Tips for Planning a Disney Vacation

We are about to embark on a magical trip to Disney World!  If you haven’t been to a Disney Park during Halloween, add it to your bucket list STAT.  It is a truly an amazing experience.  If you’re saying, “oh I’ve been to Disney, how different can it be”?  Let me just tell you that each and every pumpkin is unique, that’s how different.  Take attention to detail, and mix it with the magic of Disney and it’s incredible.  In this post I’m going to give you some tips for planning a Disney vacation because we are going to Disney World this fall. This same process can be used regardless of where you are planning your vacation!  Follow these simple tips to stress free vacation planning!

We all know what a challenge it can be to plan a trip for 2, let alone 3 or more, especially when the kiddos are involved.  When it comes to being sure the trip is fun and as relaxed as possible, organizing vacation planning tips come to the rescue!

Before you settle on a date, do a little research to ensure your destination has the activities you are interested in, available for the dates you are planning on going.  For us, that meant watching Disney.com to release the Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Spooktacular dates.  For perspective, I did this back in late March for a trip in late October.  With Disney, the key is to plan EARLY, like 200 days+ in advance.  More on that later.

During the month of October nearly every Thursday & Friday night are Halloween Party nights, so I knew just about any weekend in October was in the running for our trip dates.  Next up was to shop for plane fares.  I watched fares, watched fares, and then watched fares some more.  I watched them for each weekend that worked for our trip.  For 2 weeks, I watched fairs for 4 separate weekends to find the best package.  I ended up booking a package with Allegiant Air at the very end of March.  The package included airfare, hotel and a rental car for the 3 of us.  Because I opted to stay 20 minutes away from the park, I was able to save about $150/night.  

Once logistics were set, it was time to organize.  I created a spreadsheet {I’m an auditor by day, can you tell??} to input all of our important travel information.  I scrubbed this version for privacy, but hopefully this shows what my template looks like:

I am not one of those mom’s you see walking around with a laminated copy of the schedule, once we are in the park, we do our own thing and fly by the seat of our pants. However I use this template to keep track of our “set in stone” plans: flights, hotel, scheduled meals and park hours.  Anything and everything else is just in there so that we can remember when we can do character meet and greets.  Miss O is 2 1/2, so missing meeting a princess = epic fail for mom.  

If you haven’t been to Disney, an important number to remember is 180.  180 is the number of days in advance that your character dining reservations can be made.  This is so so important!  The first time we went, I didn’t know so we ended up not being able to do character dining.  This time I listened to advice of a friend and called. The second booking was available so I booked the dining experiences I wanted.  You can see in my chart that I plotted those on our schedule.  Character dining is the reason planning the parks on the calendar in advance is so key.  If you don’t know what park you’ll be at, you can’t plan character dining!  For a simple short trip like this one, we decided to do one full day at our two favorite parks.  The last day we are going to a Disney Princess Tea Party and then catching our flight home.  

Hopefully we end up with a few more wonderful memories with our Disney Pals.  I will post about my trip over at my blog: Pretty Well Organized.  Until then, TOODLES!!!

Wendy