Around this time last year Michael and I started talking about going to Disney World with the kids. I can't remember what even sparked the conversation. But we started talking and dreaming and our excitement grew and sometime around the beginning of January we booked our trip! We first booked our trip to be at Disney on Christmas day. Doesn't that sound magical? Michael and I were star eyed and had big dreams...until we started to look at crowd calendars. Apparently the crowd calendars go from 1 being the lowest to 10 being the highest and the week of Christmas was set at an 11! After talking about it we decided that we didn't want large overwhelming crowds to be our kids first experience at Disney. So we bounced ideas back and forth - keeping our reservations for Christmas week. In April after my surgery we realized that life is short and as a family we needed to make memories. So, we decided to take a week off of school and work and go when crowds were lower! We called Disney and changed our reservations to December 10-16. I talked with my boss and he is great! Also booking when we did and adding a day to the beginning of our trip put us in a new bracket and it actually saved us money! Like $800+!
Finding where to stay was fun. I was all about the value resorts becuase I knew we wouldn't be in the room much at all. However, there are 5 of us. At the value hotels that made us have to bump up to a suite which also made the price jump up. When that happened it made the moderate resorts the same price as value if not cheaper! So we went with Carribbean Beach Resort! It was perfect for us. It had 2 queen sized beds and a fold down murphy bed. We loved staying there and would stay there again in a heartbeat!
We then started shopping for shirts and other items I had read about that we would need for our trip. Disney store puts their shirts on sale about every other month 2 for $20 and we would check online for clearance shirts and watch for free shipping. We got all of our shirts for $10 or less! We also knew that we wanted our kids to have pins to start collecting and in the future start trading - so we looked for pins that were free with purchase and free with a movie purchase. We got all 3 kids a free pin through out our year of planning! We decided we would let them pick out their own lanyard and a few more pins when we got to Disney.
Planning each day was a lot of fun. Michael and I purchased a membership at touringplans.com it is a must! We will not plan a trip without it! (these are our own thoughts and feelings about touring plans and we are in no way affiliated with this site) We looked at the crowd calendars on touring plans and planned our day around low crowds. We discovered that days with extra magic hours had higher crowds. We knew with little kids staying in the parks late was not important and probably a bad idea so we skipped days that had extra magic hours. So once we knew what parks we wanted to go to we started mapping out our "must dos" when at each park. We also decided that Magic Kingdom was a 2 day park and how we wanted to start and finish our trip so we planned around that. So our trip was - Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studio, Epcot, and Magic Kingdom. Touring Plans let us click on experiences, meet and greets, parades, fireworks, attractions and meals that we wanted and then it would customize our day for us. Sometimes it would have us going back and forth across parks and we are more systematic than that so we would change it up a bit. It was our BIGGEST planning tool and when we got to each park we used the app and followed each of our plans! It was amazing.
Then came meal planning. So...my number one tip is - GET THE MEAL PLAN!!!! Food at Disney is EXPENSIVE to say the least! Quick service meals - meaning you walk up, order, and pick it up at the counter - range between $10 and $15 a meal and then if you want a dessert they are around $5-8 each. Then drinks are $3...So on the high side a meal for one person quick service is $26 - yikes! Times 4 people $104! Table services ran us between $150-$200 for our family plus tips. So...for our 5 days in park would have cost us $1,520 plus tips at the table services. Our meal plan cost us about $700 and with it we got a quick service per person per night, a table service per person per night, a snack credit per person per night, and a refillable cup per person. It was well worth it! So some blogs say that you shouldn't plan out your quick service meals - just go with whatever you are near...however if you do that you will find yourself eating a lot of burgers and chicken nuggets for lunches or dinners. If you plan it correctly you will eat amazingly well at quick services as well as table services. I've also heard people say that dining plans are way too much food...they are! Which was a blessing - Callen was too young to be on the dining plan but could eat off our plates and any table service buffets he ate for free!! At all quick service meals they have both kids meals and adult meals but...your kids can eat adult meals which come with desserts. We had a hard time eating our desserts each time - BUT ask for a to go container and take them with you for a snack later! We planned our table services around character meet and greets! Y'all we got one on one time with characters without lines! Plus - we looked for buffets so Callen could eat free! Here are our meal choices and people we met. MK day 1 - Cinderellas Royal Table TS - we met Cinderella, Aurora, Snow White, Ariel, and Jasmine. That night we had QS dinner at Pinocchio's house. AK day 2 - Yak and Yeti QS and Tusker House TS dinner - we met - Donald, Mickey, Goofy, Daisy Duck. Hollywood Studios day 3 - Backlot Express for QS - they had Star Wars themed food and by far the BEST dessert for any QS place! Dinner was TS at Minnie's Seasonal Dine at Hollywood and Vine, we met - Minnie, Mickey, Donald, Goofy as Santa, and Daisy. This meal was amazing. It changes with each season. For this time it is Christmas comfort foods on a buffet. The desserts were these tiny vintage desserts! Epcot day 4 - before we got to Epcot we went to Chef Mickey at the contemporary. It was good and a good experience but we don't know if we we will go back. We met - Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto, and Donald we then hopped on the monorail to go to Epcot. For lunch we ate around the World Showcase! QS meals can be turned into 2 snack credits if you want to use them that way. Most of the carts around World Showcase are snack credit items. For dinner that night we ate at Coral Reef - this was our least favorite meal. The food was good but, we could have gotten a steak anywhere...It was our anniversary and they did bring us treats. The dessert was really good. Next time we will just eat around the world the entire time! MK day 5 - breakfast at Crystal Palace. We made early reservations to be allowed in the park before it opened! We were able to get a picture in front of the castle with no one in it. Crystal Palace was by far our favorite breakfast food! It was SOOOOO good! We met - Pooh, Eyore, Piglet, and Tigger! We were so full from breakfast that we all split a lunch of chicken nuggets and french fries. For dinner we ate at Be Our Guest! If you are a beauty and the beast fan this is a must! We met the Beast here!
Once we secured our dining plans - 180 days out then we for sure set the rest of our days and plans. We had to change a few things since we didn't have exact meal times until then. Once that was set we were able to start looking at FastPass information and what we wanted to FP each day. We made those at 60 days out.
Then we just finished our shopping list and waited until the time came!! We bought maps off of Amazon for the kids to look at. I read about the best way to organize our hotel room. More of that coming up!
