Speaking of chaos, Disney World is awesome, but it definitely has an aspect of chaos. There are loads of people, food, parades, noise, kids, characters, rides... it's nuts. In my last post I hinted that I'd be providing some tips... here they are!
- Fly. If you live in Michigan, and are going to Florida, fly there. We drove. It wasn't horrible or anything – we invested in a DVD player for the car, and I’ll hold strong that it was the best $100 ever spent, but man oh man, if you can afford it, just fly. We spent 4 days in a car – that’s 4 days that could have been spent doing much better things. Despite our increased budget, we didn't fly, we choose to spend our funds on something else….
- Stay on Disney property. This was my first experience with this, and I would absolutely do it again. Staying at a Disney resort really does seem to have some perks. We stayed at Pop Century, which is one of their “budget-resorts”. Budget smudget, it was awesome. 3 pools, a huge dining area, daily activities for the kids, nightly movies by the pool, fairly typical hotel room set up, it was fine for us! The only thing I didn't like was there wasn't a coffee pot in our room, and because the resort was so freaking large, I had to walk 5 minutes every morning to get my coffee. (just kidding, I don’t do anything until I've had at least one cup of coffee, I had to send Jon on a 5 min walk every morning to get me my first cup of coffee, which meant I had to wait 10 min to get that first dose of caffeine, which was difficult for me). I loved the refillable cups though, once you made it to the dining area, I could fill that cup with as much coffee (or whatever you wanted to drink!), as many times as needed throughout our entire stay. If you are going in June, it’s super freaking hot out, you’re going to be thirsty, bonus tip: get a refillable cup!
- Get a meal plan. I have no idea how much a spent on food, it was probably a lot. But because I purchased a meal plan and paid for it all in advance, it eased the pain. I’d watch them ring up our lunch, and see the $80 bill flash in the screen, and panic, but then instead of paying that, they’d just swipe our card and wah-lah… food! Having to pay for each meal would have really drained the fun of eating, and enjoy eating I did. I wasn't worried about finding the cheapest thing on the menu, because with the meal plan it didn't matter. You could get the most expensive thing and it still just counts as one meal deducted. You basically buy a number of meals – we got 40 (which gave us two meals per person per day. And, the best part if you ask me, with the meal plan you get a dessert with lunch and dinner – generally I wouldn't eat dessert twice a day, but I just couldn't force myself to say no. The Mickey Mouse cupcake with Oreo ears called to me, often. Also, I have to say, I was quite impressed with their ability to accommodate Liam’s gluten free diet – something I’m fairly certain we wouldn't have been able to do at a non-Disney place.
- Get a photopass. Why not? They take pictures of you all over the park, for free! Unless you want to purchase the pictures, then of course you have to pay for them… but let them snap away and check out the pictures later. It’s fun and easy. You can check out our pictures here: Clay 2013 Photopass Pics
- Check out a map before you go. I’m generally a big fan of winging it, especially on vacation. But these parks are gigantic, if you don’t have some sort of a plan of the items you definitely want to do, you’re going to get run down or run over by everything and everyone else! I would be sad to spend all day at the front of a park, only to find out about something awesome at the back of the park, but not have enough time to do it (even if you were having a great time in the front of the park.) Also, talk to the people at the resort, most have a really good feel for which attractions get the busiest, so you know if you need to try to get to something early.
- Take advantage of the “magic hours”. By staying at a Disney resort, they have magic hours on certain days for certain parks. They open early and stay late for just Disney resort guests. I originally thought this wasn't that big of a deal, and then we did it. It’s amazing the difference! We flew through lines during the magic hours – actually there weren't lines at all – we just went right up to things and got on. During magic hours Mary and I rode the Little Mermaid ride, met Ariel, rode the Mad Tea Cups, rode the Carousel, and met the White Rabbit – pretty much without stopping once. We spent the entire rest of the day waiting for the Peter Pan ride. (ok, I’m slightly exaggerating about the rest of the day, but you get the point!)
- Have fun. It’s crazy how quickly you fall into the trap of trying to get through as many attractions as quickly as possible. I specifically remember two moments during our week in FL, where we lost that goal of having fun. The park had just opened, we were mixed in with a mob of people, most of whom are practically running to get to their first ride. Running, in 90 degree heat, in the middle of a mob, with two kids in tow: not fun. Jon was swerving in an out of people, I was dragging Liam, at one point there were steps, and because taking the ramp would be too far out of the way, Jon just lifts Mary’s stroller by the arms and carries her down (NOT safe!!), and continues to book it full steam ahead. At some point on that crazy mission, it realized I was not, and more importantly, Liam was not having fun. Did it really matter if we got to that ride in 2 minutes or 5? We wanted to get to the ride, but Liam wanted to look at some of the cool Disney buildings and scenery along the way – and we were forcing him to miss it. Try not to get caught up in that. The second time was while standing in line to meet some character. We got kids autograph books, and we became a little crazed with filling them up. Neither kid expressed interest in this particular character, in fact, I’m fairly certain they literally said they didn't want to meet them, yet we continued to stand in that line. We just had to get that autograph and picture. Luckily, at some point, we came to our senses, and got out of line to go do something more fun. But again, it’s so easy to get caught up in the characters, you could easily spend several days doing that alone. Decide which characters you want to meet, and stick to that.
All in all, we had a great trip. We rode a lot of rides, we met a lot of
characters (both Disney and non-Disney), we did a lot of swimming, and we made
a lot of memories. You know what we
didn't do a lot of? Drinking wine. I'll be making up for that soon!
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