300 & Something days to go…

Welcome to the second instalment of my Walt Disney World Planning series. If you missed my previous post and want to know a brief bit about my previous Disney trips head over and check it out. I left off in October with a 300+ day countdown until my next Disney trip, hence the title of this blog post. So lets get started with the basic details about our upcoming trip…

• It’s me, my mum and my sister who will be jetting off for some Disney magic (and just as a note we are all over the age of 21 and yes, you can do a Disney trip with just adults)
• We are flying from Dublin to Orlando International with Aer Lingus. One of the main benefits of this is the US preclearance, which basically means when we land in Orlando International we are treated as domestic arrivals, so we don’t have to go through crazy lines for passport control, customs etc
• We are spending two weeks in Orlando (arriving and flying out on a Tuesday), doing a split stay in two hotels – my sister is a Harry Potter nut and so a big fan of the Harry Potter areas in Universal
• We are very lucky to be spending 12 nights in Port Orleans French Quarter and 2 nights in Universal’s Hard Rock Hotel
• One of the reasons we booked our trip much earlier than in the past was to take advantage of the free Disney Dining Plan. With our booking we received the free quick-service dining plan, however we had done some research before and price checked the restaurants we wanted to eat in that wouldn’t be included in our dining plan and decided that upgrading to the Disney Dining Plan was the best option, so that’s what we did – more on this below

So planning wise what do you need to consider?

Before I dive into this I am going to say one thing. I am a major planner, for me half of the fun of a Disney trip is the planning that comes with it. I’ll plan which park for which days and a list of attractions to try and do whilst we’re in that park, but I don’t plan every minute of everyday because I do believe there is such a thing as over-planning.

When is the best time to visit Walt Disney World?

If you are fortunate enough to not be bound by school holidays you ideally want to go during a quieter time of year. However, over the years this has become a more difficult time to find. My advice for finding the best time to go is to have a look at a crowd calendar, but keep in mind that they are not 100% accurate.  I like the Frog family over at Undercover Tourist.

From personal experience, we’ve been the last week of June/first week of July and the last two weeks of August. The last two weeks of August were definitely a little less busy in comparison to June/July and July was definitely the busier week out of the two. For both trips I think wait times were typically a maximum of 30/40 minutes aside from the most popular rides – the likes of Frozen, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Soarin’ etc. This year we are going in September, which in the past has typically been a quieter time of year so I am interest to see how it compares.

Aside from worrying about crowd levels you may also want to think about what seasonal festivals Disney has on at the time. For example if you go in September you can experience Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot. If you want more information on this, my advice is to go straight to the Walt Disney World website and check out their Events & Tours page – they’ll show you the upcoming/past events too so you can pre-plan dates based on that.

Do I want to stay on or off property?

Honestly for me this is a no brainer, always on site. I understand that it’s a slightly more expensive option but the benefits of staying on site are huge.

1. Extra Magic Hours – these are an amazing opportunity to spend some extra time in the parks with a lower crowd
2. Transportation – Disney operates it’s own free transportation system within the Walt Disney World resort. You can take a bus, the monorail or a boat stress free to your destination
3. Free magic band – the magic band system at WDW is great! It allows you to access your hotel room, your park tickets, your fastpasses, your dining plan and you can even link a card to it so you can charge items to your room
4. 60 day Fastpass+ – when staying on site you get to book your fastpass+ reservations 60 days in advance, this can be key in securing those hard to get fastpasses like Flight of Passage, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train or the new Toy Story land rides like Slinky Dog Dash or Alien’s Swirling Saucers
5. 180 days +10 – one of the lesser know things about staying on site is that when the dining reservation window opens, guests staying on site get to book reservations for the first 10 days of their trip as soon as it’s 180 days before their trip. This is a huge benefit over guests staying off site who only get to book their reservations day by day
6. Bonus THEMING – each of the WDW resort hotels is beautifully themed, from Disney films to the Caribbean to a Polynesian village. The theming of the resorts helps add that little bit of bonus magic

At the end of the day, staying onsite although amazing does come at a cost. However I highly recommend that you stay onsite when you can – particularly if it’s your first visit!

Do I need a Disney Dining Plan?

This is a tough one, because I personally don’t have any experience with the Disney Dining Plan… yet. From my research I believe the dining plan is worth it if you’re getting in for free with your holiday booking. This time around we booked our trip during Disney’s UK free dining promotion. This meant if you booked a value resort stay you received a free breakfast voucher per day of your stay, if you booked a moderate resort you received a free quick service dining plan and if you booked a deluxe resort you received a free Disney Dining Plan. Each of these dining plan levels have different food entitlements, for more information on this check out the Walt Disney World website.

Before we officially booked our holiday we had a look through the food options available at Walt Disney World, specifically anything that wasn’t counted as a quick-service meal. These were options like Teppan Edo, Garden Grill, Via Napoli and Yak & Yeti. This helped us decide which dining plan was best for us. We priced up different hotel tiers vs upgrading dining plans and settled on a moderate resort with an upgraded dining plan, and I have to say I am so excited for all the food.

Now that you’ve booked, what happens next?

Now, with our holiday officially booked, our 300+ day countdown had begun and the next major milestone was the 180 day mark. For those new to, or just unsure about Disney planning, the 180 day mark is the day when restaurant reservations can be made. It is a vital day for securing hard-to-get reservations like Be Our Guest, Cinderella’s Royal Table, ‘Ohana or the coveted 8am breakfast reservations to secure earlier park access.

Top Tip: Do some research on the parks. Youtube is a great source for getting to see what Walt Disney World is like and there are so many people out there who vlog their trips. Some of my favourites include: Ellie Steadman, Charlotte Ruff, Lizzie Gines, Adam Hattan, The O’Dell Sisters, Krispy Smore and of course TheTimTracker

The first thing I did was research into when park hours are released – six months before ie: 180 days. I won’t lie, I believe this to be a slight oversight on Disney’s behalf, I think the park hours should be released a little earlier than the restaurant reservation mark. However, what I will say is that Disney pretty much run like clockwork across the years, meaning that you can base the opening hours (including extra magic hours) for your trip on the park hours from the year before [I learnt this tip from Lizzie Gines]. I created a spreadsheet of all the park opening hours and made a skeleton plan of what parks we were going to visit on what days. I basically wanted to make sure we didn’t book a reservation early in the morning/later in the evening in a park that had extra magic hours.

Once I had our skeleton plan I looked at our list of places we wanted to dine at and fitted them into the plan, trying to decide on our ideal time to eat. Basically I wanted to book all breakfast reservations around 8am the hour before the park opened, all lunch reservations between 1/2pm and then dinner reservations between 6:30-7:30pm fitting them around our evening plans. I attempted to plan it so we only had one table service meal per day as were didn’t want to be overwhelmed with food.

[Pictured are two planning guides directly from WDW – they used to have more information in them but now they’re a little scarce. However they can help to build excitement, particularly if you’ve a child or if you’re just a big kid at heart! Added bonus, ‘The Big Book of Magic’ comes with stickers!! Also my ears are from the wonderful Alyssa over at Queen Ursula UK]

I think all in all I had our skeleton plan completed by January. I tabled our Disney planning for a while due to university commitments, but got straight to it over Christmas. After reviewing it with my mum and sister and making sure they were happy, all that was left to do was wait for the day to arrive and cross our fingers that we could get our reservations. To find out how it went, tune in to the next instalment of my Disney Planning Series.