Can you guess which parks we'll like most?

[KrisM]

Because I can't!

It's our first trip, next April. I was there in 1987 and DH has never been there - so new to us all!

DS1 - will be a couple weeks short of 10 year old. He loves roller coasters and thrill rides. He likes scary things. He likes math, science, Chinese class, robotics, etc. He doesn't like Star Wars or Legos (except Mindstorms).

DD - will be 2 months short of 8 years old. Right now, she still likes princesses and has a couple Rapunzel items on her wish list. She likes spinny rides and mild coasters. She does not like to be scared and most Disney movies still scare her at parts, although she can sit through them now. She also likes math, science, and Chinese class. She likes art.

DS2 - will be 5.75 years old. He's too short for most coasters, but likes the ones he's been on. He likes spinning rides. he doesn't like to be scared, but part of that is copying DD. He does not know Star Wars. Currently, he still likes Mickey Mouse, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and other Playhouse Disney things. He also likes princesses. He should be 44" by then.

We'll likely arrive on a Saturday in early afternoon and stay through the week to the next Sunday, probably as late as possible. So, 8 or 9 days of park possibilities. The last weekend is the week before Easter, so crowds will pick up. We can do hoppers (or not).

As of now, we're considering Contemporary, Fort Wilderness Cabins, or the Dolphin resorts. We haven't priced out the dining plan, but I'm sure we'll want to do a couple character meals and maybe a breakfast at CP to get into MK early.

It's likely to be our only trip. If we go back, it'll be in a number of year when the kids are teens.

Any ideas how many days we'll want at the various parks? I keep reading how many have kids who don't like Epcot or DHS and spend all their time at MK. But, then I read here how many kids love Epcot! I'm so confused.

Thanks!

[spunkybaby]

I think your kids would like DHS. Lots of roller coasters for DS1, princess shows for DD and DS2, and the Disney Jr. Live show with Sofia the First and Jake and the Neverland Pirates for DS2.

StudiosCentral.com is a great resource for Hollywood Studios attractions and shows.
http://www.studioscentral.com

I think they would also like MK.

They would probably like Epcot and AK as well, so I would definitely try to go to all four parks and then just plan to go back to the parks they like best.

I think you can upgrade your tickets to parkhoppers if you like.

A lot of people don't recommend parkhoppers, but we had them and used them quite a bit. In fact, on our last day, we hopped to three different parks. We hit AK in the morning to ride the Safari rides and Triceratops Spin one last time, Epcot afterwards for more KimPossible missions, and then ended up in MK.

Sorry that I'm not much help!

[georgiegirl]

The only "problem" with DHS is that there aren't many rides for those who don't like roller coasters or scary rides. Toy Story Mania is always crazy, so you can really only ride it once. The younger two might not like Star Tours (since its kind of scary) or Tower of Terror (which is also scary), so it's mainly shows for them. My DD (7) loved the beauty and the beast show, the muppets 3D show, and the stunt show. (The little mermaid snow is decent too, but I'm not sure whether the boys would like it.).

The best rides are at MK. Your son can ride space mountain, and I bet all of the kids would like thunder mountain. My kids like MK the best.

I'm sure they will like all of the parks, since each one has a thrill ride (test track at Epcot and expedition Everest at AK...but I will want adults not to ride it twice in a row since it is nauseating.). Your oldest will also like the Dinosaur ride at AK, but it's not for those who are easily scared.

[SnuggleBuggles]

I'd just do one park/ day and then go back to the hits. Seems like a good plan to me as you just never know what may tickle their fancy. :) I've only done MK and Epcot. There are highlights at each that I would love to see and do.

[BayGirl2]

With that mix of kids I'd want to do each park for at least one day, probably an extra day or two at MK and maybe an extra at Epcot if you want to cover World Showcase. We had 6 day ParkHoppers and we just about covered everything. For a "one and only" trip I'd plan at least that long, we could have spent a few more days and slowed down, and we didn't touch the water parks.

DHS has fewer rides but has some shows like Disney Jr that your younger one will like. And enough thrill rides to keep the older one happy. You can do Toy Story twice if you get there at rope drop and ride, then grab a FP right after you exit the ride.

Epcot may be interesting for your science-interested kid. There's a lot to cover and a few big ticket rides. World Showcase can be fun for kids if you do the passport and Kidcot stuff.

MK just has so much its better to split it into a few days, including one late night. Animal Kingdom has some fun stuff but is usually a 1 day park. Of course if you did Park Hoppers you could come back there if the kids really enjoy it.

[hellokitty]

Kris, your kids are somewhat similar in age to mine. I have a '04, '05 and '09. Anyway, I think that Magic Kingdom will be their fav, I find that it has a little something for everyone, little kid rides for those who easily scare and bigger rides for the thrill seekers. My older boys' favorite ride when we went six months ago was Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain, they would have ridden those two rides over and over again all day if they were allowed to. My youngest was all about Dumbo, Peter Pan, Pooh, the Haunted Mansion, Buzz Lightyear, etc.. All of the kids loved the Pirate of the Carribean ride and DS2 got selected for the Jack Sparrow's Pirate Tutorial and it was hilarious! For our last trip, we spent 2.5 days at MK. Be sure to check out the newest part of Fantasy Land, it is totally girl oriented with Little Mermaid meet and greet, a LM ride as well as storytime with Belle. We skipped the storytime, since I know my boys would not be into it.

Epcot came in a close second this time. My boys older boys were all about Mission Space and the more science related aspects of Epcot, while DS3 was into Nemo. They weren't really as into the world showcase part. There is a lot to see at Epcot, we did two days there.

DHS was great when we went, due to the Osborne Lights, but that's a Christmas season thing. If you have a child who is a starwars nut, make sure you head to the jedi academy first thing, you have to sign up with the child in person. Send the other parent to go grab fast pass from Toy Story Mania as soon as the rope drops. It is insane and they run out of FP very quickly. My boys all liked meeting Lightening McQueen and Tomater and getting pics. The Indiana Jones and Lights, Motor, Action were two shows they liked as well. The Beauty and the Beast Show might be something your DD may like. Tower of Terror and Rockin' Roller Coaster are at DHS, your oldest son will love those two. Your youngest one will love the, "Honey, I shrank the kids" play area, so be sure to check that out. DS3 would have loved to have spent more time there.

Animal Kingdom is ok. Your roller coaster freak will love Everest and Dinosaur, Dinosaur is kind scary, the animatronic dinosaurs get in your face. We LOVE the nemo show, but are meh about Lion King. We find AK to be difficult to navigate, it is kind of a big circle and you cannot cut across, so you walk a lot and the walkways are more narrow, so the park seems more crowded than it really is. The safari ride is great, be sure to do it first thing in the morning and then one more time in the late afternoon before you leave.

We have never gotten park hoppers, don't forget that you can always add on park hoppers later, so you can try not doing park hoppers and see how it goes, but if your kids end up wanting to park jump a lot, you can add that on. We usually hit rope drop, and ride all the rides we want to ride, eat lunch, return to the hotel for rest/swim and then go to dinner and return to the same park that evening if we are up for it. I REALLY like touring plans and highly suggest that you not only buy and read the most current copy of, "The Unofficial guide to WDW with kids." Buying the book gives you a discount on buying the phone app, and you can use the app to help you figure out which parks to do on which days. Last time we did 2.5 days at MK, 2 days epcot, 1 day DHS and 1 day AK. I thought that was just about right for our family. Since you are going the wk leading up to Easter, it will get more crazy as you get closer to Easter, so save any, "repeat" days for the latter part of your trip, in case it is busy, you've at least done those parks at least once already, kwim? We arrived on the evening of Black Friday last yr and knew it would be nutso during the first wknd, so kept our expectations really low, but we knew that the crowd would thin out a lot by Sunday, so it was the flip situation of what you will be in. Have fun planning!

Oh and I LOVE the chat feature on the touring plans app. If you have any questions, someone will answer it right away. I had a question about how to get to an early morning ADR before parks were open and ppl answered right away. I also had a situation where DS1 really loved a pokemon book at the Japanese Pavillion and I told him I would get it at home (amazon), but then I couldn't remember the name of the guide. So, I posted on the chat and asked if anyone was at the Japanese Pavillion and could look up the book for me and someone did it right away and emailed me a pic of the cover! I found that app so helpful and was sad when my touring plans subscription ran out. We probably won't be back to WDW until 2015.

[KrisM]

I like the idea of planning to hit each park once and going back for repeats. But, then if we do the dining plan, it'll be hard to schedule meals for those last days if we're winging it. Or, I just we likely plan on hoppers and not worry about it. I haven't gotten much into the dining part of planning, so I'm not sure what we'll want or if we'll do the dining plan.

[egoldber]

This is why we never do the dining plan and always get parkhoppers. I don't like to plan each day and like to be able to go to whichever park we like each day, go back to a fav, hit something we missed the first time, etc. We've done three parks in a day before on the last day. :)

Especially since you've never been, I think you should try to be as flexible as possible. Even at a very early age, Epcot has been my kids favorite park.

While I love the MK, it is very busy and overwhelming from a sensory perspective. And it gets sooooo crowded it can be hard to even walk there.


Last time we did 2.5 days at MK, 2 days epcot, 1 day DHS and 1 day AK

This is similar to what we do as well. I break up the MK days and sometimes we just go back at night for Spectromagic and Wishes. AK is easily done in a day. DHS can be done in a day, but it can take a bit of logistical planning if your kids want to see all the shows. And again, here is where I don't like the dining plan because it interferes with being able to see attractions in the most efficient manner. :o We usually stay in an Epcot area resort and often walk into Epcot every night for dinner "around the world".

[KrisM]

Regardless of whether or not I have the dining plan, the planning is hard if we want a sit-down character meal. As I understand, and I may be wrong because it's information overload, I can make a reservation for something like Akershus for the princesses and pay for it OOP. But, I still need a reservation months in advance, right? I can't just decide the day of that we'll have the princess lunch there that day?

[egoldber]

That is true. Generally I make one or two character meal reservations and that is that. I try for a very early breakfast (8:05 in the MK is great because the park is empty when you walk in), or a late lunch that can double as an early dinner, or a very early dinner that serves as a late lunch.

But I do 2 at most because that leaves us the most flexibility.

And I have actually made reservation changes while at WDW. While there, people do make changes because most of the princess meals have to be cancelled 48 hours in advance in order to get a refund. People really do cancel while they are there.

[hellokitty]

That is true. Generally I make one or two character meal reservations and that is that. I try for a very early breakfast (8:05 in the MK is great because the park is empty when you walk in), or a late lunch that can double as an early dinner, or a very early dinner that serves as a late lunch.

But I do 2 at most because that leaves us the most flexibility.

And I have actually made reservation changes while at WDW. While there, people do make changes because most of the princess meals have to be cancelled 48 hours in advance in order to get a refund. People really do cancel while they are there.

I agree with Beth that character meals are most easily fit in as an early bkfst for the least amount of disruption. When we went in 2011, we did a lot of character meals and it was too much, and keep in mind, most character meals tend to have the most mediocre food. In 2012, I asked the kids which character meals was their favorite. They wanted the Ohana bkfst with Lilo, Stitch, Mickey and Pluto. So, we did that one, and that was our last MK day too (flight at 6pm, so that was our half day), so we just took the monorail afterward to the park and it worked out beautifully. The one character meal was all that was necessary for my kids and for us, I think we may just keep a tradition of doing one character meal on our last day. We got free dining the last two times, but I do not think it's worth it pay OOP for the dining plan unless you are doing a ton of character meals. There is too much food and like Beth had mentioned, having so many ADRs, ties you down to a schedule and knowing exactly which parks you want to do for the day. If you do the DP, I suggest you get on touring plans or easywdw and map out the crowd schedule and decide which parks you are going to do on which days and then schedule our your ADRs. You have 180 (I think plus 6-8 days earlier if you are an onsite guest) days prior to the days that you are booking your ADRs. That is what I've done in the past two yrs and it has worked out ok for the most part. However, unless we get free dining again, I do not plan to do the dining plan again, we'll just pay OOP as we go and maybe just do one or two ADRs during the entire trip.

You can do meet and greets with the characters in the park too, if your kids are into getting autographs by meeting characters, get an autograph book. I'm kind of glad my kids aren't into that, since that would be more waiting in line, but there are a lot of kids who really enjoy it. Instead, my kids really enjoyed pin trading. I wasn't really prepared for it on our trip in 2011, so they only had a few pins and just traded a few times, but for our trip in 2012, I bought pins and lanyards ahead of time and brought them with us and the kids had a BLAST trading pins with CMs, on the pin trading board at the resort (in the gift shop) and even with other children, while waiting in line or waiting for shows to begin. I thought that the extra interaction with CMs was great and it was also neat meeting ppl from all over the world who were also trading pin. We didn't really buy them any souviners last time (I got a few items as stocking stuffers that they didn't know about), since they were very satisfied with the pins, I started each kid out with about 15 pins and that was plenty to keep them occupied. You can order these for a lot cheaper than buying them new at WDW (esp since the kids just trade them off). We ordered from mousepinsonline and had two very pleasant transactions and they are located in MI and we got our order in less than 3 days in OH via USPS. We got a good variety of pins and the boys mostly traded off the girl pins (CMs have to let the child pick the pin of their choice and the child can give them whichever pin they want to trade away), DS2's goal was mainly to get all Chip and Dale pins, DS1 liked certain series of pins and tried to collect those particular series. DS3 just liked whichever pins suited his fancy, no theme, lol. The pins were the same ones that were sold at the WDW stores, so not fakes.

[hellokitty]

Oh and if you pick the Dolphin, I know that they have their own character breakfast. Just FYI, since it would be easy to do one at the place you are staying at. However, if the one at the Dolphin is not part of the dining plan, so would probably work out better if you do OOP for meals.

[egoldber]

Older DD was all about autographs when she was younger and now younger DD loves it as well. She mainly loves to meet and interact with characters and the autograph is just a bonus really. but we we NEVER stand in long lines. We scope out the character greeting areas and then ask CMs when the characters will be back out. The characters are typically on a pretty well managed schedule.

I never let the kids do pin trading because I was afraid there would be post-trade angst. But maybe I should get over that. ;)

[KrisM]

Thanks again. It's a lot to consider. It kinds of seems like I just need to plan to come back :). It would be easier to spread those meals out over a few trips! But, we only have so many days of vacation a year and we have other things we'd like to do as well, so this is it for these ages.

[hellokitty]

I never let the kids do pin trading because I was afraid there would be post-trade angst. But maybe I should get over that. ;)

We worried about it too, esp when DS1 traded off a really nice pin to another boy one time (and the other parents were concerned too, lol), but we asked him if he was sure and so did the other parents and he kept saying yes, so we were like, "ok!" I really liked that they kept on the look out for pins that they wanted, almost like a scavenger hunt and you never know which CMs have a lanyard or belt that has pins, so it's usually spur of the moment.

[BayGirl2]

It sounds like you will feel better if you have a plan for each day vs. winging it on the last few days. That's what I prefer, I could not just leave a few days "blank" and see what we're in the mood for. Actually I left the last day fairly unplanned and the "What do you want to do"; "I don't know, What do you want to do"; "I'll do whatever"; "OK so where are we going next then".... conversations drove me absolutely crazy, and that was just among the 3 adults in our group. I like to have everything planned in detail so I can go on autopilot at the parks. We still deviated from plan (4x on the carousel and that ride wasn't even in my plan) but in general I got everyone excited with the "we're going to do x next" talk track. I've also realized my DS really likes to know what's coming up, so this worked well for him.

My suggestion is to just pick the parks and plan, in as much detail as you can tolerate. 2+ days at MK, 1 at AK, 2 at Epcot, 1-2 at HS. Either 1-2 days "off" or afternoons off if you take breaks. Remember you can cancel a 2nd day if you don't need it, but it takes more mental energy to add in a day if you don't have a plan. I'd plan in this order:

- Choose park days - go to EasyWDW and use Josh's crowd calendar

- Schedule ADRs by park - We did at least 1 Table Service meal a day, often 2. We are just sit down people who enjoy being waited on and were thrilled that we avoided burgers/pizza/theme park food for an entire week. We also did 4 character meals over 7 days and enjoyed them all. Most of our TS this time we did for lunch or dinner. We did rope drop every day and it was nice at 11:30 or so to force ourselves to slow down in an air conditioned restaurant. In fact DD fell asleep in DH's arms at lunch every day. We did one 8am character meal but the rest were at the end of breakfast or for dinner. We did not have the dining plan but I think we still came out ahead paying OOP. I did add/change some ADRs a couple days out, including Akershus, but I wouldn't rely on that.

- Plan an attraction order - Let your kids get on the Disney site and YouTube videos and give feedback to which attractions they want to hit. This part is fun for them, but honestly I'd still make a plan to hit everything, knowing you can drop things on the fly as preferences change. Use the cheat sheets at EasyWDW to determine a ride order. I subscribe to TouringPlans then use the website to create a personalized plan for each day with a ride order that I create based on my research, designed to minimize lines. TP has estimated wait times which helps me know in advance if we'll be able to fit in the rides and shows we want, or if we'll need an extra day at that park. In the park I use the plan to guide us to the next stop, and I could be fairly confident we'd fit everything in.

It was a lot of work, but I enjoy researching and planning, like most BBBers do. On our 2 trips with kids (DL and WDW) we managed to do everything on our must-do list plus more, never waited for more than 10 minutes in line, and weren't crazy rushed.

[SnuggleBuggles]

I've always wondered, Amy, how does it work to have all the meal reservations wrt spontaneous opportunities? Like, we weren't planning to ride something but we walked by and the line was unbelievably short so we jumped on. Or we saw some pop up performance type thing (likely on the schedule of events but didn't expect to be interested, so didn't plan around and then enjoyed it)? Would you just say, "sorry. Too bad?" That's what I haven't understood a out being really scheduled. Eta- I do hear you on counter service date though...we only have done 1 day at the parks. A week of that wouldn't be awesome.

[hillview]

I'd just do one park/ day and then go back to the hits. Seems like a good plan to me as you just never know what may tickle their fancy. :) I've only done MK and Epcot. There are highlights at each that I would love to see and do.
:yeahthat:

[BayGirl2]

I've always wondered, Amy, how does it work to have all the meal reservations wrt spontaneous opportunities? Like, we weren't planning to ride something but we walked by and the line was unbelievably short so we jumped on. Or we saw some pop up performance type thing (likely on the schedule of events but didn't expect to be interested, so didn't plan around and then enjoyed it)? Would you just say, "sorry. Too bad?" That's what I haven't understood a out being really scheduled. Eta- I do hear you on counter service date though...we only have done 1 day at the parks. A week of that wouldn't be awesome.

We did plenty of jumping into short lines and viewing pop up performances. For me its an order of rides, not a scheduled time for rides. The first 2 hours of the day are fairly busy jumping into short lines, but there aren't many pop up type performances that early anyway and everyone's just caught up in the motions. We'd usually leave to get to ADRs a little early so its a leisurely walk and we can observe the entertainment. For instance at AK we had about 25 minutes to walk across the park to a 10:45 at Tusker House. The leaf lady was standing on the path so we stopped to watch her, stopped to play the drums, etc. My kids don't spend more than 5-10 minutes on that kind of stuff anyway.

There were a couple times where I said "we'll do X on Tuesday, let's go to Y now" for things that always have short lines and don't need to be done in the first few hours. Frankly I'm making that tradeoff for the kids, knowing we'll have less cumulative wait time so its better to do Y now. We're still doing something fun, and they knew they'd get to do X eventually. Wasn't a huge issue for us as everyone realized we were ahead of all the lines.

Also I was monitoring FP and Line times in the park and adjusting on the fly. So if something really was an unbelievably short wait we'd go do it.

[KrisM]

It sounds like you will feel better if you have a plan for each day vs. winging it on the last few days. That's what I prefer, I could not just leave a few days "blank" and see what we're in the mood for. Actually I left the last day fairly unplanned and the "What do you want to do"; "I don't know, What do you want to do"; "I'll do whatever"; "OK so where are we going next then".... conversations drove me absolutely crazy, and that was just among the 3 adults in our group. I like to have everything planned in detail so I can go on autopilot at the parks. We still deviated from plan (4x on the carousel and that ride wasn't even in my plan) but in general I got everyone excited with the "we're going to do x next" talk track. I've also realized my DS really likes to know what's coming up, so this worked well for him.

This is what I worry about. We'll try to decide and then fail! We do a week visiting family each year and always have a list of things that we should do and very rarely actually do any of them because the time flies. It's not the same, of course, but I worry about it. Maybe I'll plan things and put the "must have" ADRs at the beginning and leave the rest of the week more loosely planned.

What would you plan for our final day - or would you leave earlier? It's a 10 on the calendars now (the Sunday before Easter).



My suggestion is to just pick the parks and plan, in as much detail as you can tolerate. 2+ days at MK, 1 at AK, 2 at Epcot, 1-2 at HS. Either 1-2 days "off" or afternoons off if you take breaks. Remember you can cancel a 2nd day if you don't need it, but it takes more mental energy to add in a day if you don't have a plan. I'd plan in this order:

- Choose park days - go to EasyWDW and use Josh's crowd calendar

- Schedule ADRs by park - We did at least 1 Table Service meal a day, often 2. We are just sit down people who enjoy being waited on and were thrilled that we avoided burgers/pizza/theme park food for an entire week. We also did 4 character meals over 7 days and enjoyed them all. Most of our TS this time we did for lunch or dinner. We did rope drop every day and it was nice at 11:30 or so to force ourselves to slow down in an air conditioned restaurant. In fact DD fell asleep in DH's arms at lunch every day. We did one 8am character meal but the rest were at the end of breakfast or for dinner. We did not have the dining plan but I think we still came out ahead paying OOP. I did add/change some ADRs a couple days out, including Akershus, but I wouldn't rely on that.

- Plan an attraction order - Let your kids get on the Disney site and YouTube videos and give feedback to which attractions they want to hit. This part is fun for them, but honestly I'd still make a plan to hit everything, knowing you can drop things on the fly as preferences change. Use the cheat sheets at EasyWDW to determine a ride order. I subscribe to TouringPlans then use the website to create a personalized plan for each day with a ride order that I create based on my research, designed to minimize lines. TP has estimated wait times which helps me know in advance if we'll be able to fit in the rides and shows we want, or if we'll need an extra day at that park. In the park I use the plan to guide us to the next stop, and I could be fairly confident we'd fit everything in.

It was a lot of work, but I enjoy researching and planning, like most BBBers do. On our 2 trips with kids (DL and WDW) we managed to do everything on our must-do list plus more, never waited for more than 10 minutes in line, and weren't crazy rushed.

I like this idea. Thanks for all the info. The kids won't know we are going until a couple months out, but I will have them look. I am planning on buying the book Birnbaum's Walt Disney World for Kids, specifically for DS1 because as of now he has zero interest in going to Disney :rotflmao:. He thinks it's Mickey Mouse and Princesses and has no idea, so I think he'd enjoy the book.

[BayGirl2]

This is what I worry about. We'll try to decide and then fail! We do a week visiting family each year and always have a list of things that we should do and very rarely actually do any of them because the time flies. It's not the same, of course, but I worry about it. Maybe I'll plan things and put the "must have" ADRs at the beginning and leave the rest of the week more loosely planned.

What would you plan for our final day - or would you leave earlier? It's a 10 on the calendars now (the Sunday before Easter).



I like this idea. Thanks for all the info. The kids won't know we are going until a couple months out, but I will have them look. I am planning on buying the book Birnbaum's Walt Disney World for Kids, specifically for DS1 because as of now he has zero interest in going to Disney :rotflmao:. He thinks it's Mickey Mouse and Princesses and has no idea, so I think he'd enjoy the book.

The bold above is EXACTLY why I became an uber-planner, especially for Disney. Too many vacations where we missed doing things or scrambled to find a local provider after we arrived. Disney is not a sit-back-and-rest vacation for me, we can do that for a lot cheaper elsewhere.

For the final day I'd see if you can get an 8am ADR in a park so you can be in before rope drop, do a few last minute rides you enjoyed, then head out early to hang at the pool at your resort. We did that with MK on our last day. We had already done the "priority" rides so ended up doing Tinkerbell Meet & Great, then repeated Aladdin, Jungle Cruise and did Hall of Presidents. Anything we "didn't get to" was fit into that morning with no wait. As I saw the line times jump up around 10:30 am we headed out of the park, took a few pics, did some last minute shopping, and hopped on the monorail. Or alternatively you could plan to do a water park in the morning, but those may be busy too.

[egoldber]

I think there's a difference between not having a plan and not having ADRs scheduled every day. That's what I meant. I do think it's a good idea to have a general plan of things to see in a general order, especially for the MK. I start out with a general plan and then let it flow from there. We "re-group" and re-plan for the next day each night as a family .

What I personally dislike is feeling like I have to be at a certain place at a certain time for a meal. What if I'm not hungry at that time? Or what if the kids aren't hungry yet? What if we decide we're tired and we'd prefer to ride the monorail over to Epcot and be there instead of the MK for the afternoon. I just don't like to plan my day around meal reservation times, which is what having ADRs tends to mean for us. We did a WDW vacation with a family on the dining plan once and I felt like we spent the whole trip going from meal to meal.

We also tend to eat a lot in our rooms and pack in snacks/PB sandwiches kind of thing and then get heavy in the parks vs. eating a lot of true meals.

But every family is different.

[KrisM]

I think there's a difference between not having a plan and not having ADRs scheduled every day. That's what I meant. I do think it's a good idea to have a general plan of things to see in a general order, especially for the MK. I start out with a general plan and then let it flow from there. We "re-group" and re-plan for the next day each night as a family .

What I personally dislike is feeling like I have to be at a certain place at a certain time for a meal. What if I'm not hungry at that time? Or what if the kids aren't hungry yet? What if we decide we're tired and we'd prefer to ride the monorail over to Epcot and be there instead of the MK for the afternoon. I just don't like to plan my day around meal reservation times, which is what having ADRs tends to mean for us. We did a WDW vacation with a family on the dining plan once and I felt like we spent the whole trip going from meal to meal.

We also tend to eat a lot in our rooms and pack in snacks/PB sandwiches kind of thing and then get heavy in the parks vs. eating a lot of true meals.

But every family is different.

I can see doing it that way. We eat at pretty much the same time daily, and I'd imagine not deviating from that too much. DD turns into a monster with not enough food. It's very easy to tell if she didn't eat all her lunch at school! I'd think we'd have breakfast foods in the room easily enough, but we might not want to come back for lunch and I'm not sure what we'd carry with us for lunch that would still taste good hours later. I wish my kids would eat pb&j.

[123LuckyMom]

I think there's a difference between not having a plan and not having ADRs scheduled every day. That's what I meant. I do think it's a good idea to have a general plan of things to see in a general order, especially for the MK. I start out with a general plan and then let it flow from there. We "re-group" and re-plan for the next day each night as a family .

What I personally dislike is feeling like I have to be at a certain place at a certain time for a meal. What if I'm not hungry at that time? Or what if the kids aren't hungry yet? What if we decide we're tired and we'd prefer to ride the monorail over to Epcot and be there instead of the MK for the afternoon. I just don't like to plan my day around meal reservation times, which is what having ADRs tends to mean for us. We did a WDW vacation with a family on the dining plan once and I felt like we spent the whole trip going from meal to meal.

We also tend to eat a lot in our rooms and pack in snacks/PB sandwiches kind of thing and then get heavy in the parks vs. eating a lot of true meals.

But every family is different.

This is why we made only two ADRs, one for the night we arrived, which was a non-park day, and the other for lunch at AK where we were going to be all day with no midday break. Otherwise we did counter service, room breakfasts, and snacks brought along. I can't stand the whole need for ADRs. It's my least favorite thing about Disney! When it comes to food, you should be able to be more spontaneous!

If I were you, OP, I would invest in a subscription to Touringplans.com and get their app called Lines. We used that app constantly! I made custom park schedules for us while we were still at home, but the app allowed us to reconfigure the schedules on the run in the parks as we'd get off schedule. When we took an unscheduled break or hopped on a ride because the line was short, we clicked the "optimize" button on the app, and it rearranged our rides so the lines were always the shortest possible. It was great!

[egoldber]

We eat at pretty much the same time daily, and I'd imagine not deviating from that too much. DD turns into a monster with not enough food. It's very easy to tell if she didn't eat all her lunch at school! I'd think we'd have breakfast foods in the room easily enough, but we might not want to come back for lunch and I'm not sure what we'd carry with us for lunch that would still taste good hours later.

This is actually us too. All of us get really cranky when we don't eat regularly. ;) And FWIW, the kid meal selections are not that different restaurant to restaurant so the food can get really boring for them really fast. Sometimes we get them one adult meal and they split it.

In the room, we usually eat cereal and milk or yogurt and fruit.

To take along we bring.....

PB sandwich
bagel and cream cheese (lasts a long time)
cheese sticks / tube yogurts (eat these first)
granola bars/Zbars/Clif bars
applesauce cups/Go Go Squeeze
apples / grapes / peeled and sectioned oranges
Triscuits / pretzels, etc.

We usually have a car so we make a grocery stop. I bring sandwich bags from home. But there are places that do grocery delivery as well. And frankly, even the small min-market type stores at the resorts, while more expensive than a restaurant, are a LOT cheaper than eating out 3 meals a day every day.

I also have been known to pack leftover pancakes from a breakfast buffet for a snack later. They will usually give you a "to go" cup with juice or milk (or coffee) if you ask.

You can usually (mostly) freeze a partially filled water bottle to keep things cool as well. The food bag is heavy to start with, but you're eating as you go along, so by the end of the day it's empty. :)

[KrisM]

I do have a subscription to touringplans.com It's been useful.

EasyWDW appears to put out calendars about 7 months ahead, so it's a while before April will be out.

Knowing we'll do all 4 parks at least once, I'll plan those days and put ADRs on those days. I'll sketch out other days, but with no reservations, so they can easily be changed. I am thinking breakfast and dinner are the easiest to work around, since that leaves the bulk of the mid-day free.

It gives me a starting point at least!

[hellokitty]

I can see doing it that way. We eat at pretty much the same time daily, and I'd imagine not deviating from that too much. DD turns into a monster with not enough food. It's very easy to tell if she didn't eat all her lunch at school! I'd think we'd have breakfast foods in the room easily enough, but we might not want to come back for lunch and I'm not sure what we'd carry with us for lunch that would still taste good hours later. I wish my kids would eat pb&j.

One thing that helped us is that since my kids are early risers is we do a continental type of bkfst in our room and then do an early lunch (usually eat by noon, which is before the big lunch rush). We've found this to be helpful in avoiding crowds. Then we also tend to do an earlier dinner, which also avoid the heavy dinner crowd. IDK if this will work out for you or not, but we find that we get in and out of restaurants a lot more quickly when we don't go at the height of meal times. I think the worse one was a 6pm ADR at akershus, it was very obviously their busy time, so we had to wait around, while the other ADRs, we didn't have to wait or had a very short wait. I wouldn't bother packing lunches if you are just staying at a regular hotel room, that will be a PITA. However, continental bkfst stuff is easy and we'd have the kids eat while dh and I got ready in the morning.

[westwoodmom04]

If you are not sure what park you are going to be at, at least for dinner reservations, just make outside the park reservations (i.e. at one of the hotel restaurants). We really like having sit down meals at Disney, for us it is a respite from the craziness of the crowds. We mostly ate breakfast in our rooms (we stayed at BLT) and then had ADRs for all dinners, Cinderella's castle (lunch), and two other sit down lunches at the parks. We had a chef Mickey's reservation our last day (no park time that day). We ate lunch back at the hotel a few times (poolside snack bar) because the counter service places were always mobbed (this was 6-8 crowd levels week).

We did have most days mapped out in terms of what parks to go to far in advance. But other than having a game plan for the fast pass, we just arrived at the park early and winged it from there. We spent two days at every park except Hollywood Studios. Although my kids were 4 and 6, Animal Kingdom was their favorite, not Magic Kingdom. We basically called it a day an hour or two after lunch each day (stayed later once or twice), went back to hang at the pool for a few hours, and then went out to dinner. We could see the MK fireworks really well from our room, which was great. We skipped the other nighttime performances.

[acmom]

One thing that helped us is that since my kids are early risers is we do a continental type of bkfst in our room and then do an early lunch (usually eat by noon, which is before the big lunch rush). We've found this to be helpful in avoiding crowds. Then we also tend to do an earlier dinner, which also avoid the heavy dinner crowd. IDK if this will work out for you or not, but we find that we get in and out of restaurants a lot more quickly when we don't go at the height of meal times. I think the worse one was a 6pm ADR at akershus, it was very obviously their busy time, so we had to wait around, while the other ADRs, we didn't have to wait or had a very short wait. I wouldn't bother packing lunches if you are just staying at a regular hotel room, that will be a PITA. However, continental bkfst stuff is easy and we'd have the kids eat while dh and I got ready in the morning.

:yeahthat:
We did mostly very early breakfasts in room with early lunch or dinner ADRs too. It worked really well for our family too as we are early risers and missed the rush this way.

Also agree with Westwoodmom about outside the parks meals, we did dinner at 1900 Park Fare and breakfast at Chef Mickeys on the days that I wasn't sure which park we would be going to. Gave us a little more flexibility to head back to parks we liked or wanted to do more at on our last couple days. We also did one day with no ADRs.

[BayGirl2]

I understand the concern about being "tied down" to ADR's, but we don't feel that way. We're tied down to the fact that we are going to have to eat lunch and dinner somewhere, and the rough time for that. When we do counter service its a big hassle for us - one adult has to go wait in line for food while the other entertains hungry kids at the table. Sometimes waiting for an available table too, if its a busy time. Then its getting up every time we need another straw, fork, napkin, etc. Eating off paper plate with theme park like food. Its just not a "vacationy" feeling to us. With TS ADRs we know we have a place reserved, we never had to wait more than a couple minutes, and we sit back and get waited on. Like WestWoodMom said - its a relaxing break for us - and at lunch or dinner its never really interfering with prime ride time anyway. I think there was maybe one or two times when I felt like I could wait and eat later, most of the time we would have been scavenging for food at that time anyway.

We did have breakfast in the room every morning - or more accurately, in the stroller/in motion while waiting for the bus/monorail. Instead of a grocery delivery I did an order with Diapers.com/Vine.com and had snacks for the kids and diapers (we used Gdiaper inserts) delivered in advance. DH and I got the resort mugs and used those for coffee every morning. The kids always seemed to have leftover milk in the room refrigerator and we'd just swing past the resort CS on the way out for something quick. I'm usually a big breakfast person but didn't really mind having just coffee and a croissant if it meant making rope drop. The kids got the oatmeal and yogurt mashups so that was a big treat for them every day.

[egoldber]

And like I said, every family is different. :) My kids are also a lot older and don't need as much help at meal times. They can get their own straws, napkins, carry their own trays, etc. They would rather do stuff than spend a lot of time at sit down meals. My younger DD also does not do well in sit down restaurants (was recently diagnosed with ADHD-hyperactive/impulsive type) and is a bit of a terror at meal times. :)

With younger kids we did do more sit down meals. But now that they are older, it's not a priority and not as much fun for us anymore.

[megs4413]

fwiw, you can cancel an ADR with 48 hours' notice, so you're not absolutely locked in until that point.

like you, i prefer to have days planned. i don't firm up my adr's until much closer to the trip when the crowd forecasts are at their most accurate. I make my MUST ADRs as early as I can. For you guys, I think an early breakfast ADR to get you into MK early might be my only MUST do at this point. if you go for the park-hoppers, this will all be easier. I prefer breakfast ressies for in-park meals and dinner ressies for resorts. we don't make lunch ressies anymore because they just don't seem worth it. i can either walk in and wait if i want to do a TS or we just do QS or snacks.

my kids seem to be a little different than most, in that they prefer epcot and DHS to MK. no idea why. that's jut how we roll, lol. I'm not a huge MK fan myself. we like it and it's magical, but it's a one day/two day thing max for us. DHS is GREAT for younger kids and my kids are big star wars fans, so it has that draw as well. it's tourable in a partial day, though, even if you love it. it also has our favorite disney ride: toy story mania. AKL is also a partial day park, IMO. I honestly don't even ever want to go back at this point (though they do have an expansion in the works that might make me change my tune.) if I weren't too cheap, i'd spring for park hoppers just to not have to waste a whole day of park tickets on AKL. But I am cheap. LOL

If I had to put money on it, I would bet that your kids will like epcot more than you think. You can try soda from China there, did you know that? We had a blast doing that. it was actually really tasty!

for thrill rides these are my DH's favorite:
expedition: everest (in AK)
rockin' rollercoaster (DHS)
tower of terror (DHS)
Mission: Space (Epcot)

[BayGirl2]

fwiw, you can cancel an ADR with 48 hours' notice, so you're not absolutely locked in until that point.


Key point.

That's why I prefer to reserve and then we cancel if we don't want to go. In fact you can cancel up until the time of the ADR for most places. Signatures have a cancelation fee and certain character meals (CRT) and events (Luau, Hoop De Doo) are prepaid. Otherwise there's really no downside to making ADRs for where you think you'll be. I did that for DH on the day he went to the park alone with the kids and my mother. That way in case it got crowded they would have a place to go, otherwise there was no loss if he canceled from his phone. I ended up meeting them at Liberty Tree Tavern and we really liked it, unexpectedly.

[SummerBaby]

We just took our first trip end of April. My DDs (2007 and 2004) both liked Magic Kingdom best, although they enjoyed all 4 parks. My older DD liked DHS too because she loved Rock & Roller Coaster. My animal loving younger DD also really liked Animal Kingdom and still talks about all the random animal facts she learned there. She really paid attention to the guide on the Safari! They also enjoyed Epcot, particularly Test Track and Soarin. Older DD really got into the Agent P adventure game. Still, I think there is just something special about Magic Kingdom, especially for a first trip. We had 6 day park hopper and spent 3 days at MK and one day at the other parks (3 evenings we spent in World Showcase because we were staying at the Boardwalk so it was an easy walk).

On another note, I obsessively planned this trip, made touring plans, maps, etc. I ended up not really using them and I just went with what DDs wanted to do. The only thing I stuck to is to arrive at rope drop and do the headliner rides (Soarin, Toy Story Mania, etc) first. It turned out that the rides I thought the kids would like/ wouldn't like we're way off. Younger DD, for example was afraid of most dark rides, but rode Big Thunder Mountain 10 times in a row. Going with the flow that way just made us all happier and more relaxed. Did we see everything? No, but we all had a great time!