# TLBMW – EP 43

[00:00:00] Dana Stanley When I’m working on a plan for our Disney World trips, specifically a park plan for a specific day, I know two things. Number one, I know it’s a step that I cannot skip. Like I know that it is very important, and two, I know that it probably won’t happen.

[00:00:30] Dana Stanley The idea for this episode started when someone asked me recently, actually, multiple people asked me recently if I could walk through what our Disney days actually look like versus how I plan them. So how does the day actually end up looking versus like my cute sketch that I do in advance.

[00:00:57] Dana Stanley So I went back and did and had to like play a little bit of detective. I had the original plans that, thankfully I save all of them in a Google spreadsheet. So I had that and then I also went back to my camera roll with timestamps of every single photo that I took, every single video that I took, and then kind of crossed reference that with.

[00:01:23] Dana Stanley My husband’s memories, my own memories. And then I also asked the girls too, just to like really know minute by minute what we actually ended up doing this day. And after looking into things, I found out on our last trip, the day that we had a magic kingdom ended up being the perfect example of how I feel like things typically go.

[00:01:46] Dana Stanley I have a plan. Something doesn’t really go according to plan. Something comes up and then we divert from the original plan, but somehow it all works out. Today I’m going to give you like a side by side, almost line by line breakdown of my plans versus what actually happened and the timing of it all, and I think this might end up being like one of the most helpful episodes I’ve recorded because.

[00:02:17] Dana Stanley What ended up happening to us, I know is what ends up happening for like 99% of families in Disney World. So one of you had said, can you please do an episode on like expectations versus reality. So today I’m walking you through one of our recent Magic Kingdom days, the exact plan that I had written down to the minute, and what actually happened once we stepped inside the park, or even before we got to the park.

[00:02:55] Dana Stanley So first I want to give you our plans for the whole day, just so you can kind of have like a mental bird’s eye view of what I was expecting to do.

[00:03:10] Dana Stanley So we were staying at the Riviera Resort. And headed to Magic Kingdom on a Sunday, which is like one of my favorite days to go to Magic Kingdom. And I have right on the top of the day leave Riviera early in all caps. So this is a common thread of mine that for Magic Kingdom in particular, because the other parks, I don’t, I mean, I don’t typically.

[00:03:36] Dana Stanley Rush out the door. But Magic Kingdom is one of the parks that I do try to get to as early as I can because they let you onto Main Street really early, even before the park is actually open. And then there’s the castle. It just has things that the other parks don’t. And also Magic Kingdom is the most popular park.

[00:03:57] Dana Stanley Like if anyone has like one park day or two park days, they’re going to Magic Kingdom.

[00:04:14] Dana Stanley So then under that, I had plans to do a laid back rope drop, meaning when the ride started running, I wanted to go to the mad tea party. Very chill because. Pretty much nobody is going to Mad Tea Party, and I know that it would be a walk-on. I had notes that early entry was starting at eight 30 with the official park opening at 9:00 AM and our lightning lanes that we had booked for the day.

[00:04:46] Dana Stanley Thankfully, I have a screenshot of these. So my plan was to hit our first lightning lane for Winnie the Pooh at 9:10 AM. Our second lightning lane was for 10:05 AM for Peter Pan’s flight, and our third was at 1:10 PM for Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger spin.

[00:05:11] Dana Stanley Now because you are able to book another lightning lane after you scan into one. I have a note on my spreadsheet under each thing of what to book after, so I’m not like. So I’m not actually making any decisions in the park in the moment with the kids in a theme park. Everything’s going nuts. I know already what I’m going to be booking.

[00:05:33] Dana Stanley So I wrote nine 10 Lightning Lane. We need the Poh and then book. It’s a small world, and I do that for all of the lightning lanes that you’ll see. After that, I wanted to hit some fantasy land with small world Mickey’s fill her magic and a snack. Then we would scan into our Peter Pan’s flight and continue to book things for like Little Mermaid, the Barnstormer.

[00:06:01] Dana Stanley I have a note that I wanted to go to Cool Kids Summer over at Storybook Circus, which is like the special thing that they were doing in the summer with like activities and characters. And then there were certain snacks, um, that were a specialty across the park. I wanted to get to that around 10 30.

[00:06:23] Dana Stanley Before hitting our lunch reservation, so this was the only reservation that I had for the day, and this was at Cinderella’s Royal Table, which is where you can eat inside the castle. It’s a popular dining reservation and I got one for 1120 because we eat early, like we’re the family that eats lunch early.

[00:06:44] Dana Stanley We eat dinner at like four. So I knew that would be perfect because after that. The plan was to head over to Tomorrowland, do our lightning lane for buzz and there was another, um, cool kid summer location over in Tomorrowland too. And I knew Stitch was there, so I did not say anything to my stitch obsessed daughter that he was gonna be there.

[00:07:10] Dana Stanley ’cause he’s kind of hard to see in the parks. And I knew this was running from 11 to three. I wasn’t sure exactly when Stitch would be out. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know if the timing was gonna work, because after that I wanted to go back to the room. So I had that in there and I had it kind of in gray font that just so I knew that there was a stitch ice cream float.

[00:07:36] Dana Stanley My daughter’s like, I mean, she’s nine, so I guess this is like just the thing, but she’s very into like treats right now, you know, like. Boba and sour tape and ice cream sundaes and all of those things. So there was a stitch float in Tomorrowland at Galactic goodies. So I kind of just had that as a little side note for myself, but I didn’t tell her I had two to four 30 completely blocked off for a nap and some pool time, followed by a quick service dinner back at the resort.

[00:08:12] Dana Stanley Now this is where the. I was kind of hoping this would work out in the plans I had that we would eat at Primo Piata over at the Riviera. I was hoping that during our nap I would be able to snag a lightning lane for Slinky Dog Dash for nighttime. I love riding Slinky Dog Dash at night, and if it worked out and I got a lightning lane for the evening, I wanted to head over to Cake Bake Shop for some dessert.

[00:08:44] Dana Stanley Then take the boat from the boardwalk to Hollywood Studios, essentially just to ride slinky. I thought that would be like a fun night with like the boat ride and we’re just getting cake. We haven’t been to Cake Bake Shop, so that was kind of, it wasn’t like a solid plan. I kind of wanted it to happen because even though we already had another Hollywood Studios Day, it kind of freed up our night if we got this done.

[00:09:12] Dana Stanley On a different night, like on this night, then our Hollywood Studios day wouldn’t have so much on the list and it would be more chill. So that was just kind of like, I dunno if you wanna call it a Plan B, but it was like a, if it happens, it happens. Type of plan. Now that we went over the expectation and the, you know, the vision, I will go over what actually happened starting from the top.

[00:09:38] Dana Stanley Of leave early in all caps. Yeah, we did not leave early. We ended up getting to, like I wrote, leave early at seven. I wanna say that in my mind, I probably was shooting for more like a seven 30. We got to the bus stop at 8 58, like very, very off. Now, I know the night before we had been a little spontaneous and after our dinner reservation at the Grand Floridian, we had popped into Magic Kingdom.

[00:10:15] Dana Stanley So I think maybe the combination of being out a little later, being just in Magic Kingdom the night before, I was probably like, eh, we just have to get there. For Winnie the Pooh, like it’s not that big of a deal, which is fine.

[00:10:35] Dana Stanley But this is one of the reasons why I hate putting like an early morning on myself. And I do it every trip. I really have like the greatest intentions. ’cause I do, I do like the mornings, but, but it rarely, rarely has been happening for us lately. So we got to the bus at 8 59. The good news is that by the time we actually like waited for the bus rode to Magic Kingdom got through security and tapped in, it was 9 27.

[00:11:08] Dana Stanley So,

[00:11:13] Dana Stanley so in less than 30 minutes from even getting to the bus stop, we were already in the park, which is wonderful. So the teacups at like quote rope drop. No, not even close, because now the park has been open, like the official park open was at nine. Early entry, which we had access to was at eight 30, and we could have been like heading to the rides well before then, so,

[00:11:44] Dana Stanley but I still wanted to stick to the original plan, which was to head to the teacups first. So that’s what we did at 9 45. We were on the teacups. It was still a walk-on, thankfully, and in it was still a walk-on, thankfully. So, so far, so good. We are just behind quote schedule. Now, the next thing on the plan was Winnie the Pooh, but it went down.

[00:12:21] Dana Stanley And this is always like the moment when everything is fine, but when a ride goes down unexpectedly, it just reminds you of like you are not really in charge of your plans at all and Disney kind of dictates a lot of what’s gonna happen and your kids too. So instead of like waiting around for Winnie the Pooh and staying in fantasy land, we pivoted in a way of like, we just bumped up the timeline a little bit.

[00:12:52] Dana Stanley So instead of staying where we were and waiting for our Peter Pan flight lightning lane, which was very quickly approaching, like we could have scanned into Peter Pan at this point. We went over to the Cool Kids summer area in the Storybook Circus. So this is where like Dumbo is, there’s the Barnstormer and some characters

[00:13:20] Dana Stanley we were trying to keep from, we were trying to keep from backtracking, so it just made sense instead of like. Going back to Peter Pan and then doing this, and then waiting for Winnie the Pooh to come back up. We just wanted to get this all outta the way. And my kids like, especially my 2-year-old, he wasn’t quite two yet.

[00:13:41] Dana Stanley He loved Cool Kid Summer. There was like people juggling and activities and there was music and there was bubbles and there was hula hoops and we were kind of like, oh, we are like not going to get him away from this area now. So we made the decision that Colton would stay with Cruso at the Cool Kid Summer ’cause he was having a blast while I took our newly, almost 5-year-old on Barnstormer because she had not been on barnstormer before.

[00:14:11] Dana Stanley She ended up getting front row and absolutely loved it that when we got off. She made her dad take her on again and they got to ride front row. There was no lines. There was like nobody in Storybook Circus again. Magic Kingdom on a Sunday is awesome. But this ended up being like the highlight of her trip.

[00:14:30] Dana Stanley Like she loved it and the videos of her riding it are absolutely hysterical. ’cause she’s got this really big curly hair that just like goes incredibly wild. And she was like screaming like I do. And it was just very fun and very cool.

[00:14:51] Dana Stanley When we got back, when he got back with her crew was still jamming at Cool Kid Summer. And was on like a first name basis with the cast members there. And so I took the girls over to the characters. We saw Donald and we saw Goofy, which was really fun. And then finally Poo came back up. So at 10 38. So we were there probably 45 minutes, um, maybe even a little longer before we got back to Winnie the Pooh.

[00:15:23] Dana Stanley And we were able to use our lightning lane that we had originally had, and then when we got off, we immediately scanned into Peter Pan at 10 54. So it was not originally what I had planned, like in a linear, tidy way, but we at this point have done everything that I thought we were going to do for the most part.

[00:15:55] Dana Stanley Now, this was the perfect timing for our lunch reservation. We were set to, our actual time of the reservation was at 1120. We got there a little bit early and sat down out. We got there a little bit early and waited for Aine to be called, which is. Super quick and we were seated by 1119. So that all like easy peasy, everything’s going good and the kids are happy.

[00:16:25] Dana Stanley Everyone’s in a good mood. We had a really good lunch. I, so now I had had in the plans earlier when we were gonna be kind of just like bopping around fantasy land. That we were going to ride small world and Mickey’s fill her magic. That had not happened. And while I was at lunch, my friend, uh, my Instagram friend had been texting me because she was also in Magic Kingdom and she was also in fantasy land.

[00:16:53] Dana Stanley So we ended up kind of, I hate saying like kill two birds with one stone, but we ended up meeting her at Mickey’s, fill her magic. We’re able to say hi, get a picture, which is really cool. And then we. Popped in to Mickey’s fill her magic, which was a great rest and air conditioning ’cause at this point it is very hot.

[00:17:19] Dana Stanley So I mentioned earlier that as my day is going on, I’m being really efficient with my lightning lanes and getting as many as possible because the lightning lanes are what are going to keep us out of those long lines. So at this point, we have not waited in any line longer than, you know, five, 10 minutes.

[00:17:36] Dana Stanley And one of them that I had grabbed was Little Mermaid for 1 35. So the plan.

[00:17:46] Dana Stanley So this is where things really divert because technically on paper we would’ve already rode Little Mermaid, but because we spent so much time at Cool Kid Summer, which I did not regret at all, we were now pushing that back as kind of our last ride before heading out to to Marland. So I wanted to just do Little Mermaid.

[00:18:10] Dana Stanley We would do buzz and then we would rush back for a nap.

[00:18:16] Dana Stanley But of course, truly on the walk from the exit of Little Mermaid to the stroller, my son fell asleep on my husband and this was his thing. The whole trip was he could not make it back to the room for nap time. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a boy, like my girls always napped at like 1 32. He wants to nap at like 11 30, 12.

[00:18:42] Dana Stanley He’s just nonstop moving since the moment he opens his eyeballs and the whole trip. My schedule that I’ve relied on always in Disney with both of the girls was just not quite working on this trip.

[00:18:59] Dana Stanley And truly when I say like we were about to leave, right when he fell asleep, and you know, once a kid falls asleep, like that’s it. They’re gonna take a little cat nap, but you’re not gonna be able to get them to take like another long, better nap at the room. This is their nap.

[00:19:21] Dana Stanley So I had to completely like rethink what we’re gonna do. ’cause now I just wanna keep this child asleep as long as possible. So now instead of leaving, we have some time to kill while he’s sleeping. So, because the original plan was to hit tomorrow, land on the way out. Before we left, that’s what we did. So the only thing that changed here was Colton.

[00:19:44] Dana Stanley My husband took my two girls on Buzz light ear, which we had a lightning lien for while I sat out with the baby ’cause he was sleeping. And I mentioned that I had wanted to see the cool kids summer in Tomorrowland to secretly hope to see Stitch. And I also had that little stitch flow idea, kinda like in my gray color.

[00:20:11] Dana Stanley ’cause it was like a nice to do, not a must do. And now we had time. So that’s exactly what we did. We

[00:20:21] Dana Stanley walked over to galactic goodies and we got two of their specialty floats and I found. And we found like a quietish spot where crew could nap. We were inside in the air conditioning. We took turns, like all going to the bathroom. Um, we did this little activity. It was like for the new movie Ilio. It was like a send a message to space or something.

[00:20:48] Dana Stanley And because it is hard to find some more quiet magic kingdom, like I feel like when I find a little quiet spot somewhere. Like a little corner, that’s when like someone’s dragging a trash can by or something or like, I don’t know, someone will drop something. So it’s just, it’s really hard to find somewhere quiet.

[00:21:08] Dana Stanley So I just was so, I was really like, once I got him kind of tucked in a corner, I didn’t wanna move him and we just waited. But then after that, on the way out, my 9-year-old got to dance, got to dance. With Stitch, like one-on-one dance with Stitch. And again, this was happening for Cool Kid summer. It’s not something that’s always going on, but this was like her dream, like peak dream for the trip.

[00:21:42] Dana Stanley She was decked out in like her stitch merchandise. I’ll try to leave a photo in the show notes because she had like the headband and the shirt and then she was really like. Face to face dancing with Stitch. He was interacting with her and I’m like, she’s living her best life right now. She is so, so happy.

[00:22:02] Dana Stanley And it was what I was secretly hoping would happen. And it feels really good as a mom in Disney when like something just feels like, oh, there’s just like unplanned magic happened. I can’t believe it. It’s Disney. It was me. It was me. I knew that he was gonna be there. I knew where he was gonna be. I was really trying for this and I’m really glad that it happened.

[00:22:27] Dana Stanley So right around then is when crew had woken up. So he got like a solid hour nap. It’s now around three and he’s in a fairly happy mood. Um, and there wasn’t a reason to rush back at this point because we had no real plans for the rest of the day.

[00:22:58] Dana Stanley At this point, I knew that my little Plan B of going to Cake Bake Shop and getting a lightning lean for Slinky was. Dead and in a ditch because now that he woke up, I just decided, you know what? We’re gonna have a nice early bedtime, which was honestly fine because we stayed in the park longer and didn’t take that break.

[00:23:21] Dana Stanley We were all getting tired at this point. It was really hot. So we decided to do two things that we don’t always have time for, and that’s the people mover and the carousel of progress very. Slow, calmer things, um, to kind of put towards the afternoon plan instead of having that like true rest that I was planning on.

[00:23:43] Dana Stanley And honestly, crew had very close to like gone, lost his mind on carousel progress, which stinks because you can’t get like off really or go anywhere. And it’s also pretty long. Carousel progress is. Kind of like a stage show with animatronics where the stage stays put and you move in a very slow, slow circle around the stage.

[00:24:15] Dana Stanley But there’s, you know, kind of like theater seats and it’s dark and you can’t really go anywhere ’cause it’s technically moving and it’s pretty long, which is what I like about it. Like, I loved nursing him on carousel progress, but when you have like a. Unhappy toddler who’s just like, had enough it, it stinks.

[00:24:35] Dana Stanley So we had a few minutes of like sweating as parents, um, just trying to keep him happy. Just trying to keep him happy. And we got through, he really liked the people mover. And then on our way out, we broke one of our rules, and I had mentioned this in another episode about breaking all of my own rules. And we bought a balloon for Sailor on the way out.

[00:25:01] Dana Stanley So eventually by four 19 we were on the bus, very tired and sweaty. With our balloon. Um, but thankfully I didn’t have anything set in stone for the evening. We didn’t have dining reservations because I only stick to one a day. We didn’t have any, you know, fireworks planned or things that I had, you know, paid for and booked in advance that we had to do, which is a very good feeling of just having an open night.

[00:25:38] Dana Stanley So we were just. Chilling. This night, we mobile ordered from Primo Piata, which was in my original plan. We ate in the room and because we weren’t going to Cake Bake or taking a boat over to Hollywood Studios, Colton graciously took the girls down to the pool, which they had been really wanting to quote Night Swim since we had gotten to Riviera because of the view that we had.

[00:26:07] Dana Stanley They would just be like in their pajamas getting ready for bed, and they’d be like, there’s people still swimming. So this made them very happy and I got to stay back at the room and put poor Cruso down to bed early, which he really needed. So they got to swim. There was this insane sunset, which I could see from the room, but Colton was also sending me pictures.

[00:26:34] Dana Stanley From down below, like on the water with the skyline in the background. It was really, really pretty. The sunsets at the Riviera were insane. Like that was one of the best thing. Like that was one of my favorite things of the whole trip. Were just seeing the sunsets because it was, was seeing the sunset because it was so late at night and it was usually when we were winding down anyway.

[00:26:58] Dana Stanley And then the girls got to get some gelato. I have some really cute pictures of them, like, and video of them, like chitchatting because they’re usually bickering. So when they’re sweet to each other it’s just, it’s just really cute. So they had a nice, sweet moment with their dad and it ended up being one of those perfect nights where we got to catch up on sleep.

[00:27:22] Dana Stanley Um, the girls got to do something they really wanted to do. I got to be in the room alone by myself while crew was sleeping, which I really enjoy. And I really did want to go to K Big shop. Like, I just wanna say this wasn’t like something I did not care about. Like I had missed the grand opening by like two days on our last trip and we had been at the boardwalk and walking by it, you know, every day, all day.

[00:27:51] Dana Stanley And then we saw all the media around it. Reviews, et cetera. Um, my girls watched YouTube videos of it, and it’s funny because I just don’t really feel like FOMO at all anymore. I think maybe like three or four years ago maybe I would’ve, like, I would’ve cared and really felt like I needed to go to cake Bake or like I should.

[00:28:17] Dana Stanley And the difference with this trip versus other ones was on this particular night that I’m talking about. We did not have like another trip booked, so I truly didn’t think like a genuine like, oh, well, we’ll just do it next time. It was just more of like, I knew that wouldn’t be fun, like that would not be enjoyable tonight.

[00:28:40] Dana Stanley This what we’re doing right now is much more enjoyable.

[00:28:47] Dana Stanley So that’s how our day actually looked, and I thought it would be cool. To go back and kind of do like a score, like a percentage of my plans versus what actually happened. So I broke it down in three categories, which is how I like to plan my park days and teach my members how to plan their park days is you have your rides, your dining, and your experiences.

[00:29:14] Dana Stanley So a ride versus an experience to me are two very different things. A ride is typically. Going to have a longer wait or something that you maybe wanna get a lightning lean for, um, you’re moving in this scenario versus an experience. It could be something that is like a show or meeting a character or like doing something.

[00:29:39] Dana Stanley Like, it could just be something that’s included in your park ticket. It could also be, you know, make sure to get a picture in front of the castle, like something very important to you. That you want to experience? Um, dancing with Stitch would be an experience. So ride wise, we did really great. I did not over plan our rides, um, right off the gate, but out of the eight rides I had quote planned, we only missed one.

[00:30:09] Dana Stanley And that was small world. And I can tell you for a fact that we literally forgot, we just forgot to ride small world like we were leaving the park. And my daughter was like, Hey, we didn’t ride small world. And I’m like, you know what? You’re absolutely right. We didn’t, I, we just missed it. I think we could have squeezed it in for sure.

[00:30:30] Dana Stanley Genuinely forgot. So we got on Winnie the Pooh, just late Peter Pan’s flight. Um, we saw Mickey’s fill her magic, which I don’t know if you wanna call that a ride, but for the sake of this episode, we’ll call it a ride. Uh, the teacups in the morning. The Barnstormer we ended up doing twice and then Little Mermaid, so we ended up checking off like 90% of the rides that I had planned.

[00:30:59] Dana Stanley Um, one of which we just forgot, which I think is pretty good considering we got there late and left early. So it still looked absolutely nothing like how I had it scheduled out, but we ended up doing what I had planned anyway.

[00:31:20] Dana Stanley Then the experiences. I really wanted to see cool kids summer in two different locations. So if you wanna call those like two different experiences, I don’t know. Um, and I also had that plan B of like the boardwalk and cake bake shop for a piece of cake and then a boat ride to Hollywood studios for Slinky.

[00:31:39] Dana Stanley Even just saying that out loud, like that was a lot. Um. And I’m really glad that that didn’t work out. So on the experience side, I would say we did like 75% of what I planned. Cool kid summer twice. Um, with like the sit dance party instead of the whole boardwalk and cake, bake shop, slinky moment. Then dining, we actually did 100% of our plans.

[00:32:04] Dana Stanley We had lunch at the castle and we did our just quick, easy dinner. Of mobile ordering at the resort.

[00:32:18] Dana Stanley I hope hearing like these two side by sides just makes you feel less pressured to quote, get it right on your trip, but also know how important thoughtful planning ahead of time is. Yes, things went wrong and out of our control. But because we started off with one, just realistic expectations and plans, and two, knew what to do when things were kind of going haywire and like how to pivot without, you know, backtracking and panicking and just making more work for myself.

[00:32:57] Dana Stanley And just going back to the first thing I said in the episode of plans are. Really important. Just know that they’re not going to happen. Exactly. Have you exactly how you have it laid out. Kids will fall asleep at the wrong time. Um, lightning lane rides are gonna go down,

[00:33:20] Dana Stanley and somehow it just, it all works out. So if you’re planning for your first trip or your hundredth, let this be your reminder that. The goal isn’t to control everything and sometimes Disney will remind you that you are actually not in control at all. Thanks for listening to today’s episode. I will see you next week.