'm going to be there over Easter too, and it's been 16 years since I've been. I don't want to over-plan either, but I do think having an idea of which parks on which days and maybe making an ADR for breakfast or lunch for that park and some FP+ for those parks is a good idea. I'm going with my 70+ year old parents, and we're early risers, so we'll probably hit the parks at their opening anyway. I'm thinking we'll do Animal Kingdom on Easter day as it's probably going to be the least crowded park that day.

What I've been doing this morning is checking out table availability at the places I want to eat for the big dates over CHRISTMAS, as I figure those are comparable times in terms of ADRs getting booked. We're just going to be really flexible about when we eat. For instance, I know I want to eat breakfast at the Crystal Palace on our MK day, but I don't really care what time. If it's 7:05, fine, we'll be there. If it's 10:15, fine, we'll grab a bagel before leaving the resort, go rope drop MK and ride stuff and walk around and then relax for a late breakfast. The other meal I might plan each day would be either a very late lunch or a very early dinner (in the 2-4pm range). That seems to be a time when spots are open, and works well if we've had a good breakfast that day. If breakfast winds up late, we probably won't be very hungry until then either, but if breakfast is early, we can snack in between. If we eat a nice lunch/dinner around 3pm, we'll be good to just find something quick later in the evening if we get hungry again.

As for rides and FP+, we plan on being in the parks early in the AM and then late in the PM, so I'm hoping that works to our advantage as well as trying to use the crowd calendars. 60 days out I'm only going to secure FP+ for fireworks and parades, which are a priority for us and something that I think would make those events more enjoyable for my folks. There are only three things in AK that are "must do" for us: the safari, Nemo musical, and Lion King, so we'll FP+ those even though the safari is probably the only one that really requires it. If Nemo and Lion King FP+ times don't flow, we'll blow them off and go when we want. Other than IllumiNations, Spaceship Earth is the only other "must do" for us in EPCOT, so that FP+ will be important. We'll decide on the other one (Seas with Nemo, maybe? I have to look back over the "tier" groups) whenever. We'll be there early anyway, so we can probably do a lot without FP+
I doubt we'll step foot inside HS. Just don't care for it much.

We're only there four nights, so two of those will be devoted to EPCOT and MK for IllumiNations and Wishes (and MSEP) FP+, but the other two will be "Where do you want to go tonight?" nights. We have park-hoppers, so those two nights give us our dose of spontaneity. It'll be nice on our last night there to decide which park we didn't get enough of and hop on a bus to soak in as much as we can. It's also good in case bad weather affects the parades or fireworks on an earlier night, we can just plan to do it one of our open nights.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful time!

 

[4EverFigment]

My advice:

Pack a couple of ponchos in case it rains. Bring a few snacks. Make sure you have sunscreen and comfortable shoes. Be prepared for close to capacity crowds, which means your non planner doesn't get to go on very many rides besides the FP's unless she's willing to stand in lines.

No one "has" to micromanage a day at the parks, but being prepared for the realities makes it more fun for all.

 

[sharonabe]

Easter week is the 2nd most crowded week of the year behind Christmas/New Years. You're going to need some kind of plan in order to manage the crowds. In our family, my DH doesn't like to plan, but I do. So I make the plan in such a way that it doesn't seem like we're following a plan. They know I'm more familiar with the parks and all that's going on, so they let me take the lead as to where we're going.

I don't think you need a minute by minute plan, but you need some idea of the attractions you'd like to see and in what order you'll see them. Otherwise, you get inside the gate and stand around saying, "what do you want to do? I don't know, what do you want to do?" and you waste precious time while the crowds are flowing around you.

I like your idea of you planning the second (and I would say following days) and let her see what having no plan on the first day is like. She'll probably be more than ready to follow your plan.

 

[itchin2go]

Take a look at this, particularly the back pages that show wait times and how they climb during the day:

http://www.easywdw.com/cheatsheets/mk_cheatsheet_v3.pdf

You should probably look at the heavy crowd page. (BTW - you can access cheat sheets like this for all parks at that website.)

If you know which rides to go to first, you're ahead of the game. You do not need a rigid touring plan, but the more knowledge you have, the better off you'll be.

We never have a rigid touring plan, but (1) we almost always enter a park at rope drop, and (2) we wouldn't, say, go to the teacups at rope drop and then try to hit Peter Pan at noon. That wouldn't be wise.

Also, for what it's worth, we mostly only make ADRs for dinner, and that way we're not tied down to anything for lunch. We do CS for lunch most days.

Hope this makes sense and helps some!

 

[epcotty]

That certainly seems like enough planning to me. We don't plan any more than that (and we don't do ADR's)

 

[disnut8]

Hi All! I am content to have a plan on a spreadsheet and save it as the wallpaper on my phone We will be going over Easter where crowd levels are expected to be maxed out but my wife doesn't want to plan too much. We have both been but its been ages and its our first time as a family so basically we are first timers. Shes fine with making ADR's and it seems like she will go along with my recommended park for the day(using crowd calendars). I think she will be ok with pre selecting our FPs also but a broader touring plan she wont want to do for sure.

Is having our park selected and a FP plan enough to let us "wing it" the rest of the way? Trying to balance out her desire to be spontaneous with the need for a plan. Has anyone had a similar experience and any things that worked well for you? My back up plan is it have a full plan for day two and let us wing it on day one and have to wait all day haha!

Yes - you just select your three FastPasses for that day at whatever park you have chosen and the rest of the day is yours. Just KISS (keep it simple stupid )

 

[wisblue]

We have visited frequently over the Easter break, including 2015. Our planning consists of:

1. Thinking about which park we will likely start at each day.

2 Because we almost always have hoppers or APs, we then think about what park we will likely want to go to later in the day (usually arriving around 4 or 5 PM). We may have one or two (at the most) ADRs and we will work those into the plan.

3. We then make FP+ reservations for some of our favorite attractions in the second park of the day, knowing that standby lines for those will be long.

That is it. It doesn't involve hours and hours of planning or scheduling anything close to every minute of every day. I would say I spend about an hour total on planning, including about 25 minutes to make a week's worth of FP reservations.

On the trip, we decide each day where to start the day (usually deciding the night before). We almost always are at a park at rope drop and are able to do most of our favorite attractions before the lines get too long. With the 7 AM EMH that they usually have at the MK that week, we can enjoy almost all of the park's major attractions with short waits before 11 AM without FPs and without long waits. Then we slow down for lunch, some of the park's "anytime" attractions, or general strolling. At the MK we might catch the early presentation of the parade.

If we feel like it, we might take a break in the middle of the day, either at our resort, by having lunch at another resort, or going to some place like Downtown Disney or the Boardwalk. At Epcot, after doing attractions in Future World, we can stroll around the park enjoying the flower and garden displays, sidewalk entertainment, and country pavilions.

If we decide we would rather go to a different park later in the day than the one where we have FP reservations, or not go to a park at all, we will just do that instead of feeling like the FPs somehow force us to go to that park.

That's our favorite time of year to visit given our limited choices with teachers in the family. The parks will be crowded, but with a good approach (not a detailed plan) we always have a great time. We are looking forward to doing it again in 2016 with our DVC reservations at the Poly and the APs we purchased last Easter.

 

[sharonabe]

itchin2go made a good point. Someone in your group needs to have at least a basic knowledge of which attractions build lines early and which attractions are available at almost any time of day. For those of us who make frequent visits, that knowledge is ingrained and we don't even think about it, but for a first-timer or been-a-long-time visitor, that type of information is needed if you don't want to spend the bulk of your day in long lines.

 

[bumbershoot]

I think she will be ok with pre selecting our FPs also but a broader touring plan she wont want to do for sure....

Trying to balance out her desire to be spontaneous with the need for a plan.[

Well, I'll tell you...there is nothing at all wrong with you planning, in your mind and on your bookmarked spreadsheet to your heart's content. That way you have a concept of the issues you might encounter, and you have ideas for those times when she stops (right int he middle of the walkway...non-planners always pull out the map and stop right in the middle of things) and asks "whattayawannadonext?" You know exactly what you want to do next! Amazing! You might also have suggestsions. Or helpful thoughts like "wow, it's 11am, let's make our way over to Space Mountain because "just in case" I made FP+ arrangements for it at 11:15. Sound cool to you?"

This is what I've found in my family, and it's possible it is the case in yours, too. The non-planners? They don't care about the planning. They just don't want to HEAR about it. They don't want the obsessive "but what about this? or that? what do YOU want to do at 8:18pm Easter Sunday?" They want to know they'll be fed, that there will be fun, that they'll get on some rides.

Sometimes...there's some planning that *someone* has to do to make those things happen. Just don't talk about it.

Easter week is the 2nd most crowded week of the year behind Christmas/New Years. You're going to need some kind of plan in order to manage the crowds.

Yes.

 

[gemini2727]

I am an uber-planner, it's something I really enjoy doing, so we've always done Disney that way. This last trip, however, was more last minute and not as planned out. I can tell you from my experience that, for me, planning as much as I can is the way to go. This time, we missed out on restaurants we wanted to visit, or times that we hoped to reserve. I'd rather have the plans in place and change them if we wanted to (keeping cancellation penalties for dining in mind!) than not plan and be at the mercy of fate. As it is, they changed park hours and messed up our pre-park-opening CP reservation, ugh. Still a great trip though, as always!

 

[I'mfarfaraway]

Hi All! I am content to have a plan on a spreadsheet and save it as the wallpaper on my phone We will be going over Easter where crowd levels are expected to be maxed out but my wife doesn't want to plan too much. We have both been but its been ages and its our first time as a family so basically we are first timers. Shes fine with making ADR's and it seems like she will go along with my recommended park for the day(using crowd calendars). I think she will be ok with pre selecting our FPs also but a broader touring plan she wont want to do for sure.

Is having our park selected and a FP plan enough to let us "wing it" the rest of the way? Trying to balance out her desire to be spontaneous with the need for a plan. Has anyone had a similar experience and any things that worked well for you? My back up plan is it have a full plan for day two and let us wing it on day one and have to wait all day haha!

Your family sounds like mine. What worked for us was for my husband to be able to really plan a few days out of trip, for us to kind of plan another few and for one day to be totally open. We will be there for 9 days. Our weekend plans are super detailed with ADRs, Cirque du soleil and fast passes while some most of the week days only have the fastpasses. I needed to have at least one day with no plans in case I just really wanted to relax.