Dana Stanley 00:00:01  When you’re planning a trip to Disney World for the first time, it’s easy to make some rookie mistakes that can really mess you up. And don’t worry, I’ve been there. So today I’m sharing five and a half Disney World planning mistakes to avoid that will help you skip very avoidable stress and make the most of your time at the parks. I’m going to walk you through mistakes that you definitely want to avoid. Plus, I’ve got a little freebie for you at the end with ten more mistakes that you need to be aware of, especially if you’re going to Disney World for the first time. 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. Here we’re not chasing perfection, but creating our next favorite memories.

Dana Stanley 00:00:57  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. So let’s dive in with the first one. And that’s winging it when it comes to transportation. And when I say transportation I just mean getting around Disney World. Walt Disney World is gigantic. And you may have heard that it’s as big as San Francisco, and I’ve heard that too. And while that is true, I’ve never been to San Francisco. So whenever I hear that, it’s kind of hard to picture that in my mind. So I was researching how many acres Disney World actually is, and then I was able to break it down to things that I think I can imagine. To help put it in perspective for you. Like 5.6 million target parking spots.

Dana Stanley 00:01:58  Okay, that might be a little bit hard to imagine. So here’s a better one. It’s enough space for 50,000 average size playgrounds. And if you can’t picture 50,000, it’s enough that you could take your kids to a different one every day for 137 years. All that to say, it’s really big. And thankfully, Disney knows this. And because of its size, it’s built a lot of different options to get around buses. A monorail system, the Skyliner, which is a gondola system, and boats. Then there’s some parks and resorts where you can walk between the two. On top of being able to use your own car or call an Uber or Lyft. Here’s what I don’t want to happen to you. You’re standing in the back of Magic Kingdom, and you realize that your dining reservation is in 20 minutes at Villa Napoli in Epcot, and you heard somewhere and you did a little bit of research that, you know that Magic Kingdom and Epcot are connected by a monorail, but that does not mean it’ll be quick.

Dana Stanley 00:02:57  And I don’t want you to be frazzled. Figuring out how you’re getting to this dining reservation. Or worse, not have a grasp as to where things are actually placed. Even things that seem convenient, like a monorail, can close down or be delayed for whatever reason. Which brings me to a bit of a side story that may be helpful for you. On a night on one of our last trips. We were going from the Boardwalk Resort to Magic Kingdom for the Fireworks Desert party. Once you know that I love. And we wanted to check in around 630, so we headed down for the bus around six. Now, I knew that 30 minutes was not enough time, but I figured even if it took an hour, we’d still be okay. I had a newborn baby with me, so I was kind of just trying to not panic about being late. And when we got to the bus stop, we saw that there was an ETA for the next Magic Kingdom bus, and we saw the time just getting later and later and later, when the bus finally got there, it sounded like the bus maybe got diverted because it was having technical issues, so they had to send a new bus.

Dana Stanley 00:04:03  Long story short, it was very unnecessary stress that I could have avoided by booking a minivan through the Lyft app ahead of time. Minivans obviously cost extra, but they come with two car seats and they drop you right off at the gate at Magic Kingdom. And obviously you have to worry about traffic and things like that, but it puts you a lot more in control because you know that someone is coming to pick you up. So if you really have your heart set on being somewhere at a certain time, don’t depend on the undependable book, something that’s a little bit more in your control, or even better, if you can depend on your own two feet somewhere that’s like walkable, that’s even more of a guarantee. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to map out your transportation plan, not only for each park day and how you’re getting there, but for your dining reservations, too. You may book a character breakfast at a resort. I want you to have a game plan as to how you’re getting there.

Dana Stanley 00:04:59  Look on a map and just be familiar with maybe what is close by. What could you walk to? Where could you get dropped off? There’s a lot of different avenues of getting around and there’s no wrong way. You just want to allow extra time. If you’re using buses, monorails, the Skyliner boats, some of those can be delayed or crowded. And remember to buffer in extra time. Buffering time is key here. And speaking of dining reservations, that leads me to mistake number two. And that’s getting the wrong dates for when you can make dinner reservations. So once you learn that you can book your dining 60 days before, it’s really easy for your brain to equate 60 days to two months. So I check in on June 4th. So that means I must be able to make my dining reservations on April 4th, but that 60 day reservation window really starts at a true 60 days before. I’ve done this before where I’m up at 6 a.m. a day too early, which isn’t that big of a problem.

Dana Stanley 00:06:04  But what can happen is using the June 4th example. Really 60 days before would be April 5th. So if you woke up on April 4th ready to make your dining reservations, you may panic because you see that you’re not allowed to. And then you have to wake up the next morning at 6 a.m.. But what’s worse is if you could be a day behind and that leaves you scrambling trying to find those reservations last minute. So to avoid this, if you’re staying on property, double check your check and date to avoid any confusion of that 60 day mark. And then use a calculator like a time calculator to make sure that you’re booking on time. I’ll leave a link in the show notes for the one I use, but you can just google a time and date calculator. Put in the date of when you want that reservation and or your check in date, then hit subtract 60 days. This will give you an accurate date. Write it down one time so you don’t forget, so you’re ready to go 60 days before.

Dana Stanley 00:07:01  The third mistake is basing your resort choice on budget alone. And I may get some slack for this, but just hear me out. Would you rather stay in Disney World sooner with a tight, strict budget, or wait a little bit and not feel like you have to skimp on the things that could make your vacation better? Sometimes it pays to decide where you want to stay first and then work your way backwards. So, for example, if the Grand Floridian is on your radar because it’s really easy to get to Magic Kingdom and you have two little toddlers, you want that walkability. We’re going back to that transportation. Note that we talked about earlier, and this is at the tippy top of your budget. You could think of creative ways to still stay there, but stay within the bottom of your budget. So maybe you could do less park days or skip the park hopper. Or rent DVC points. I mean, I’ve saved close to 50% renting DVC points instead of booking through Disney’s website. Maybe you could go during a lower price time of year like September.

Dana Stanley 00:08:06  Maybe you could research the setup of the room and find out that you could do a studio versus a one bedroom, or you could do a mix of all of these things versus automatically thinking, I have to do this for as cheap as possible and booking a hotel or Airbnb offsite. And it may seem cheaper at first, but I want you to really price out the cost, because choosing an off site resort because it seems cheaper can backfire. If you consider renting a car, parking, and missing out on some perks. Now, I’m not knocking staying off property. I think there’s a time and place and situation for that, but most people, if they’re just doing a trip dedicated to Disney World and they stay off property. When I talk to them afterwards, they say we had a great time, but next time we’re going to stay on property. So just really price those things out and don’t just assume that it’s not possible. Mistake number four, and I see this a lot, is thinking that you can park at Magic Kingdom.

Dana Stanley 00:09:08  So if you’re driving yourself to Magic Kingdom, you’ll quickly realize that there’s no direct parking at the front gate. Instead, you have to park at what’s called the Ticket and Transportation Center, or TTC for short, and then take a monorail or a ferryboat to the park entrance. And this was very intentional when the park was designed, but if you’re expecting, I’m going to just drive up, park my car and, you know, walk 30s to the front gate. That is not going to leave you enough time, especially if you’re expecting to get there for early entry or a set dining reservation time. You need to plan for that extra time to get from the TTC to the park entrance. I have a lot of friends that just prefer driving their own car, even if they’re staying on Disney property and all the other parks, you can just park and walk right to the gate. This is the only park that does this is Magic Kingdom. So just consider using Disney’s transportation for that one park day. Even if you’re going to drive the other days because the buses or the resort monorail, they’re going to take you right up to the Magic Kingdom gate and you can walk right in.

Dana Stanley 00:10:15  And I mentioned this earlier with my fireworks desert party debacle. And that is if you want to get to Magic Kingdom at a very set time and you want to book an Uber, you’re going to be in the same bucket of people driving. Ubers can’t drop off right at the gate. They have to go to the TTC. The exception to this is to book through the Lyft app and get a minivan. It’s like Minnie Mouse van. And those are driven by Disney cast members. And they come with two car seats. And they’re the only rideshare that can drop you off right at the gate. Mistake number five is waiting until the last minute to download the My Disney Experience app. If you’re going to Disney World this year, or even thinking about going to Disney World, go ahead and set up your My Disney Experience now. You’re going to download the app and create an account with an email and password. Then my Disney Experience app kind of has two pieces. One is like the internal part of the app that’s holding a bunch of Disney World information.

Dana Stanley 00:11:19  Like the ride wait times maps. Each attraction has its own page with details where to meet a character, park hours, parade times, all that kind of stuff. Then the second piece is your account. So once you’re logged in within the app, now you can interact with the app within your account like booking lightning lanes. Making dining reservations. Mobile ordering food. Scanning into things you can see your photos. I mean, really everything that’s tied to your account can be in the app once you’re logged in. But the problem I see people make is they’ll create an account when they’re buying their vacation package on Disney site, because you have to make an account and they kind of forget about it, since you’re usually doing all of that on a desktop. I don’t think a lot of people realize that once you have your account, you can log into the app and then everything will be connected. And it’s free to make this account. So download the app, log in, start clicking around and get used to it.

Dana Stanley 00:12:18  Now, like those 15 minutes of mindlessly scrolling on Instagram, we all do it. Take that time and do the same thing for the app. Just start clicking around. One of my kids favorite thing to do is go inside the park maps and they’ll like tap and zoom around. I mean, you can see everything from little playgrounds to the pool slides. It’s actually really fun. You can see different paths and get familiar with how things just kind of flow. Within the parks, it’s going to make you feel so much better going into your trip. Just seeing where the parks are in relation to the different resorts. You can see the monorail line, the Skyliner line. It’s really cool. So we went through the five mistakes and now we have the half and it’s a half because it’s a little one and it’s a really easy one to avoid. And that’s to measure your kids before you go to the park. I feel like this is such an easy thing to overlook of walking up to a ride, assuming that your child is tall enough because they just they want to get on it.

Dana Stanley 00:13:24  They seem big enough, and then you realize that they’re under the height requirement. So have your kid put on the shoes that you’re going to pack for Disney. Have them stand up against the wall, get a little measuring tape and just write down in the notes of your phone, or write it down so you don’t forget. And again, you can see all of this easily inside the Disney World app that you already downloaded because I told you to. And you can use the search bar, look up any ride and it’ll have the height requirement right there. That way when you’re maybe taking big brother or sister on a ride, you already have a plan for the one that doesn’t meet the height requirement. You could look at different attractions that are nearby and say, hey, I’m going to take baby on this. You go take big brother or sister on that, and you’re not frazzled trying to think of what to do at the last minute. While those are five and a half Disney planning mistakes you don’t want to make, there are ten more and I’ve got them all ready to send to you.

Dana Stanley 00:14:20  I’ve rounded up the biggest mistakes that can cost you time, money and your sanity, and you can grab them for free at Laid Back Magic Wacom. It’s a super quick read and full of tips that’ll make you make you think, oh wow, I never would have thought of that, but it can make a huge difference in your trip. So before you find yourself wondering why is it so crowded or wondering where your stroller is, or totally underestimate how much walking you’d be doing because I’ve been there. Grab that guide. I’ll put the link in the show notes for you so you can go in prepared. Thanks for hanging out with me today and chatting about all the mistakes that yes, I have made. And I will 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.

Dana Stanley 00:15:17  Seriously, thank you in advance. You can find me on Instagram @somewhereworthwhile 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.