I’ve briefly gone over the plans for the trips I took with the boys in 2017 and 2019. The 2020 trip was going to be a little different due to this whole COVID thing, but I would leverage what I learned from the previous trips to see what I could pull together.
Staying Outside the Bubble
We had many reasons to stay in the parks or “inside the bubble” on my trips with the boys. Due to COVID as well as how this trip was coming together, most of those reasons didn’t apply to this trip. First, the FastPass+ program was suspended so staying in the park wouldn’t allow us to make those reservations earlier.
Since we were already renting a car, we wouldn’t be able to leverage the Magical Express (we were coming from Fort Myers instead of flying into Orlando, anyways). We’d have to pay for parking at the parks, but not at the hotel due to my Hyatt status.
Finally, since my wife isn’t a Disney fan and wouldn’t be going to the parks with us, staying outside the park was less claustrophobic. She would be in a “normal” hotel and not constantly confronted by themed everything. Some people love the theming. Some people don’t mind it, and others hate it. My wife is in the latter category.
When searching for hotels we found the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress which is very close to the park. At a Hyatt we could use our upgrade certificates to get a free suite upgrade which would be a nicer room than we’d pay for in the park. As Hyatt Globalists we’d get free breakfast and free parking at the hotel as well. The hotel also had a TON of activities to keep us busy on any off days we didn’t go into the park.
Park Reservations and Tickets
Reading the Undercover Tourist and Touring Plans blogs I had learned that in order to go to a park we needed to make a park reservation. We could only go to a park if we had a reservation for that park and couldn’t switch to another park that day (i.e. no Park Hopping). The reservation system ensured that park attendance was capped at 35% of maximum capacity which I hoped would make it more manageable than a normal Christmas in Disney World which is some of the busiest days of the year.
In order to make a reservation I needed to have tickets. When purchasing tickets, specific days had to be specified and, as I found out on Undercover Tourist, the longest stay I could buy was a 7 day pass. We had a nine night stay so we’d have a free day to rest. We wouldn’t be going to the park on the first or last days.
As I was buying the tickets I convinced my wife to spend one of the days with us in Epcot which is her favorite park, if she absolutely had to choose one. She loves the countries and the shopping and the boys would love “showing her around” so we figured I’d get her a one day ticket. It’s also the least ride/theme-centric of the parks which is probably why it’s her favorite.
I purchased the tickets on Undercover Tourist for the dates we wanted (or I thought I did) and ordered the card rather than the e-ticket in case we had to cancel our ticket due to COVID or other reasons. The return policy is generous in that there is only a 5% return processing fee but you can get that back if you order something else within a certain period of time.
I got an email notification when the tickets were shipped which included the ticket numbers. I was able to take the numbers from the email and enter them into the Disney website to make our park reservations. At that point I realized I put the wrong dates for all the tickets except my wife’s. Ugh. Luckily I was able to contact Undercover Tourist and get things sorted out without any drama.
I had a few options but the most expedient was to buy new tickets and return the old ones when they arrived in the mail. They kindly short-circuited the 5% return fee on the original tickets and gave me a full refund when they received the returned tickes in the mail. I was very thankful for that and it was a lot less painful/expensive than it could have been.
Once they issued and sent confirmation of the correct tickets, I added the numbers my Disney account and was able to make the correct park reservations for the days we wanted. Luckily we were several months from actually going and there was availability on all the days we wanted.
The best part of this was that I still had the option to cancel the tickets and the rest of the reservations in case COVID got bad enough hat we weren’t able to travel. That made getting the physical tickets twice as valuable to me. If I had chosen electronic tickets it’s unclear if I would have been able to change the tickets I had purchased for the wrong days.
Touring Plans
Before we had nailed down the tickets, Tomatico and I had used the Touring Plans site to determine which parks and rides to go on for each day since we had to decide which parks to make reservations in. We based our park decisions based on the crowd calendars, though we found they changes significatnly as we got closer to the trip. This was because the data predictions were adjusting based on the influence of COVID attendance.
Tomatico was determined to try all the rides his brother had tried and it was fun to plan things with him. His little brother didn’t know we were going to Disney on the trip and we were going to keep it a surprise, though he tried his hardest to guess.
This trip was going to be a much different dynamic with both boys at the same time. Tomatico and I talked about how his little brother would be the one taking the lead deciding where to go next to help set expectation and minimize conflict. It would still be a big test!
We had our plans. We had studied up on what to expect for COVID regulations. We had our park reservatons and tickets set. We were READY for the trip!
Tomatico Travels 
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