A successful Disney vacation is not something that just happens. It’s also not something you win. It is something you earn. And how do you earn it? Planning, kids. Planning, additional planning, and then some more planning.
How do you do it? What steps do you take in attempting to plan a successful visit to Walt Disney World? The planning process I use is one that has been developed over 20 years; and tweaked repeatedly to accommodate the changes that occur on a regular basis at Walt Disney World—what we term the Disney “Carousel of Policy.”
I have two trips coming up—both of them still months away. The first one is scheduled for October of this year and will include just the wife and me. We’re heading down for the Food and Wine Festival although that’s certainly not the only reason for the trip. The second trip is early 2009 and will total seven people including our (then) 3-year old grandson. For the sake of discussing the planning process, we’ll focus on both trips. That should demonstrate the differences in complexity when traveling with a larger group.
Rooms
While your planning process may be a bit different, ours almost always starts with room reservations. The main reason is that we’re Disney Vacation Club (DVC) members. We can reserve rooms at our home resort, the Boardwalk Villas, up to 11 months in advance. Do we have to make our reservations that far in advance? Unfortunately, that answer is “yes” too frequently. Because the Food and Wine Festival is held at Epcot, the Epcot resorts (the Boardwalk, Beach Club and Yacht Club) tend to fill up quickly. Apparently, DVC members are quite fond of the Food and Wine Festival because the DVC accommodations at the Boardwalk and Beach Club Villas are almost always sold out early. To make sure we get our studio room, we reserve it as close to eleven months in advance as possible. Let me be clear about this though… were I to call months later, I’d most likely be able to secure DVC accommodations although they probably would not be at my preferred resort.
For our trip in January, we also made our reservations as soon as the 11-month window opened. There’s not the same demand for January rooms but, our larger group requires a two-bedroom villa and, because there are fewer of these suites, I didn’t want to risk calling later and being shut out. The up-side of making your reservations this early is that there’s one planning item you can check off your list. On the other side of the coin, a lot can happen in eleven months and, sometimes, these happenings can affect the dates chosen.
The process for reserving non-DVC rooms is quite a bit different. To take advantage of any special discounts or plans being offered requires you to wait until approximately sixty days prior to your travel dates. If discounts will be available, they are typically announced late in the game, when Disney discovers they have available resort rooms they’d like to fill. I know waiting until the last minute can be a bit taxing on the nerves so… you may want to reserve your rooms at your resort choice well in advance and then rebook them when discounts are announced. That’s typically fairly easy to do as long as you remain aware of the cancellation policy (which varies with how you made your reservation): direct with the Disney Reservation Center; through a travel agent; via the Internet; through a local AAA office; etc. No matter how you reserved your room, ask and document what the cancellation policy is. It may be important later.
Transportation
Depending upon how near or far you live relative to Orlando, you may be driving your personal vehicle. For the purpose of this article, let’s assume we’re flying. How early do you purchase air fare? You probably already guessed this answer… it depends.
We fly out of Albany, New York and have a few—but not many—alternatives for flights to Orlando. For a number of reasons (convenient times, non-stop flights and better pricing), we typically prefer Southwest Airlines. Over the past five to seven years, I’ve paid as low as $135 and as much as $265 for a round-trip coach ticket. I have done pretty well purchasing early and then taking advantage of lower fares released later via e-mail announcement or by receiving a Southwest Airlines’ “Ding!”—Southwest’s software you can download to your system that allows Southwest to notify you electronically of special fares for cities that you select.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t always able to take advantage of the credits I would receive for rebooking flights at a lower fare—Southwest does impose a time limit on these credits. I’ve since learned that you can extend this window of opportunity with Southwest, for a fee. Paying a fee does offset some of the savings but this still may be something to look into. For that reason, I began a process of not booking fares as soon as they were released and I waited until some specials were announced. That worked a grand total of one time. After that, I noticed that fares from Albany to Orlando (and the return trip) seemed to increase over time. Another good plan ruined by a change. Anyway, I now am back to the process of buying as soon as the fares are released. For our October trip, I bought them immediately upon getting an email announcing that the dates I needed were available for booking. Our round trip fare is $192 per person which, considering I was expecting a big rise due to increased energy costs, I’m quite pleased with, and… the fares have gone up since I purchased. This is certainly not an endorsement but, you can try Farecast (link) for some help. Farecast will advise you, based on historical data, when you should purchase your airline tickets.
Now we have to plan our ground transportation to get us from the airport to our resort. Over the years, I’ve rented cars, used Mears transportation, booked with Town Car services and, more recently, ridden with Disney’s Magical Express (read my March 21, 2008 article, “Disney’s Magical Express“). The only option that I would choose to reserve well in advance is the rental car—they seem to get more expensive as you get closer to your travel dates. If they do offer a special rate at some point, you can always book it and cancel your older reservation at no charge. For our October trip, I’ll reserve Magical Express when we’re about 60 days away. We haven’t yet decided what mode of transportation we’ll use in January. When there are more of us, seven in this case, the cost of a Town Car service seems more palatable than if it was just two.
Park Passes
As DVC members, we get a fairly significant discount on Annual Passes. A discount that makes them just slightly more expensive than 7-day Magic Your Way Park Hopper passes. What we’ll usually try to do, and so far we’ve been successful, is to manage our DVC points and plan our trips so that we’ll get at least three trips on the Annual Pass. We activated our current passes in January 2008 and then planned this October trip and the January 2009 trip to occur before the passes expire. We’ll then allow them to expire and purchase new ones before our next trip, which should be the first of three within another twelve-month period. Got all that?
For the purchase of Magic Your Way passes for the rest of the family, for our trip in January, things are more complicated. There are lots of questions to be answered such as:
- Do we buy the Park Hopper option? In my opinion, always. We rarely visit only one park in any given day and, frequently, visit as many as three.
- Do we purchase the no-expire option? In my opinion, never. I just don’t see the value unless you’re planning on buying a 10-day ticket and splitting it between two trips of five days each (or six and four, etc.).
- Buy the Water Park Fun and More option? Purely an individual decision.
Then there’s the issue of how many days to buy. How long will you be there, and do you intend on visiting a park each day? What I usually do is search out the park hours (usually published six months in advance by Disney) and lay them out into a spreadsheet. (I can hear all the groans and accusations that I’m an obsessive-compulsive trip planner. I am not… OK, I am. But the spreadsheet still comes in handy and you’ll find out why in just a minute.) Now scan your spreadsheet and lay out a rough plan, based on the park hours, for which parks you intend on visiting on which days. You can take a look at parade and fireworks schedules, special events (such as Pirate and Princess Parties, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, and so on) to help you do this. Keep in mind, you’re not planning every minute of every day. You’re just looking to map out a rough schedule that will help you decide the length of park pass you need to purchase. When in doubt, know that buying an extra day can be done later when you’re on site… and the additional cost in moving from a 7-day to 8-day pass, for example, is just a couple of dollars.
When should you buy your passes? My own preference is as late as possible but, before Disney announces a price increase. I’ve been lucky enough to read online about an increase coming the following day and have purchased my passes, via the Web, just hours before the increase. If in doubt, buy early (and we pause for this commercial break: Look for your discounted tickets right here from MousePlanet discount ticket partner Orlando Fun Tickets (link).
Dining Reservations
I saved the best for last, didn’t I? It’s a tired story and one that I’ve hammered on repeatedly for some time, but since the announcement of the Disney Dining Plan, many (most?) restaurant reservations must be made in advance. Particularly, if you’re looking to dine at one of the more popular places, you’ll need to make those reservations six months early or risk not being able to dine where you want and when you want. If that’s not a big deal for you, skip the rest of this article. Otherwise, read on.
Remember that spreadsheet you just threw together? Well, dig it out because you’re now faced with the unenviable task of deciding where and when you want to dine six months in advance. I know, I know. Don’t blame me—I didn’t make these rules.
Typically, at some point just prior to the six month window opening up, we’ll pull our entire traveling party together (a pizza party usually works) and collect everyone’s suggestions and votes on which restaurants we want to reserve. I’ll now map this list of restaurants on to the spreadsheet giving consideration to that rough schedule of which parks on which days… Are you getting the picture? Then I give a call to 407-WDW-DINE and spend 20 minutes making these reservations and entering those 75-digit reservation numbers on to my spreadsheet (the spreadsheet is really a useful tool, isn’t it?). Is it a pain? You bet! Is it necessary? Unfortunately, it is.
So there you have it—planning in a nutshell. You’ve got six months to go and the trip is planned. Nothing to worry about now except shopping, packing, lining up a cat sitter or kennel, charging the batteries for camera and camcorder, charging the laptop, drive or shuttle to the airport, use the airport’s main or peripheral lot…
That’s my opinion. What’s yours?
Another sad note and I hope this is the last one of these I write… On May 18, Randy Berbaum died unexpectedly. Randy was a long-time Disney fan and frequent contributor to the online Disney communities, particularly the rec.arts.disney.parks (RADP) newsgroup. Randy is remembered by many for his humor and good spirit, as well as for his frequent visits to Fort Wilderness for the annual RADP meet. I only knew Randy online but it was obvious he touched many people. I send my sympathies to Randy’s many friends and family.
