After posting our most recent Disney trip recap, I thought it would be helpful to post our best tips on “how we like to Disney”. Having been many times with infants to toddlers and many adults, we have honed in on a few ways we like to do a Disney trip. Here are our top tips:
Liv and Lucy at the Art of Animation Resort.
Use a travel agent that specializes in Disney. Yep, it’s a thing- and if you just do one of these things, let it be this one. A Disney-specialized travel agent will take the largest amount of stress off your shoulders, be able to advise you on when and how to do things, and even make reservations and schedules for you. We used Ashly with Foerster Travel, who is also our friend and has been to Disney something like 30+ times! She was amazing, kept up with all our reservations and even let us know when it was time to book dining and fast passes.
Stay at a Disney resort. I get it- Disney can be expensive- but you’re paying for convenience. And much of that convenience is due to the perks of staying a Disney resort. When you stay at a Disney resort, you have free transportation (via bus or the new skyliner) to every park and every other Disney resort. Your bags are checked from your departure flight straight to your hotel room. Your room keys are on your magic band, giving you one less thing to carry. Each of the parks have Extra Magic Hours (extra early or late opening/closing hours for Disney resort guests). Not to mention that the resorts themselves are a vacation. Each is elaborately themed and fun with their own pools, shops, and special features. For us, being at a Disney resort has been a huge part of the experience. There are a ton of resorts to choose from, and from our experience, even the Value Resorts are great quality- we stayed at Art of Animation this last time, and absolutely loved it!
Go for more than 4 days, get the Park Hopper tickets, and take a break/resort day. Again, yes- this is the more expensive option- but the more days you book, the better rate you will receive on both your room and your park tickets. Since there are 4 main parks, we have decided it is worth it to book at least one extra day, so that you don’t have the pressure of trying to cover an entire park in just one day. (It’s pretty much impossible with kids!). We had 5 full days this last time, and would have loved 1 more just so we could have had a resort day and gone to the pool. It was, however, so nice to have the park hopper option, which means we were able to bounce from one park to the next on the same day. This allowed us to go back and revisit some favorite rides and some we weren’t able to do on the last day of our vacation.
Don’t try to do it all. I put this tip here, because if you’re like me, you want to get the best bang for your buck and get the whole experience. One of the reasons we keep going back is because Disney is so, so good at constantly improving and changing things- there’s just no way you’ll ever do it all in one trip. So, go knowing that each trip will be different and remember it’s impossible to do everything!
Reserve everything you can in advance. This includes dining reservations (meals with characters book up very quickly!) and Fast Passes (available 30 days before your trip). You can do this on the My Disney Experience app which is essential to a great stay at Disney. Food is MY favorite souvenir, always- so I did lots of research on the best places to eat at the Disney Food Blog, who were right on in their recommendations! Since we opted for the quick service meal plan this trip, we didn’t need to do any dining reservations in advance- more on that next…
This was a quick-service meal in Pandora at Animal Kingdom, and it was delicious! Knox loved his cheeseburger “pods” and Shawn was eating some sort of Asian-noodle stir fry and a mysterious green beer- which was also great!
Do a Dining Plan. Guys, I did the math. I really, actually, ran the numbers on what it would cost us to feed 5 people, and decided the dining plan was worth it. Disney has a few different dining plan options- and here is my recommendation: if you’re going with mostly adults, do the Disney Dining Plan, which contains 1 table-service (a.k.a. waiter/more formal sit-down meal) and one quick service (order at the counter) meal, plus 2 snacks per day. If you’re going with mostly littles: do the Quick Service Plan. We have done both, and loved both. It is always enough food for us, and we typically use 1 snack credit for breakfast (you can get a muffin or bagel, for example). This last time we chose to do the Quick Service dining plan (which is less expensive), and were so glad that we’d opted for that over the regular Dining plan for a couple of reasons: 1) We didn’t have to make any dining reservations- which means we weren’t bound by any schedules and 2) we weren’t wrangling 3 little people to stay seated/behave at a “nice” dinner. Annnnd, the food was GREAT. Again- refer to DFB for recommendations on where to eat.
Eat meals at the resorts. A dining plan also includes meals at any of the Disney resorts and some of them have the BEST restaurants- some of our favorites include, O’hana, Sanaa, and The Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue. On this past trip, we visited Magic Kingdom on a particularly busy day and decided to seek refuge at the beautiful Polynesian Resort and eat lunch there. It was way less crowded, and such a nice break- plus they serve the famous Dole Whip there!
Don’t get hangry- pack snacks. One of your greatest enemies when pulling a long Disney day is hunger, and Disney allows you to bring food into their parks, which is a huge perk. We always pack protein bars, and they have come in clutch so many times- for adults and kids! Our kids love Zbars while Shawn and I prefer Larabars.
We loved riding the new Disney Skyliner from our resort to Epcot and Hollywood Studios!
Pack swimsuits in a carry-on if you want to swim first thing. If you’ve ever been on a cruise, this is the same tip! Because your bags are checked directly to your room from your first flight, your bags will take a few hours to arrive at your hotel room. We landed around noon and had a couple of hours to check out our resort before our room was ready, which would have been a great time to enjoy the pool (we didn’t plan on going to a park that day). The only problem was our swimsuits were in our bags- so, now we know for next time- pack our swimsuits in a carry on!
Do laundry! If you have a larger family and are staying for more than 5 days, I would recommend only packing for half your trip and doing laundry. Most resorts have laundromats centrally located and are very convenient. I did laundry on a previous trip and it saved me from packing a lot more clothing. You’ll need some quarters. :)
Meet the characters first. If you’re going with littles that really care about meeting the characters, decide on your “must see” characters and plan to meet them asap. Our travel agent scheduled in alerts on our My Disney Experience plans that would let us know when character meet and greets were happening, so we were able to go first thing to meet Minnie and Mickey (and didn’t have to spend the rest of our vacation being begged to meet them!). We also HAD to see Elsa and Anna, so we knocked that out on our Epcot day first thing. Other character meets happened organically for us and it was nice to not stress over this aspect since we’d already said hello!
Bring cash for extras to stay on budget. Since your magic bands can also be connected to your credit or debit card, it can be really easy to charge things to your account using them (don’t worry- you control whether or not kids can charge on their bands!). We decided to bring cash to use for souvenirs, tips, and extra snacks, etc. It worked like a charm and helped us stay on budget.
Utilize Rider Swap. Ya’ll this one thing is GOLDEN for parents of littles. Because our two youngest were too short to ride many of the heart-pumping feature rides, we were able to utilize Rider Swap and Knox (our 8 year old) got to ride twice- once with Shawn and once with myself. Essentially, when you get in line for a ride, you just need to find the Cast Member at the end of the line and they will scan the magic band of the first two riders, and then the rider that will swap once the first two have gone. I’d wait with the girls while Shawn and Knox rode, and then once they were done, Knox and I got to go in the Fast Pass line again. Definitely one of the best ideas we’ve seen Disney implement!
Be willing to go single rider. The single rider line is often moving at a much faster pace than the regular one. We sent our 8 year old son in the single rider line a few times and he had a blast, and got to ride much faster!
Go see the shows- they are a nice break and generally great! While the rides are generally our family’s main focus, the shows are always a great experience. This past time we loved the Frozen Sing Along and it was a great break and nice opportunity to sit down. Also, if you’re at Disney in the summer, they’re a nice break from the heat!
This stroller was so nice to have and accommodated many naps! Lucy (25 lb.) sat in the back most of the time and had plenty of room.
Utilize a double stroller with more than one kid. Twice now we have put our Phil & Ted’s Dot Stroller to WORK at Disney- once with a 3 month old and 3 year old, and then with 3 and 4 year olds. Both times it was totally worth it to bring it. You can rent strollers at Disney or from one of the many outside vendors in Orlando, but none of the rentals we saw were inline like our Phil & Ted’s. Having an inline stroller made it easier to get through tight crowds and on and off the Skyliner (Disney’s new gondola system servicing Hollywood Studios and Epcot). People with side-by-side strollers were having to break them down, while we were able to just stroll on and off. :) Plus, it allowed our girls to take naps without leaving the park. Having that stroller was so essential to our trip and we love ours!
Take this little tripod and bluetooth remote! This was a last-minute Amazon purchase (LINKED HERE) that I am so glad I made. You may be shocked to hear that this professional photographer did not bring her “fancy camera” on vacation- but with 3 kids and all the gear that comes with that, it just didn’t make sense. I would have spent more time obsessing over photos and equipment, and less time enjoying the time with my family. So, I picked up this little tripod/remote combo that meant I could jump in the photo. We also purchased Memory Maker which was also WORTH IT to me. I loved that we could get photos of all of us with little to no effort, including the fun ones they take on the rides. Some of those images are my favorite!
Quite possibly my favorite ride photo ever. Thank you Memory Maker for capturing this moment!
There’s so much more I could write, but this post is too long as it is- I do hope this has been helpful! Feel free to send me your Disney tips or things you’d like me to address in a future blog post!