[00:00:00] Dana Stanley: Hi friends, and welcome back to the Laid Back Magic Way podcast. You can already tell that I am coming off a really nasty flu. I actually did a replay episode last week because I was just way too sick to record and I did not want to miss another week. So I. So I feel pretty good. I just unfortunately sound like an actual frog,

[00:00:40] Dana Stanley: but I really did not wanna miss this episode because I know it’s gonna be really helpful for, I know it’s gonna be really helpful for you if you have a Disney World trip coming up, especially if you are planning a summer Disney World trip.

[00:00:59] Dana Stanley: Because I’m going to walk you through exactly how I’m sketching out our upcoming trip this coming July,

[00:01:13] Dana Stanley: which is right smack dab in the middle of summer. And I wanna show you how I’m thinking about this because for every time of year in Disney World, there are just unique things to think about versus other times of year. And we honestly have a lot of things that we wanna do on this trip, and I know that we’re not gonna be able to do all of it.

[00:01:33] Dana Stanley: I know that we’re gonna be dealing with very specific seasonal things, but I still want to hit everything on our like absolute must dos without it being too structured and full.

[00:01:50] Dana Stanley: And when I say sketch, if you’ve ever heard me say. Sketch or sketching your trip. I mean it literally by the definition, which is like a rough or unfinished drawing that someone would make first before they make a more finished picture or a more finished trip. In this case, I,

[00:02:13] Dana Stanley: this is my favorite part of planning and it’s what I teach my members inside of Laid Back Magic. I have a whole chapter on sketching. So that they can learn to do it on their own. And unfortunately, it’s the step that most people skip. Sometimes it can get really exciting, especially like this part of planning.

[00:02:31] Dana Stanley: I could be shopping for like cute summer outfits, or I could be booking the flights. I could be grabbing, if I saw a promo, I could be grabbing tickets, A number of things.

[00:02:47] Dana Stanley: But it’s really important that I get this bird’s eye view of the trip first and start lightly sketching

[00:02:57] Dana Stanley: to know what I actually need to be thinking about what’s going to give me the most like juice for the squeeze, so to speak. And I know just spending a little bit of time doing this first is going to have a huge impact on the actual trip itself. More than all of those other things I could be doing.

[00:03:26] Dana Stanley: So I actually have my Google sheet pulled up that I use to sketch out my trips, and I wanna give a little bit of context about summer trips as a whole.

[00:03:39] Dana Stanley: Because I think summer kind of gets a bad rap at Disney World. And yes, the heat is definitely a factor and I’m going to be complaining about it a lot. Like while we’re actually on the trip. I am definitely a baby about it. I’m not gonna pretend like it’s something that doesn’t bother me, but from a planning perspective, it’s actually one of the simplest seasons going in the summer.

[00:04:06] Dana Stanley: The reason is, is that there isn’t like a big, like glaring holiday, like you have 4th of July, but once we’re out of that window, which we are, there’s no like huge holiday you have to avoid. There’s no like a spring break or Christmas or marathon weekends or like a festival opening that is gonna shift the crowds.

[00:04:31] Dana Stanley: Summer has been like pretty level with. The crowds themselves. I would call it like maybe like an even medium to high-ish baseline, just kind of across the whole board for July.

[00:04:55] Dana Stanley: So because my dates are set in stone already, I’m not thinking about like what week I’m going to be booking my vacation. But I am going to be looking at the specific days and from park to park. We are not going with the crowds. We’re going to hopefully zig while everyone else is zagging. But the important thing is that I have to kind of layer these things in as I go.

[00:05:26] Dana Stanley: So before I even looked at the park days, like before I looked at the crowd calendars or like thought about the rides, lightning lanes, anything, I filled out my laid back magic journal, which you can grab for free in the show notes or you can go to laid back magic way.com, back slash journal if you haven’t already.

[00:05:45] Dana Stanley: But it’s helping me think through things because I have such a big to-do list.

[00:05:54] Dana Stanley: My 2-year-old is getting older and starting to actually have little interests in things. He’s very into Elsa right now, which is very funny. He sings Let It Go, and he wants to meet Elsa and show her his trucks. He, he told me. So there’s just a lot of thing, like he’s getting like this little list of must dos, which is, which is different than.

[00:06:20] Dana Stanley: Our past trips, he kind of just went along for the ride. He didn’t really have much input. So I’m thinking about, you know, what are my kids into right now? Do we want to prioritize fireworks? Are we going to be eating at more sit down meals or quick service? Like where my kids are at right now? How much downtime do we need for the pool?

[00:06:43] Dana Stanley: Like what is going to feel good for us right now? And if you’re trying to do this too, and you’re kind of hitting a wall, when you’re picturing like, okay, what does that mean? Like I don’t really know what our quote rhythm is. I like to think about our weekends. Like if you have a Saturday and there’s nothing, you know, big in the calendar for that day, like what do you guys usually do if you just have like a day off together?

[00:07:09] Dana Stanley: That’s a pretty good indicator of like what time you guys are naturally gonna wake up. What time you eat? Like are you having like an early lunch? Are you having a late lunch? I’ve noticed this with our neighbors too on the weekend. Um, our neighbors across the street have kids of similar ages, but they do not have a toddler.

[00:07:30] Dana Stanley: And I kind of laugh because our schedules are like opposite. We like to get out the door earlier in the morning, have like a little outing, we’ll go out to lunch because we’re kind of. Trying to do everything before nap time, which is like 1, 1 30. They’re the opposite. They like stay home all morning, cleaning up the house, getting caught up on like home things and the kids are just kind of hanging out and then they leave the house at like 1, 1 30 and they’ll kind of be gone all day.

[00:08:04] Dana Stanley: And that’s like a rhythm, like that is a set thing that you guys find yourselves naturally doing. I like thinking about that first, so that we’re not like putting a square peg in a round hole when we’re on our trip and fitting things in at weird times when we don’t normally eat or

[00:08:27] Dana Stanley: rushing or even feel bored because we’re usually doing something at those times.

[00:08:40] Dana Stanley: So now that I know my priorities, I’m going to start filling in this, I’m gonna start filling in this spreadsheet a little bit by looking at crowd calendars. And this is really important because I’m not going to like drive myself insane with this of like, oh, this day is a seven crowd. This day is 7.5, but this one’s an eight and I should switch this and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:09:03] Dana Stanley: But I am going to use it as a jumping off point because like I said earlier, summer crowds stay pretty even. But each park still is going to have a high and low day throughout the week. So I’m looking at historical crowds of high and low, and I’m plugging those into my dates that I’m going of. What is the high crowd park day?

[00:09:25] Dana Stanley: What is the low. Crowd park day like, okay, where are the slightly better things that I can tweak and go where there’s hopefully less people, for example, like the first full day that we’re there. My instinct if I skip this step, would be to just start a magic kingdom because we’re staying at Grand Floridian.

[00:09:45] Dana Stanley: We’re so close. Being on the monorail, it’d be super easy to just. Start at Magic Kingdom, but when I look at the crowd calendar, Hollywood Studios is actually the least busy day, and Magic Kingdom is the least busy the day after. So I’m just gonna let that make the decision easy for me and work around that.

[00:10:07] Dana Stanley: The crowd calendars are definitely gonna show like ebbs and flows throughout my week, but I’m also going to be plugging in the things that do not change, like the non-negotiables, just like the facts, like things I cannot control whatsoever. I’m gonna be thinking about the things that are just like true about this trip.

[00:10:29] Dana Stanley: Obviously we have our check-in and our checkout, and the one thing we already touched on is the heat. Like I’m expecting it to be 95 ish and that’s not what the humidity and like the actual feels like it’s going to be much higher, but I am not pretending like we’re gonna be rope dropping to park clothes every day in July in a hundred degrees.

[00:10:52] Dana Stanley: Like we are not doing that.

[00:10:56] Dana Stanley: And the top things I wanna make sure that I’m including in our plans, factoring in this heat that I know we’re gonna have is I is one I want like extra time at the pool. I need to at least factor in, you know, that my kids are going to wanna do that.

[00:11:19] Dana Stanley: Two is to plan a little bit more for like air conditioning and shows, preferably in that like two to four o’clock window when it’s like very hot. So we’re either like taking a break back at our room and having a nap. If not, because I know my son sometimes falls asleep while we’re in the park. Having something penciled in of like if and when that happens, where we can go a place nearby with like a show or air conditioning or at least shade.

[00:11:53] Dana Stanley: And third is having some lunch reservations, like sit down lunch reservations that aren’t quick service. I learned this on our last summer trip that just about when I was about to like reach my melting point, like actually.

[00:12:13] Dana Stanley: Like actually not be able to take it anymore. We had a lunch reservation and we were heading to lunch and it felt so good to just sit down in air conditioning, have a bathroom close by, fill up on food and salt and water and all of the things. So that’s definitely something I wanna incorporate this time.

[00:12:37] Dana Stanley: Another big thing that is out of my control and very summer specific is that the sunset is late, which means the fireworks are late, and like for us it means really late, like Fantas and happily ever after are most likely gonna be at nine 30. So if we want to prioritize fireworks, which I know that we do because we actually didn’t see them last time because of this reason, and since we’re staying at the Grand Floridian, I’m looking forward to being able to get back to our hotel fairly easy after the fireworks.

[00:13:08] Dana Stanley: But I really do need to treat it as a little bit bigger of a deal than if it was like February or something and the fireworks were a lot earlier. It’s not something we’re just gonna like casually stumble into at the end of the night and watch the fireworks.

[00:13:25] Dana Stanley: So knowing that this might mean that I’m going to splurge for a fireworks dessert party, so that if and when my kids are tired and I’m looking at the 2-year-old in this scenario, if he’s having like a rough night, we’re gonna make it as easy as possible on ourselves to. Not have to fight the crowds or be packed in like sardines to get a good spot or get there very early and just make him sit in the stroller.

[00:13:57] Dana Stanley: Being that it’s so late. I’m also gonna plan in a slower morning the following day. So like I’m not going to schedule a eight o’clock character breakfast the next morning, or even like very early lightning lanes if we’re going into the parks. Because I know that we’re going to want to chill the next morning if we’re getting back so late.

[00:14:25] Dana Stanley: And on that fireworks night, I’m going to make sure I sketch in like a real break in the middle of the day. ’cause I can’t expect my kids to make it to late fireworks after like a full hot day in the parks with no break. Like that’s not going to work.

[00:14:44] Dana Stanley: I. Now let’s talk about what’s actually happening in the parks, specifically summer,

[00:14:57] Dana Stanley: because there’s a lot of stuff going on and the biggest one is for cool kids Summer. They did this last summer as well, and we really, really liked it. This year, it’s running from May 26th to September 8th, and this is important because there’s just a lot of extra. Like entertainment and activities, uh, character experiences, things that are just really geared toward kids,

[00:15:28] Dana Stanley: but the cat. But the catch is that a lot of these things, like the new bluey meet and greet that’s going over an animal kingdom, they’re going to end on the early side, like probably around 4, 4 30, something like that. I. I know last year in, I know last year we loved hanging out with Stitch in Tomorrowland.

[00:15:52] Dana Stanley: He had like a little dance party for Cool Kids Summer, and my daughter really liked it,

[00:16:01] Dana Stanley: but I wanna say it only ran until three 30 or four. So it’s not something that you can just go whenever you want. So now I’m thinking like, if we really wanna do those things. Those need to happen earlier in the day, which again, just reinforces like there’s gonna have to be a lot of things that we’re just not going to get to.

[00:16:22] Dana Stanley: Things that I’m gonna have to say no to if I want to prioritize the cool Kids Summer, which my kids loved, but I also can’t expect, you know, a lot of pool time and a lot of sleeping in, and a lot of taking breaks and all of these things and hit everything. There’s going to have to be a balance, which again is why I like sketching, because you’re essentially just penciling things in very lightly, and then when you can see it all at once, you can say, this is not gonna work, and you can edit and delete and curate things as you need.

[00:17:00] Dana Stanley: I’m also thinking about extended evening hours. Since we’re staying at a deluxe resort, this is one of the perks that we get. This is. Epcot usually on Mondays Magic Kingdom, usually on Wednesdays, they essentially keep the park open only for deluxe resort guests after the park officially closes. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get to it, but I do wanna make little notes of the hours inside of my sketch.

[00:17:32] Dana Stanley: The actual hours haven’t been released for our trip yet. But I know that they’re coming, so I wanna make a little note that way. If and when I’m feeling spontaneous, like maybe we could potentially pop in, like I could take the two older ones into one of those parks fairly easily from the Grand Floridian.

[00:18:01] Dana Stanley: Next I’m gonna be looking at like what’s new or reopening. Because Magic Kingdom specifically is going to be very like lightning lane competitive this summer. I know I’m gonna want a lightning lane for Buzz Lightyear, which is reopening around the time that I’m recording this, and also Big Thunder Mountain is reopening this summer.

[00:18:29] Dana Stanley: So I know that these two lightning lanes are gonna be fairly hard to get and in demand, and they’re on my must do list. So when it comes to using Multipass, if we end up doing two days in Magic Kingdom, for example, I may not use lightning Multipass for the first day of the trip. I’m gonna be focusing more of my rides towards the end of my trip on like a second Magic Kingdom Day.

[00:19:01] Dana Stanley: And the reason I’m doing this, and just a reminder that people staying off property can only book three days in advance for like the entire length of their trip. So if you picture like a chart going from left to right of your park days, let’s say you have five, you are fighting against more people. On the left, like on that first day versus the end towards the right, like it gets less and less people.

[00:19:26] Dana Stanley: The farther you go out and the less people you’re going up against. Obviously the better chance you have of getting first dibs, not only on the lightning lanes, on the rides that you want, but the times that you want too. Like I don’t.

[00:19:45] Dana Stanley: Like, I don’t want a lightning lane for Buzz Lightyear at three, four o’clock. I want it probably in the morning. So I know that sketching those in towards the end of my trip, I’m gonna have a little bit of a better of a chance than if, if it was our first park day, and I would say this is like. A typical to short trip, it’s five nights, six days, and I have yet to really know actually how many days I actually want to be in the parks.

[00:20:16] Dana Stanley: And that’s why I love sketching so much because if I were just getting like six tickets, oh, we’re gonna be there six days, I’m gonna get six days of park hops or something.

[00:20:29] Dana Stanley: I may actually be wasting a little bit of money because it’s good to know like, Hey, do we even want to go into the parks the day that we get there? Maybe I could see what time the flights are. Are we gonna be exhausted? Are we even gonna have time? Do I want to risk that? Like if our flight was delayed?

[00:20:49] Dana Stanley: And then also like, do we want to go to the parks the day that we’re flying home? I honestly don’t think we’re going to be able to do like a full rest day because of the length of the trip. But what I am building in is what I would call like a half reset day, and for us that would be like there is no alarm being set for one of the mornings towards the middle of the trip.

[00:21:15] Dana Stanley: I wanna wake up without an alarm, grab like an easy breakfast, and head straight to the pool. If you have kids that are like very into the pool, it’s nice to go in the morning sometimes, especially if you’re staying somewhere in the summer, especially in the summer, which obviously it’s hotter. People wanna be at the pool in the middle of the day.

[00:21:36] Dana Stanley: It can get pretty crowded and or if you’re staying somewhere with a popular pool like Beecher Yacht Club, I mean, people will be lining up in the summer, like before the pool officially opens to make sure they get chairs. While I don’t think that will be the case for us when we’re at Grand Floridian, I do wanna build in at least like one late morning pool hang, which now that I’m saying this would actually work perfectly on the night that we wanna stay up late for fireworks.

[00:22:08] Dana Stanley: So kind of penciling that in because we could do the pool and then probably do an early nap. Like a nap is gonna be a non-negotiable on fireworks night. And I know that not building in at least some sort of like a softer day, or at least a softer morning is gonna make the whole trip feel like really exhausting.

[00:22:41] Dana Stanley: So when I look at my spreadsheet now and what it actually looks like. It’s not like a set itinerary. I have things around the times that they would happen, but I don’t know the official park hours yet. I don’t know the official times for fireworks yet,

[00:23:01] Dana Stanley: but I have everything ready to go so that it’s, it’ll save me so much time when I’m starting to fill in actual timing. When I’m ready to book my lightning lanes, I have just an overview. I actually color code them. In yellow so that I see which ones I wanna be booking.

[00:23:21] Dana Stanley: But it is still very much a sketch. Like if you think of a sketch like how an artist would use it, they’re not gonna just walk up to the canvas and immediately like grab some paint and start slapping it on. They’re going to use pencil

[00:23:37] Dana Stanley: very lightly. They’re going to like sketch the outline first. They’re going to figure out like where everything’s gonna go, what the focal point is gonna be, uh, what the background is gonna be. Then they fill it in with like shading and color and the highlights and all of those things.

[00:24:00] Dana Stanley: So that is how I’m sketching our summer trip, and I will absolutely keep you posted as we get closer and I start filling in more of those details like our dining. I know I mentioned that we have a lot on our list and I will be sharing more of the things I’m excited about trying out this summer.

[00:24:21] Dana Stanley: And if you wanna start sketching your own trip again, the Laid Back Magic Journal is linked for you in the show notes. I would start there.

[00:24:33] Dana Stanley: Thank you for putting up with my frog voice. Hopefully it is improved on our next episode because I am sitting down with my friend Melissa, because she reminded me that we are almost halfway to Halloween and Disney World. So we’re gonna talk about all the things that you should be thinking about if you have a fall trip on your mind, or if you’re.

[00:24:56] Dana Stanley:f Hoping to visit Disney World around Halloween, which honestly in Disney World starts in like August, so you don’t wanna miss that one. And I will see you next week.