Dana Stanley 00:00:01  If you found me through Instagram, you probably know me as a Disney World girl. But what you might not know is how I got here in the first place. Because five years ago, I had never even heard the phrase Disney content creator, let alone imagine I’d be one. In today’s episode, I’m rolling back the tape. Back to 2019. Dana. Wedding videographer. Dreamer. Maybe a little delusional and sharing how one big decision turned my love for Disney into something much bigger. And if you’re feeling like a change is on the horizon for you, or you’re thinking about taking a leap, this just might be the episode you need to hear. 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. That’s why I’m here to help moms like you create Disney vacations that feel even better than they look on paper.

Dana Stanley 00:00:57  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. New episodes drop every Monday, so be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment. Okay, let’s dive in. When I think back to how all of this started, there are two timelines that pop into my head. The first is my kid timeline of how I fell in love with Disney in the first place. And then the second is more of the business side. And as an adult, how I ended up ending one business to start another. Now, while I wouldn’t say I was born with Mickey ears on, I was definitely a Disney kid. We didn’t have cable, so when we wanted Disney, it was straight to the movies out of our cabinet of VHS. And if you’re a 90s kid, you know that those were our prized possessions.

Dana Stanley 00:02:02  And being more of an indoor kid, like, I wasn’t in sports or anything like that. I think those movies were just kind of our escape for me and my big sister. She was and still is an amazing artist. So very early on, she gave me an appreciation for the animation of the movies. She was six years older than me, so always in art classes and drawing. And she really loved the animals in particular, like Bambi, Fox in The Hound, Great Mouse Detective, The Rescuers, a lot of mice, ironically, because none of them were Mickey. I don’t think we ever really watched Mickey cartoons growing up, which is funny. Those are the things that I still love about Disney. Not a lot of people know that. I didn’t grow up going to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, but I grew up going to Disneyland in California. My grandparents actually used to live in California, so we would take these big trips every summer to visit them for a few weeks. And they lived right outside of Disneyland.

Dana Stanley 00:03:05  So we would go to Disneyland. And I have a memory of walking to Knott’s Berry Farm. So very close. And I just have so many good memories of riding Peter Pan’s Flight. And if you were subscribed to my newsletter from like two years ago, you’ll remember the story about me in that ride. I remember riding Splash Mountain R.I.P. with my mom, and I really remember being terrified of the characters, which is something that has not changed. They kind of do scare me, but I’ve been trying to be better about it because my kids are getting more into characters, but anything that really brings a movie to life is going to be my favorite. So like Peter Pan or I remember there was an Aladdin dinner show and it was really fun. Those are like my favorite memories, and I think that’s a lot of why I still love going to Disney World. Now in my late 30s, it’s hard for me to have fun, for lack of a better word. I’m like more of a serious person, and there’s something about it where I can really enjoy the rides and shows and fireworks.

Dana Stanley 00:04:19  Kind of like privately, like internally with my family, which is funny because it’s like the most crowded place in the world. But you’ll know that feeling if you’ve been before, where when you’re on a ride together or you’re watching your kids faces with the fireworks, it really feels like you’re like the only ones on the planet. So fast forward a little bit from Disneyland, Dana, to my first real trip to Disney World. That was right after my honeymoon, and I’m so lucky and honestly hit the jackpot with my husband and a lot of ways. But one of them is marrying into an incredible family of Disneyworld pros. No one really realizes how often I get a question, and I’m not just pulling answers out of my brain, but my husband’s, my brother in law, my sister in law, my niece. I’m always texting them, especially my in-laws who remember Disney World when it was like only Magic Kingdom. They’ve just been going for so long, and that first trip is something I’ll never forget because I was so, like, snarky about it because I had grown up going to Disneyland.

Dana Stanley 00:05:24  I’m like Disneyland! The original Walt Disney had never even been to Disney World, whereas in Disneyland he like touched things and was like more hands on. And I thought that Disney World just wouldn’t have that same spark. And a lot of ways I still feel that way about Disneyland. But the difference then was being more of an adult. I was older and I got to see my niece with Mickey and Minnie get dressed up at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and just so many things that you don’t really have an appreciation for when you’re a kid. And that appreciation really grew once we were finally able to bring our own baby kid to Disney World. Now, full disclaimer all those child free trips to Disney World we had. I didn’t do a single planning for any of them. I fully took advantage of being along for the ride. And yes, I realized how lucky and spoiled I was, and things were just a lot different back then. You didn’t have to pre-book your fast passes, which are gone now, and you could really just decide what park you wanted to go to that morning.

Dana Stanley 00:06:27  I remember one year we walked into Magic Kingdom and it looked super crowded, so we just turned around and went to Animal Kingdom. It just wasn’t that big of a deal. Back then, while we were going on these kid free trips, we were trying to have a baby. So for five years we had no luck. We had miscarriages until finally our daughter’s story was born in 2016, and I reached the peak of my motherhood of being able to bring her to Disney World for the first time. The way the cards fell, I was getting more involved with the planning of her family trips, including her first one when she was six months, and because she was so little, everyone was really flexible around taking breaks and letting me have more input around her naps and things like that. I wouldn’t call myself a planner by nature. I don’t remember being very on top of things as a kid or type A at all. It wasn’t really until I became a mom, I think just time management and running a business and having kids, it just forces you to become a planner.

Dana Stanley 00:07:36  After years of filming weddings and I’ll chat more about that part later, I did have a knack for timelines and handling logistics. Managing a group of different people and expectations. Staying organized and just being stressed, I guess. I’m not saying that I can handle stress by any means. I’m still working on it, but it’s funny that weddings and Disney World actually have a lot in common, and planning for our trips became something I really enjoyed because there was always something new to try a new restaurant, new ride, new thing to learn, and the end result was a thousand times worth the effort that went into it. And if you’ve ever struggled with infertility, you know that it just makes every small thing feel so much bigger, and you’re just so much more grateful that you get to do these things, even if it seems like something as trivial as a Disney World trip. And then I had the most perfect intersection, where I had my wedding videography business, and I had my love for Disney. I was able to film a wedding at the Grand Floridian, which I still cannot believe even happened.

Dana Stanley 00:08:49  It felt like a once in a lifetime thing. And it actually was a once in a lifetime thing. I had been sharing our Disney trips on Instagram, and somehow the bride with like geotagging and things. Found my tag, found my wedding video Instagram page and the rest is history. I’m going to leave the wedding video links in the show notes, because it’s still one of my favorite wedding videos to date. And Lisa and Nick, if you’re listening, thank you so much for hiring me. And I think you guys are just the best, coolest people. And now, Lisa, you’re a mom. And I just is so full circle. Seeing your family still going to Disney World. Every time I see that, it just really melts my heart. This is where things really start to make sense, because now I’m a mom with a small business that is keeping me home during the week, which is great, but I’m always away on the weekends. So on paper it looked really nice because I could be home with story I could edit during her nap time, but then my husband has like a 9 to 5 job.

Dana Stanley 00:10:06  So again, on paper it was perfect because then he would be a story on the weekends while I was away at a wedding. I was getting great one on one time with story, but we weren’t really together much as a family like the three of us. If I shot a wedding on Saturday, that meant I was prepping and super stressed on Friday. And then Sunday after the wedding, I’d call my wedding hangover because I was just so exhausted from, you know, shooting 12 to 14 hour days. It stressed me out more and more, and I kept cutting back on weddings and it just didn’t really help the stress at all. While I was filming around my 100th wedding, I was in the middle of filming a speech when there was this switch that went off inside of me that was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I do not want to be here, and I don’t want to make it sound like my clients were like, I had the best clients. They were so sweet, and nothing terrible had happened that day.

Dana Stanley 00:11:08  It was just something was telling me that I couldn’t keep doing this, and I didn’t want to be doing it for another ten years. I came home that night and kind of like announced to my husband that 2020 was going to be my last year of filming weddings and that I was done. So I gave myself a year to build up a little nest egg and save as much as I could while I figured out what this next thing was going to be. I started supplementing with doing more videos of like, brands and families over weddings, but for that time period, I just completely put a hold on booking any more weddings. And simultaneously, I was sharing more and more on Instagram about being homeless, story, running a business, and our trips to Disney World and the planning for our trips was getting harder over the years. It was just getting more crowded, more expensive. You used to book dining six months ahead of time, and all of the information online was just like, not great. I had a tab open for maps because we were trying out new resorts, so I needed to know how to get from point A to point B.

Dana Stanley 00:12:15  I had menus open, like for restaurants, tabs from Facebook groups with like 300 comments on each question, all saying different things. And when I wanted to get specific info and I finally found it, it was usually a blog that had so many pop ups I couldn’t even read it. Anyway, nothing was fitting the vibe Of how I saw and viewed Disney World. I found this old caption on Instagram that I feel like perfectly explains. Kind of where I was that summer and just my train of thought. I’m just going to read it. I said, our next trip to Disney World is next month, but you wouldn’t know that. Why? Two reasons I’ve been a ghost this summer, especially on social media. I’m a wedding videographer, so June and July are tiring. Everyone that visits Disney World waits to post once they’re there, including myself. You see the castle and all the cute outfits, but no one posts the behind the scenes. A lot goes into creating a vacation, but there’s more when it comes to Disney.

Dana Stanley 00:13:16  Where else can you vacation that has 42 million people visiting a year, where you’re encouraged to make dinner reservations six months ahead of time? But you know what? I’m a researcher at heart, a planner, and I love it. For the past three months, I’ve been reading menus, deciding if we want to go to an old favorite or try something new. I’ve been setting clothes and books aside, anticipating what I’ll be packing in my carry on. I’m printing 23 drafts of our schedule, crossing things out, plugging things in, and finding experiences that best suit my little family. I laugh when I read that because it’s like the same things just turned up a notch. Especially because now I have three kids, not one. And that 23 drafts thing that I said of crossing things out and plugging things in. That’s what I call sketching now, and is what I encourage everyone to do when they’re planning their trip. If you’re an entrepreneur, I think you’ll relate to this of always having like, my business hat on, even a little subconsciously.

Dana Stanley 00:14:18  So when I was one looking for something new to do business wise, and two looking for something to just help me plan for Disney, I wouldn’t say it was like this big light bulb moment. I don’t have like a cool story like that, but it was this gradual chain of events where eventually I thought, I have to make a guide to Disney World. Once I knew, I wanted to create a quote guide, and I’m putting that in air quotes because my original idea didn’t really pan out. It started as a PDF that broke everything down step by step, from deciding your dates based off crowds to dining and basic things. And by that August, I had I had a really terrible name for it. I’m just going to tell you it was called Ears Not Required. A laid back guide to Disney World. And the thought was ears not required. Like Mickey ears. You know, like you don’t have to wear ears. I know it was a really bad name, but that was the name.

Dana Stanley 00:15:16  And I scheduled a photo shoot with a local photographer down in Orlando in the park, so that I had images for the guide, but I quickly realized that that wasn’t going to work while I was working on this guide. Between editing wedding videos, 2020 rolled around and Disney World literally closed. And I also had another baby girl in July, so everything was at a standstill. Like no one knew really what was going to happen or going on. And I had a newborn. And as Disney World phased into its reopening, everything had changed from what it had been before the closure. And while I didn’t have to throw out everything that I had worked on into the trash, it was a big realization that I had to pivot to something more than just a PDF, because that could be outdated literally overnight. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a fast and easy way to do that. I’m a visual person and seeing the clutter that was happening online, it was really important to me that the guy looked and felt a very specific way, even if it took a long time to make.

Dana Stanley 00:16:26  This is around the time I had created an Instagram page solely dedicated to just Disney World things so that I wasn’t like. Annoying my friends and family and it cracked open this entirely new world to me of other moms who were just like me, loving on Disney, but not like obsessed from travel agents, content creators, YouTubers. These people that I have met are some of the kindest, most hardworking super moms, some of which I’ve been able to meet in person. And I just can’t believe that there’s another dimension somewhere that I never went down the road, this Disney Guide Road. And I would have never met these people. Like the only thing that connected us was Disney. As my page was growing and I was chatting with more and more people and answering questions inside my DMs, I realized that my guide needed some type of community aspect, like a forum or chat room somewhere to just bounce ideas off of and ask questions like. People really needed more support. Without going into all the boring details. I had a lot of work to do.

Dana Stanley 00:17:38  I ended up building my own platform so that I could easily embed videos, update things in real time, have downloads like maps, and have a forum built inside. Because really, I think I was just scarred for life from Facebook groups to be honest. So that ear’s not required turned into laid back magic. If this sounds like something you need to plan for your next trip, you can learn more at Laid Back Magic. So that’s how I went from owning a videography business with one kid to now having three kids and talking Disney on the internet, and now a podcast apparently, which is probably the scariest thing I’ve done so far. Like, honestly, I can’t believe I’m doing this right now, but here we are. If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this. It’s that sometimes the thing you least expect. Turns out to be exactly what you need. Maybe you’re thinking about making a change. Or just trying to figure out what’s next. Take this as your permission to go for it.

Dana Stanley 00:18:40  Because you never know unless you try. Whatever stage you’re in. I’m just glad you’re here. And thank you so, so much for listening to today’s episode. I’ll see you 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. You can find me on Instagram at Somewhere Worthwhile and I’d love to hear from you 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.