[00:00:00] Dana Stanley: If you’ve ever gotten home from Disney World and needed a vacation from your vacation, this episode is for you. I’m walking you through all the specific ways I’m keeping our upcoming trip as laid back as possible. Some of these things are simple planning choices. Others are just to like kind of get my mind right and a few are less is more.

[00:00:20] Dana Stanley: Whether you’re planning for your first trip or your 15th, I hope you’ll come away with something that makes your next trip feel lighter. Hello and welcome to the Laid Back Magic Way podcast. I’m your host, Dana Stanley, creator of Laid Back Magic. As a mom of three, I know how tough it can be to find time to plan a Disney World trip that doesn’t leave you feeling stressed or overwhelmed.

[00:00:42] Dana Stanley: That’s why I’m here to help moms like you create Disney vacations that feel even better than they look on paper here. We’re not chasing perfection, but creating our next favorite memories. So whether you’re brand new to Disney or looking to go deeper into the details, this podcast is your go-to for simple tips, mindset shifts, real life trip recaps, and expert insights to make your trip magical and manageable.

[00:01:05] Dana Stanley: New episodes drop every Monday, so be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment. Okay, let’s dive in. I’m gonna start with the more, getting my head right part, which is more of a mental thing than like actually doing something. But I do feel like it’s the most important. I found that if I don’t pause before a Disney trip or planning and think about what I want it to feel like it’s really easy for the days to get really blurry once we’re on the trip.

[00:01:35] Dana Stanley: I was recently listening to a podcast where the speaker was talking about like manifesting or something, which has nothing to do with what I’m saying, but she was saying that when you visualize something ahead of time. You become, and this was the phrase that she used, awake to it when it actually happens.

[00:01:53] Dana Stanley: I think of this like when we were struggling to have our first baby and I wasn’t manifesting having a baby, but I was imagining dreaming, whatever the word you wanna use is of like holding that baby and holding that baby in certain scenarios, like on the porch or going for a walk. And I remember many, many times when story was tiny of, I guess you could say being awake to.

[00:02:21] Dana Stanley: Those moments once they actually happened, like it made me very aware. I appreciated the more time kind of freezes for like a second and you’re like, oh my gosh, like I did it. We did it. Like this is happening. And maybe it sounds cheesy to tie that back into something like a Disney World trip. But when you do this beforehand, I think anything in your life including a Disney trip.

[00:02:46] Dana Stanley: She’s right. It does make you notice things and it’s like 10 times sweeter when it actually happens. And setting intentions looks different for every trip. But for this one, I think I want it to just feel slower. I feel like lately I’m just like rushing all the time and my nervous system is kind of shot to pieces in general, but especially the girls being home for the summer.

[00:03:09] Dana Stanley: And they’re starting a new school in September. My five-year-old will be going to kindergarten, so like going to school full time kind of makes me a little sad. So a lot of like little life changes have me wanting to just like feel slower and not feel like we’re rushing everywhere and just kind of enjoying each other.

[00:03:28] Dana Stanley: One of the very niche ways that I overwhelm myself and this won’t apply to everyone, is thinking about the content I want to get versus the trip I actually wanna have, and again, I know this won’t be specific to everyone listening, but even just for like documenting your trip or wanting like cute photos, this could be something to think about ahead of time.

[00:03:49] Dana Stanley: Lately I have to ask myself, do I actually care about filming this or is this just something I think I should be documenting for? Instagram or a video somewhere. The truth is most people listening to the podcast or following me on Instagram are here because you want to see the stuff that I like. So I’m taking you guys along for the things that I care about, and this time I’m going to use a Notion calendar to keep track of it all so I can work backwards from our plans that I already wanna do, and then I can plug in from there.

[00:04:25] Dana Stanley: The content goals I need. For, let’s say Instagram or a newsletter, or a podcast episode. From there, I can just have a shot list because I realized too that once I wrote some things out, there are some things that don’t actually need to be filmed, if that makes sense. Like they just have to live in my brain as the experience, and then I can write it out later when I’m home.

[00:04:47] Dana Stanley: And I also don’t wanna waste time over filming something and being on my phone for like a more podcasty episode that doesn’t actually need a video or any visuals. And while I’m on the subject, what do you wanna see from this trip? If you can shoot over to Instagram and send me a quick dm, I would very much appreciate it.

[00:05:06] Dana Stanley: This trip is also feeling a little bit more laid back because for once, I didn’t actually do this all by myself. My friend Melissa is a Disney travel planner, and she actually offered. To look up pricing in rooms For me, when I was convinced that renting DVC points was just not going to happen, I could not, for the life of me, get the stars to align in terms of very specific dates and also where we wanted to stay.

[00:05:32] Dana Stanley: You might remember from a past episode that I had said I was obsessed with checking DVC rental store and I was constantly, but I just waited too long. Classic, like do, as I say, not as I do. But I was also being very picky with the resorts. Like I wanted Grand Floridian or the new Polynesian Tower, even a mix of both, maybe like a split stay, but I couldn’t get the dates to work.

[00:05:55] Dana Stanley: I saw that Riviera had a ton of one bedrooms, and I was just kind of getting overwhelmed and when I was venting to Melissa, she was like, Hey, have you actually looked at the summer promotions? They’re really good. Let me just look for you. And for the first time, I had someone else book it for me. It was actually a really cool experience.

[00:06:13] Dana Stanley: She confirmed the dates and price. I filled out a form with my credit card and then I got a confirmation email with the resort reservation number. I linked it to my, my Disney experience. No problem. It’s actually the same thing that I do if I booked it with points. So all good there. And while she offered to book my dining and other things, obviously I said I would handle it because I like it, but it’s nice to have someone to fall back on if I have questions.

[00:06:38] Dana Stanley: I haven’t stayed at this resort before, so it’s nice just knowing that if anything happens or things get messed up or I have a question or I. My room category isn’t right, or I don’t like my room. I can get in touch with Melissa. Okay. Let’s get more into the nitty gritty of what I’m actually doing on the trip to make it feel laid back in the park.

[00:06:59] Dana Stanley: And number one way, which is essentially to throw anything extra in my budget into lightning lanes. I actually wrote down a list of things that I would completely give up to spend money on Lightning liens, whether it be Multipass and or single Pass. I would give up character dining completely. I’m not saying that I don’t like character dining, but if I have to choose, I’m gonna go with lightning liens.

[00:07:24] Dana Stanley: I could get all of us Lightning, lean, and Multipass for Magic Kingdom for the day, plus some single passes. If I wanna do Seven Dwarves or Tron. For less than one character meal at a character spot, just for some quick math, one character meal for a family of four could cost around 250 to $300 with tax and tip, but meanwhile, a lightning lane multipass is between $15 on the low end or $30 on the high end per person, depending on the park.

[00:07:53] Dana Stanley: I would give up even a bigger room. I would give up a one bedroom and book a studio and put that extra money towards lightning lanes. I would give up my magic bands for all four of us. That could be one day of lightning lanes. I would give up buying the kids souvenirs I would give up buying new clothes for the trip.

[00:08:11] Dana Stanley: You get the idea. It’s one of the easiest and simplest ways to make our trip instantly feel more laid back. And because we’re using lightning lanes, that means we don’t have to rope drop or rush in the mornings and head to the most popular rides first. So we’re gonna do what I call like the laid back rope drop.

[00:08:29] Dana Stanley: So when you’re staying at a Disney resort. And some neighboring hotels too. You get early entry, which means you can start riding rides 30 minutes before the park even opens. Most people, when they’re using early entry, they’ll get there very early and head straight to what makes the most sense time savings wise.

[00:08:49] Dana Stanley: So in Magic Kingdom, that’ll most likely be Peter Pan and or Seven Dwarves, mind Train and Epcot. That’d be Remy’s or Frozen. In Hollywood Studios, a lot of people had to Slinky Dog Dash or Rise of the Resistance. If it’s up and running and in Animal Kingdom, nine times outta 10 people are going to flight of passage during early entry.

[00:09:11] Dana Stanley: Now, I like using early entry. I like getting there early, like on my own time schedule. I don’t like to rush and feel like I’m behind, but I do like getting there when early entry starts. But I will head to somewhere that no one cares about and I’m gonna take my sweet time. So a Magic Kingdom. While everyone’s going to Peter Pan, I’m probably gonna go to Winnie the Pooh or Buzz Lightyear, depending on our plans in Hollywood Studios, we’re gonna head to Toy Story Mania.

[00:09:38] Dana Stanley: Love that ride. I still cannot beat Colton, so help me please, with the tips on how to beat my husband. I actually beat him one time and I was so excited, and if I’m being honest, he was sick as a dog that day, like he could barely sit up straight. So I took it as a win, but like I don’t feel satisfied with the win, you know what I mean?

[00:10:00] Dana Stanley: In Epcot, we’re gonna go to somewhere very chill, like Figment or Nemo Animal Kingdom. We’re gonna go next door to flight, a passage and head to Navi River Journey. And again, I’m able to do this because I’m booking lightning lanes for those things that I mentioned before, that people are rushing to. Doing this just feels slower, less crowded, and just more in line with what we will actually like to do.

[00:10:25] Dana Stanley: Now let’s talk about the travel day itself, because this part is huge for me. I am a very anxious traveler and do not enjoy flying at all. So if you can picture, I’ve been up since 4:00 AM either not sleeping or an early flight. I just spent two and a half, three hours on a plane. With two kids and one on my lap.

[00:10:46] Dana Stanley: I’ve been handing out snacks, trying to keep the baby from spilling everything. Bluetoothing the kids’ headphones, getting up and getting down for diaper changes, like you get the idea all while being terrified of flying. Let’s just throw that in there. And then we finally get off the plane and we wait a few minutes for our gate check stroller.

[00:11:07] Dana Stanley: No problem there. I open my phone and I get a text from our driver, which I’m gonna touch on in a little bit. That he’s waiting for us and where to find him. And here’s the best part. We go down the escalators to meet our driver, which is the baggage claim level as well. And we see the baggage claim and we just walk past it.

[00:11:29] Dana Stanley: All those families are standing there waiting for their bags. And even with waiting for our stroller a little bit, I look over and the bag carousel hasn’t even started like dumping out bags yet. We skip all of that and we head straight outside to our driver. And when we get to our resort, by the time we change into our bathing suits, we’re probably sitting by the pool in less than an hour.

[00:11:51] Dana Stanley: And that is the sixth way that we are keeping things laid back, is that we are only packing a carry-on. We are not checking bags to make this as seamless as possible. Now you’re probably thinking, Dana, how are you getting five people and only carry-ons? I have to check a bag. I have a baby. We have so much stuff and I am going to be working on something with more details on how to actually pack for Disney in carry-ons.

[00:12:15] Dana Stanley: ’cause I am completely sold and convince that everyone and anyone could do this, but one of the pieces that I am using to. Bring carry-ons is I’m using a themed capsule wardrobe, so sometimes when I feel more overwhelmed than usual, I will choose like a vibe or theme. I. For all of our clothes, just to help narrow things down.

[00:12:40] Dana Stanley: Like one year I did 1970s Polynesian. It was like, uh, August summer trip, and yes, we were staying at the Polynesian. This time, I’m thinking summer on the Riviera Linen classic pieces that can kind of mix and match some like citrus print. I think maybe I’m picturing last summer I did kinda like the opposite.

[00:13:01] Dana Stanley: It was like eighties. Tie dye, Mickey surfer vibe, very like bright. The point of the capsule wardrobe is, or any theme that you do, is that if your plans change, everything still works. If someone’s sick or the weather’s weird, or you’re going to a different park, then you weren’t planning on. I can go from the pool to Hollywood studios and then to a nice dinner.

[00:13:27] Dana Stanley: And still feel comfortable and pulled together. If you’re not familiar with a capsule wardrobe, it’s essentially 10 to 14 key pieces that are very versatile, so you can wear them in a lot of different ways, and then you can pack less, especially if you’re okay with doing some laundry on vacation. It makes it really easy to just pack less, and then it’s easy to bring a carry-on.

[00:13:48] Dana Stanley: I’m gonna back up a step when I mentioned getting to the resort, because that’s part of what makes the arrival day feel really easy. I mentioned that we’re flying, and that’s probably two thirds of Disney World’s visitors each year are flying into the Orlando Airport, and that means we all need transportation to get to Disney.

[00:14:10] Dana Stanley: Outside of having your own car or renting a car, which I am not doing, I know my options are to Uber or Lyft. Now, if I didn’t have little kids with me. I would probably pick this because it’s the cheapest and fastest, but you can’t schedule out an Uber ahead of time if you need a car seat. And I need two of them.

[00:14:31] Dana Stanley: So this is just not gonna work for me. And then I’m not sure about the availability at all. I’d have to look like when I got off the plane, which I don’t like. And then the most popular option is Mirrors Connect, which is like a shuttle service. But my problem with this is that it’s a shared service, so if depending on what time you show up and actually get on the shuttle bus, you’re either gonna leave right away, but you could end up just like sitting and waiting for more people to get on the bus.

[00:15:01] Dana Stanley: And then once you leave. You don’t know if your resort is gonna be the first stop or the second, or the last one, the eighth stop. And when I’m in Disney, like I wanna go, like I just wanna get to my resort and get settled in, which is why I’m going with the third option of hiring private transportation to directly pick me up and directly drop me off.

[00:15:20] Dana Stanley: It’s scheduled ahead of time, so I already paid. And don’t have to worry about like surge pricing like I would with an Uber or Lyft. And I know I’m going to have the two car seats waiting for me. There are a lot of different private transportation options and I think they’re all great off the bat because you’re not, you know, worrying about the shuttle or shared drop-offs.

[00:15:41] Dana Stanley: But we’ve been using a service called Away We Go because they have plenty of car seats, like they will have two car seats for me. They had an infant car seat when crew was tiny, so they have front or rear facing, they have booster seats too. And it fits up to 12 people. So even when we’re with my in-laws, it fits all of us.

[00:16:02] Dana Stanley: And the nice thing about private transportation is they’re tracking your flight too ahead of time. So like one time, for instance, our flight was weirdly an hour early and I thought, oh no, we’re just gonna be like sitting at the airport waiting. But they were tracking the flight while we were in the air and they knew, and they got us an hour early.

[00:16:19] Dana Stanley: Okay, speaking of arrival day, you can tell a lot of my thoughts are just like travel day. I had originally planned for us to go to Blizzard Beach because waterpark admission in 2025 and 2026 is included on your check-in day, so it’s free. And we’ve never been to Blizzard Beach. I get a lot of questions about Blizzard Beach, so I was like really committed to going, especially ’cause we’re gonna have an early flight.

[00:16:44] Dana Stanley: But the more I thought about it. And the more I looked into it, I decided it’s not something I want to do. I was researching it because obviously that’s what I do, and I found out that people will rope drop water parks because if you get there too late, there might not be anywhere to sit. And then I saw that there’s kind of like a strategy of which slides to hit first, and then I was like, okay.

[00:17:09] Dana Stanley: I knew in my heart that I wasn’t a waterpark girl. But I thought I could like do it for the kids. But now thinking about staying at Riviera and the beautiful pool and we’ve never been there, that sounds much more my speed versus going to a waterpark on travel day. Probably my worst nightmare on that type of day.

[00:17:31] Dana Stanley: So instead we’re doing like a soft start to the trip. On check-in day, we’re not gonna go into the parks, we’re just gonna settle in, hit the pool, and then when our room’s ready, I can unpack, which honestly I look forward to. And when I say unpacking, this is going to include the 10th tip of ordering groceries to the room.

[00:17:50] Dana Stanley: This one’s simple, but it’s always a good move no matter what. We’re gonna have groceries delivered to the resort, like snacks, bottled water, and lots of easy things for breakfast. When we wanna be eating kind of on the go, I’m gonna use Instacart so that everything is waiting for us when we actually get to Orlando.

[00:18:11] Dana Stanley: And that way if our room is ready early, great, but if not, Disney will keep things cold and or frozen for us until we can get them. It’s one of those little choices that’s very easy and makes the whole trip feel smoother. Having our go-to snacks and things on hand, especially with my one and a half year old, he’s not like a big.

[00:18:31] Dana Stanley: Meal guy. He kind of just snacks all day. And while I love going out for breakfast and grabbing coffee, when you’re like rushing out the door in the morning, it’s easier to just at least have almost like half a breakfast at the room. And then whatever you grab after is just a bonus. So I’m including this in our travel day of when our room is ready, we can head down, pick up our groceries, and I can unpack and get settled.

[00:18:54] Dana Stanley: And while I love having things in the room on hand, I will admit I am like a sit down girl at least once a day. I really just want my food brought to me. I want to talk to a human being and tell them what I want, and then they bring said food to me. I don’t wanna be getting up and down getting ketchup and forks and napkins, and I don’t wanna wrangle three kids, even up and down to a buffet a lot of times.

[00:19:20] Dana Stanley: And I don’t mean like it has to be like a fancy meal or expensive or character dining. I just want something locked in where I know one time today I don’t have to make a decision of where we’re eating and the food is going to be brought to me, and most likely a cocktail too. I took the three kids out to lunch by myself the other day, and I felt like I needed a nap afterwards.

[00:19:42] Dana Stanley: So definitely one reservation a day to keep things as laid back as possible. So those are the 11 things of what’s making this trip. Feel more laid back before we even get there. If you’re planning a trip of your own and any of these stood out, feel free to borrow them. Adapt them, and just ignore the ones that don’t sound right and don’t fit your family.

[00:20:03] Dana Stanley: I’ll be sharing more behind the scenes of our trip over on Instagram. And if you’re new around here and want a planning approach that’s actually doable, you can check out my full trip planning framework. It’s called Lead Back Magic at the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for hitting play on this week’s episode.

[00:20:20] Dana Stanley: Until next time, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of. The Laid Back Magic Way podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode and it was helpful for you, it would mean the world to me. If you’d write a quick review, your reviews, help more moms like you find the show, and I read every single one of them seriously, thank you in advance.

[00:20:39] Dana Stanley: You can find me on Instagram at somewhere worthwhile, and I’d love to hear from me there. DM me if you have any questions about this episode or what you’d like to see in future ones. Until then, keep planning for your next favorite memory and I’ll see you next time.