Planning for Disney is complicated. It’s unfortunate that you have to do so much planning to best ensure you get the most out of your vacation, but it’s a reality. Fortunately I love the planning part almost as much as the trip itself and over my previous two trips I had learned a few tricks.
Previous Trips
My very first Disney trip was in 1982 with my parents and grandparents. It was a much different place back then with only the Magic Kingdom. I still have fond memories of that trip where we stayed at the Polynesian Village resort. I remember riding the roller coasters with my dad, especially at night and in the rain when things were less crowded.
I have been at least a half dozen other times before having kids. I had been with my wife a few times, but she was decidedly not into the “magic” so once we had kids it was never a priority to bring the kids. It was something she had resigned herself as something we’d have to do at some point but would not be a priority.
What I Enjoy about Disney
Everyone has a different way of enjoying (or not enjoying) Disney World. Some people love the characters, others love the rides, others get caught up in other forms of “magic”. Disney World is an amazingly complex place and I appreciate the effort and cost of creating and maintaining the atmosphere day after day for decades.
To understand our planning decisions for the parks, it’s important to understand our priorities at the park. I’ve never been about the characters. I remember as a kid we went to a character breakfast and, even at 6 or 7 I was terrified of them and couldn’t wait for the torture to end so I could get back on the rides!
I really enjoy the rides. There’s just the right amount of “thrill” to keep me interested but not overwhelmed. I appreciate the details that go into each ride. It’s the purposeful cracks in the sidewalk, the detailed animatronics, the way an outdoor ride experience changes from day to night. These are the things I personally appreciate about the Disney experience.
I also enjoy the evening shows. The music and fireworks always get me. The quality of the performances, performers, and particularly the sound always impress me. No matter where you are in the park, the sound is always excellent. It’s clear and encompassing. It’s full and loud, but never overwhelming. You can easily hear what’s going on. I think the sound design in the parks is one of the more underrated aspects of the park experience.
Being an amateur audiophile, I especially appreciate the sound quality of the rides and shows. Having high quality sound inside in controlled conditions is difficult to pull off. To have it outside is much more challenging. The performance stage in front of the American Pavilion in EPCOT is probably the best I’ve ever been to. Not only is the sound loud, full, and clear from every seat, the performers and performances are always top notch.
Even secondary venues in the parks are fantastic. Any random film show in any of the parks has a better sound system than most commercial movie theaters. It always brings a smile to my face even though most people don’t notice.
Bringing the Boys to Disney
Disney was a place we’d eventually have to take the boys. Their friends had been so we kept hearing the “when are WE going to go to Disney” question, especially as they got older. My wife and I decided that it would be best if I took them. Since they both have differing interests and comfort levels with “thrills” I felt it was better to take them one at a time so I wouldn’t be outnumbered.
In the end I decided that the summer they turned 8 I would take them. This meant I would only have one at a time and that we could have some quality time together without the added distraction of balancing my attention between the two. It would be nice father-son time and they would be old enough to remember the trip and have enough endurance to do everything they wanted.
Plus, my wife would be spared having to go and could do a special event with the other kid.
Tomatico’s Trip
Tomatico turned 8 in 2017. I started planning the trip in late 2016 and would tell him about the trip on his birthday at the beginning of 2017 even though the trip would in the summer.
Summer is a busy time at Disney World, but I found the two weeks before Labor Day are relatively quiet since schools in may parts of the US go back to school in early or mid-August. In the northeast, schools tend to go back right around Labor Day. I had found flights for us for a 6 day trip the next to last week in August, returning two days before his school would start.
Since it had been more than a decade since I had last visited the parks, I reached out to relatives that are hardcore Disney fans. They go nearly every year, though they almost always stay outside the park. I got the lowdown on how FastPass+ works and got some strategies for navigating the park.
I also found two Disney-focused websites and blogs I found extremely useful. Undercover Tourist has a great blog on all the latests news in the parks and also sells official discounted park tickets. Touring Plans was another site I found that had in-depth information on absolutely everything about Disney World.
My favorite feature of Touring Plans (requires a subscription to use) allows you to pick a park and a day and indicate which rides you want to ride. It’ll take that information and compute an optimized plan for visiting the park based on the anticipated wait times for the rides on that particular day. It’s a geek’s dream feature and I happily paid the (very modest) subscription fee to access it and all the other great information on the site. It was worth every penny!
Through my research I determined that it would be best to stay “in the bubble” at a Disney property. People often say that it’s cheaper to stay outside the park, but by my math it would have been quite a bit more expensive considering the need to rent a car and pay parking fees. By staying in the park we could also take advantage of Extra Magic Hours and the Magical Express bus from the airport to our hotel (and back).
I ended up booking a room at Pop Century, one of the value resorts. It’s often reviewed as the best of the value resorts. It’s a pretty generic hotel room with pools that don’t have as much theming as some of the more expensive resorts, but we were only needing the room to sleep in. The food court was also rated as one of the better ones and the paid rates for the end of August were quite reasonable.
I used the Disney site to book us 6 nights at the resort getting the lowest rate we could find which was $129/night. That seemed pretty reasonable to me. Booking a higher priced room with a pool view wasn’t going to be much of a bonus for us since we didn’t plan on spending much time at the hotel other than to sleep.
When it came to buying tickets, we went with a 7 day park hopper ticket. This would allow use to visit a park on both our first and last day as our flights were first thing int he morning on arrival day and later in the afternoon on the day of departure. The 7 day pass would allow us to maximize our time in the park. The park hopper aspect of the ticket would allow us to visit more than one park on a day. This would be something we’d take advantage of later in our trip as we could go between parks to ride our favorite rides again (and again, and again).
With Disney World tickets, after about four days, adding an extra day comes at a very minimal cost, usually only 20-40 dollars per day. Adding the park hopper feature was another hundred dollars but we would take full advantage of that.
I purchased the park tickets on Undercover Tourist. The tickets were discounted compared to the cost buying directly from Disney and there was an option for an electronic or a physical ticket. We chose the physical ticket as they were refundable for the same amount of money. Once we received the tickets in the mail we could add them to our account just like the electronic ticket.
As far as planning, I worked with Tomatico by using the Touring Plans site to go through every ride and show in every park too see which ones he wanted to (hint, it was almost all of them). We used the crowd calendars to help determine which days we wanted to go to which parks and then used the touring plan evaluator feature to plug in the rides we wanted to do in each park. It really got him excited and invested in the trip.
With the Touring Plans site subscription I had access to their touring plans calculator which allows us to chose a park for a given day, select the rides we wanted to try to go on, and it would spit out a suggested plan to optimize our time in the park. It was awesome! It also helped recommend which rides to get fast passes on.
Since we had 6 nights but a 7 day pass, we planned on going to the park on both the arrival day and departure days. Some may find this too stressful but we wanted to maximize our time. This meant we’d have an early morning flight to Orlando and an afternoon flight back.
In the end we had a fantastic trip. I learned a lot and all the planning made for a MUCH more pleasant trip and a smoother (more magical?) experience.
Tomatico Travels 
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