If It’s been a few years since you’ve been to Walt Disney World, you’ll notice that a lot has changed with the way you plan a trip the world of the MOUSE! At Go See It travel, we are all about how to plan great trips for yourself, sometimes with the help of great travel advisers. So although Walt Disney World has new transportation options (Skyliner to the parks), and new lands (Toy Story and Galaxy’s Edge in Disney Studios and Pandora World of Avatar in Animal Kingdom), we are going to talk about how planning a trip to the “world” has changed. (Much thanks to dear friend Jen, for allowing me to share her family’s recent WDW trip photos, featuring her adorable children, who I am calling Donald, age 10 and Daisy age 2) and Stef Rufo for her advice on itineraries and planning tips.
EPCOT Illuminations has been retiried, and a new production, Forever, has taken it’s place! (J. Klofft)
Information OVERLOAD!
Things in WDW change all the time! Even this article will be out of date soon enough! Hopefully, the lesson will be that with things changing all the time, it’s critical to find trusted and connected sources when planning a WDW trip! Some of the big changes are the sheer amount information available online. It’s easy to get stuck in a rabbit hole of analysis paralysis! While it’s fun to read user reviews and fan sites, I avoided getting lost while planning our June 2019 trip to WDW, by trusting these well known sources, who are constantly researching and culling sources for changes and how they affect visitors.
The first source is Walt Disney for “official” information. The Disney websites and apps work very well and provide up to the minute information. On of the first things to do is download the My Disney Experience App, and set up an account. From their you can link your admission tickets, hotel and dining reservations, even if you’ve purchased them through a 3rd party. You can also make many of those hotel reservations and dining reservations on the app as well as scheduling Fast Pass Plus ride times.
The second source for critical and analytical information is The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and their online Touring Plans.com, which provides more planing tools, some for free, and some behind a subscription paywall. I paid a small amount for the paper guide book and the subscription, but I saved $1000 in lodging costs for the EXACT same room I priced out on the Disney site by using the advice I found in the lodging section of the Unofficial Guide. (We aren’t affiliated with or compensated for any of the sites or apps I recommend, these are just the sources we used to plan our trip)
For getting crowd sourced questions answered, we like the DIS Boards and the WDW Mom’s Panel. And for notifications of sales and deals, I get regular email updates from Mousesavers.
Top Tip: Pay the small subscription fee to get access to the Touring Plans Crowd Calendar. This highly researched and dynamic tool will help you decide when is the best time of year to visit WDW and also which days are best to visit each park during your visit, based on constantly changing park hours and other factors. You can also create an optimized and customized touring plan for your family on the days and parks you visit.
“Daisy” contemplates her planning options in Magic Kingdom
The order in which you plan your trip has changed
Ordinarily, when you planning a theme park trip, you’d expect to plan where to stay, then plan which parks to visit, you would go to the park, buy an admission ticket, then select the rides you want to in that park while you are there and then decide where to dine in those parks. once you got hungry. Thousands of people did that and it created bottle necks and lines everywhere.
The new Disney reservation system has turned that all on it’s head in the hopes of spreading people out to avoid lines and crowds. And it more or less works that way as long as you plan ahead.
After you’ve decided where to stay, on WDW property or have purchased your park admission tickets, you get to select where to dine, 180 days in advance. This means SIX months before you go you have to decide where and when you’ll eat, mostly because some Disney Dining experiences are attractions themselves, such as dining in Cinderellas Castle requiring advance reservations or missing out completely. The Unofficial Guide I used has excellent descriptions and point by point strategies about how to make hard to get reservations. Another change is you’ll be required to tie your reservation to a credit card ad you’ll dinged with a service charge if you no show for a reservation you’ve made.
The good news is you don’t HAVE reserve your dining 180 days ahead. Another change is you can use the app to make a reservation while you are in the park, or even order a counter service meal online before you arrive to the restaurant and your order will be ready and waiting for you!
The reason this is challenging is that you won’t have the ability to select the Fast Pass Plus (FP+) rides you’d like until you are 60 or 30 days before your trip. You have to decide where to eat before you know for sure you can get the FP+ for the attractions you are going to the park to see! We ended up changing dining reservations and which park we were going to visit on which day because we wanted FP+ for certain attractions that weren’t available on the day we’d planned to go originally!
Top Tip: Bring an extra battery to recharge your phone, which can easily run down during a long day in the park using the Disney Experience App.
View to Boardwalk Resort (J. Klofft)
You don’t have to pay full price for a hotel room
We were able to pay less than half the rack rate for a Disney Beach Club Villa by renting through a broker which helps Disney Vacation Club members liquidate their points. (We used David’s Vacation Club Rentals) We had to be flexible about which property we chose, picking the one with the best price rather than being fixated on a favorite. We also traveled during a quieter time of year. We once traveled during the busy Washington’s Birthday weekend and had to pay top dollar for studio at the Contemporary Resort, there were no “deals” that weekend! Dates of stay and demand play a huge role in getting a good price.
Another way to save is to use one of the many popular home rental sites to book a room or a whole home. We have cousins with a young family who book a whole apartment for their family, where they save money and can enjoy pools and kitchens that are part of the property.
Top Tip: If you are an Amazon Customer, you can use Amazon Pantry to stock up your kitchen or order snacks to bring into the theme park. These will be delivered to front desk of your hotel within the 2 hour window you select, so you can even order perishables!
Donald’s snack is the envy of Daisy!
Park Admission Tickets are now priced dynamically based on the season
A recent change means that you purchase your tickets for the dates that you plan to visit the parks ahead of time. The algorithm calculates the busiest days and fixes prices on those days slightly higher than days which are anticipated to be less busy. The Unofficial Guide and Touring Plans sites we used offer some strategies for saving money when buying admission tickets. We used a ticket broker (Undercover Tourist) and were able to get a small discount on our total price due to the volume of tickets they sell.
Top Tip: Consider carefully whether its worth paying extra for admission tickets with amenities you wont use. For instance if moving from park to park takes a lot of time, you are better off exploring one whole park per day. You’ll save money on the tickets and maximize the amount of attractions you can see by not spending time traveling from park to park.
You can use a Magic Band to swipe easily into attractions and pay for things in the park.
The My Disney Experience App works with the Disney Magic Band available for purchase. All of your dining reservations, FP+ and admission tickets are linked to your account so you don’t need to keep carry any tickets or paperwork. You can also link a credit card to the Magic Band for tap and go on park purchases. Your tickets and your credit card are on the Magic Band and your itinerary is on your cell phone! The Magic band will even open the door to your room!
Top Tip:Plan to have one family member carry a credit card, just in case. We had an incident where the Magic Band payment system went down temporarily and were caught at a WDW restaurant without a way to pay! One of us had to sit at the table while the other ran back to our hotel room to fetch a credit card
You’ll choose your FP+ Rides online ahead of time and they’ll be loaded on the Magic Band for you to enter the attraction any time during the hour long window.
You can get Fast Passes without running all over the park
One of the best improvements is being able to book your Fast Plus Plus (FP+) admissions ahead of time. choosing up to three attractions in each park (60 days ahead if you are staying at a WDW resort and 30 days ahead if you have valid tickets for the theme park) Like all things Disney, which attractions are offered as FP+ can change at any time, but the take away is that its well worth getting up early on the days you are allowed to book your FP+ to choose the attractions you want to experience and book them in advance.
One advantage is you don’t have to wander through out the park collecting paper passes from kiosks in front of your desired attractions now. It’s all conveniently stored on the Disney Experience App, and easily viewed or changed. We even received notifications if our FP attraction was suddenly closed for maintenance during our window and allowed to make another reservation on the fly.
Another advantage is you don’t need to arrive at the parks at dawn to ride the most popular attractions without a huge line. The challenge is deciding ahead of time which parks you’d like to visit on which days and be willing to change your dining reservations or park choices around if you have scheduling conflict once you’ve booked your FP+.
Top Tip: You can add FP+ attractions once you’ve used all the FP+ attractions you’ve booked for the day (if there are still FP+ slots available)
Jen and “Donald” enjoyed their visit to Rockin’ Roller Coaster!
IS ANY OF THIS REALLY WORTH THE EFFORT?!
My answer is YES! Walt Disney World continues to add new and more “magical” entertainment options every year. While a WDW trip is not usually anyone’s idea of a “relax and recharge” vacation, it’s always a lot of fun and the innovations in entertainment are fascinating to see.
Going to Walt Disney World does require a lot of advance planning, but the recent changes make most of the planning logistics happen BEFORE you travel, so that once you are in the parks you can relax and enjoy the itinerary of entertainment and attractions you’ve planned. With the help of several expert websites and travel providers, we found easy ways to save some money and time. We were more relaxed (maybe it helped that we were kid free in WDW for the first time in over 30 years!) with the advance plans. We were confident knowing our most desired attractions and meals were already booked and we didn’t need to worry about whether we’d have to wait in a long line for meals or get up early just to fit in the newest attractions.
Be sure to leave a comment with some of your best “touring tips” for Walt Disney World!