What do you do at your WDW planning meeting?

[KittyKitty]

I am going to have a planning meeting with my adult Newbies. Maybe print out some menus, show the Disney DVD, Get on you tube for rides.

What do you do at your WDW planning meetings?

 

[KalamityJane]

Depends. I pretty much told mine I was doing the planning because they didn't care one lick. They mostly just want to show up and rides rides. I may do a "here's our itinerary, here's your Fastpasses, we will be at this restaurant for meal 1, etc." I've been using Touring Plans and they are kind of brilliant in that you can share itineraries pretty easily. Also, I try to do small bites at once, or they get all overwhelmed. I sent out an email saying basically, "all I need to know from you is if X day will work, and if you want 1 or more days at WDW (I'm dealing with locals)". I got that info and near FP window I then asked which ride they absolutely needed to ride (my itinerary is hitting headliners). I think if you piece it out like that, it's not overwhelming and works well.

 

[FirstTimeDisneyVisit]

I am going to have a planning meeting with my adult Newbies. Maybe print out some menus, show the Disney DVD, Get on you tube for rides.

What do you do at your WDW planning meetings?

We do all that and we show the resort we are staying at and possibly the restaurants we are going to eat on you tube as well.

 

[Klayfish]

Um...have a cup of coffee with my wife. We're done planning long before we're done the coffee.

But if I had a newbie with me, I agree that I'd pull up maps, YouTube if needed.

 

[KalamityJane]

I think there's a site, newbie's guide to WDW or something along those lines. Might be good to grab ideas from it on what to include?

 

[PSUGuy]

Wifey and I are staying at the Board Walk this Nov as usual, daughters, sons in law and grandkids joining us this time, some of them in a rented house off site, we put them all on our Friends and Family so they can make FP+ choices 60 days out. Below is an email I sent them to kick start our planning:


A few thoughts on the Disney trip. There's no need to make a job out of this but some advance thinking will help everybody have a nice relaxed time and still get the most out of an expensive vacation. According to the current rules all of us can make Fast Pass choices 60 days out, Sun Sept 3 seems to be the date, I'll confirm that. Several rides are so popular you either have to have a FP or else get there first thing in the morning or else face 90 min and worse waits. The whole trip won't be like that, just a hand full of rides. Here's some decisions that will affect all this. Are you guys going to be at park opening or not? If so, we'll get in several rides as walk ons thus saving Fast Passes for later. Also, are you all driving direct to the parks where we can meet up or are you coming to Board Walk? This makes sense when going to Epcot and Hollywood Studios as they're a stroll from BW, as opposed to parking in a huge lot and getting on a tram to get to the gate. Same in reverse going back. We drive to Animal Kingdom ourselves, the bus to Magic Kingdom from BW makes sense as it drops you right in front of the entrance. If you drive you park on the far side of the Seven Seas Lagoon and have to take the ferry or monorail over, often a long process.
We can take a break mid-day, no need for you to drive back to your house if you don't want to. You may go home for supper and return for nightly entertainment, Illuminations in Epcot every night, Fantasmic and the Star Wars show selected nights at the Studios and jugglers, magicians etc on the Board Walk nightly.
These are just suggestions that might make things smoother. This is you vacation, not ours. Certainly there will be some kiddie rides the little ones will want to do and some rides they can't or won't do that the older kids will want to do so we probably will split up from time to time to accomplish this.

Bill From PA

 

[chiisai]

If I have new adults, I would send them this link as homework before we meet. http://**************.net/

 

[KalamityJane]

If I have new adults, I would send them this link as homework before we meet. http://**************.net/

Yes! This is the site I was talking about.

 

[EinHoden]

Make a list of 'must do' attractions for each park to start your planning.
Make sure they understand the amount of walking they will be doing.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

I've only gone with newbies once and they were happy to let me do the planning, which thrilled me. I ran everything by them, but they only kept saying, "you know best."

Now, my sister and I are old veterans and we talk about the trip constantly anyway so the planning gets done in a very casual way. We decide on the number of days and then where we're going to eat since that affects which park will be starting in-we eat a lot in Epcot and usually hop there if it isn't an actual Epcot day. Trying some new restaurants this time around and we checked out the menus since my sister is a picky eater. We write a list of which first aid things,etc that we'll need And then buy a few things every week when it gets closer to time to leave.

 

[ArielSRL]

My husband is basically a newbie as he hasn't been in 35 years. First off, I asked him about restaurants. He said, you know what I like, book whatever. LOL. I did end up giving him menus to choose what he thinks he might eat because I need to plan a food budget. As far as rides, I printed a list and asked him what he wanted to ride. I described the ones he didn't know. That'a about it for now. I'm doing the rest of the planning pretty much on my own.

 

[pitpat]

http://www.easywdw.com/forums/showthread.php?34406-Fall-2016-Cheat-Sheet-Touring-Plans

I printed out the maps from these Cheat Sheets for them and let them read through the rest at their leisure so they had a basic understanding of the parks.

 

[Jennasis]

Planning meeting? That's a thing? LOL

Seriously though, I have tried to plan with first timers and large groups. Begging for input, and in the end their eyes glaze over and I wind up being told "whatever you pick is fine". Then we get to the park and suddenly "why can't we do xyz??" "I want to eat at BoG!" It's maddening.

The best you can probably do is ask each person for one ride at the park they MUST do and a place they want to try eating at...and if they say Chef Mickey's, you hit them with a turkey leg and ignore them.

 

[tseitel]

We have a Disney "party" every single time before our trip. I am the planner, and I have it right before my 180 days for dining reservations. I have some Disney decorations I put up, and we have something to eat. I will print out the menus for restaurants, we pass them around while we're eating, then have a vote to finalize which ones make the cut.

We will also roughly go over must do attractions, and those we want to skip, so I can plan out fast passes and general daily touring plan.

We are normally a group of 10 or so, and everyone looks forward to our Disney get together

Right before we leave I will give everyone a sheet with all our info on it. One to put on the fridge at home (for house or pet sitter) with flight info, hotel info etc, and one to take with them listing the park each day, dinner time & place, and any extra activities planned.

I'll even put some Disney stickers on the plan sheets, but hey, we're a bunch of Disney nerds. My gang loves it.

 

[BigredNole]

Meeting? Not something we do. It is me usually telling my Decision Deficient family members what we are doing.

 

[My3Princez]

When a trip is 1st scheduled, I ask each person to write down their #1 must do in each of the 4 parks. (If they haven't been before, I give them a printed list of attractions. It's up to them to figure out what each attraction is and give me back their list.)
Beyond that, I give them a printed schedule about a week before the trip. It's up to them to choose to stick to it or not.
That's our 2 planning meetings. Period.

 

[Best Aunt]

Wifey and I are staying at the Board Walk this Nov as usual, daughters, sons in law and grandkids joining us this time, some of them in a rented house off site, we put them all on our Friends and Family so they can make FP+ choices 60 days out.

I'm lousy with Fastpass. But I thought that even if they are in your Friends and Family, they can't book at 60 days out unless they are listed on the reservation for a Disney hotel.

 

[PSUGuy]

I'm lousy with Fastpass. But I thought that even if they are in your Friends and Family, they can't book at 60 days out unless they are listed on the reservation for a Disney hotel.

I asked and was told this:

https://www.disboards.com/threads/magic-bands-for-off-site-friends-and-family.3576318/#post-57067512

Bill From PA

 

[Best Aunt]

I asked and was told this:

https://www.disboards.com/threads/magic-bands-for-off-site-friends-and-family.3576318/#post-57067512

Bill From PA

Interesting. I did not know that.

 

[10MoreMinutes]

I might have to steal the "Disney Planning Meeting" idea! I usually just start a group text and ask everyone what their must-dos in each park are and what kind of food they want to eat. For our trip in November, though, we have two newbies in the group who are actually staying at a different resort than us veterans, so a sit-down might be helpful for us.