Good News! Things are moving here at In-Betweeners...and by things I mean me, Jen.
I just made a move from my home in CT down the east coast to Jeremy's home in NJ which is awesome as it means we'll have lots more time to work on the book.
Before the move, however, I got to sit down with a couple other in-betweeners and talk to them about their last trip to Disney. My friends, Sara and Alex, will be joining us in Disney on our next trip. They'll be serving as Guinea pigs, of a sort, for our travel tips and expertise, so I decided to ask them what their biggest problems were when traveling to Disney. Their answers didn't surprise me, and their problems (and likely yours, as well,) are all easily solved with smart preparation.
Knowing your CAN'T MISS List
This one is probably the most important part of planning the trip, aside from booking it. If you don’t know what you want to see, you could very well end up missing it.
For some reason, a lot of people assume they can just GO to Disney and hop on space mountain and ride the teacups with Alice. It probably has something to do with those oh so lovely commercials that are always on television.
People either forget or don’t know that there are lines to wait in for almost every single thing in the parks. Another mistake that I know is made from personal experience is assuming once you’ve seen the Magic Kingdom, you’ve seen it all. I assure you this is not correct.
I found this out the first time my sister and I went to Disney without our parents, and decided to stray from our typical, well-trodden path. We found some attractions that were okay. We found some attractions that we didn’t like. And then we found rides and shows and other stuff that we instantly added to our “Can’t Miss List”. The moral of the story is to explore. It is important to remember that Disney has hidden magic everywhere and that you will find things that you didn’t expect to find and you may love things you didn’t expect to love. That is where we come in trying to help you.
So how do you come up with a can’t miss list, if you’ve never been to Disney before? There are already plenty of comprehensive guidebooks on the shelves, which I recommend checking out in addition to this blog (or, eventually, this book). In fact, twelve-year-old Jen spent hours one summer with a fist full of gelly pens and a library copy of Birnbaum’s Walt Disney World, dissecting each attraction and deciding which ones she absolutely had to see. You can formulate the list based on any of the qualifiers that Jeremy and I use, or you can use qualifiers of your own. Whatever works the best, and helps you get as many magical moments as you can out of your trip, is ultimately what we recommend.
What you have to remember when formulating this list, whether you’ve been to Disney or not, is that it must have its limits. For Sara and Alex, I kept repeating “will you be heart-broken if we miss this ride?”, which kept me from adding pretty much every attraction in the parks to the list! Having a physical list is handy, too, because it can help plan your day and make sure you’ve hit everything you wanted to before heading back and crashing at your hotel.
Sara, Alex and I went through each park and listed off the attractions within. We went over their impressions of the rides/shows and what their favorite parts of the day were. A lot of their issues within the parks had been about time management, which brings me to my second topic…
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| The musical garden in line for Winnie The Pooh |
Know Where to Draw "The Line"This is a very general tip. As we mentioned before, you are going to have to wait in lines. Depending on the time of year you go, you may have to wait in a LOT of lines. It’s basically part of the charm of Disney at this point, which is why their queue areas are becoming more interactive and less “cattle-herd-y”. However, you should know...based on your can’t miss list...how badly you really want to get into a line. We decided long ago that we don’t wait more than an hour (with very VERY few exceptions) for anything in Walt Disney World. We’ve forked over boatloads of cash and now we wanna get our Disney magic on. If we are going to wait that hour, it better be something like Soarin or Toy Story Mania, where an hour is a “short” wait.
But how do we know what a “short wait” is? Well, for one, we’re including it in our ride descriptions on this blog. But for two, there are some excellent apps that you can get for your smartphone. We are cheap and recommend the free options which are user-moderated but incredibly reliable and simple to use. Disney World Wait Times and Disney World Maps are excellent, but if you’re willing to pay $4.99 for the official Disney Magic Guide, then you get everything in one convenient location.
Eventually, you’ll also have to factor in whether it’s too late and you need to go back to the hotel and sleep. After a full day of walking around Magic Kingdom, if you have plans to get up early in the morning and do it again then making it to the occasional 1am closing time may not be worth the lack of sleep and weariness you will feel the next day. And speaking of taking care of yourself...
Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate
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| This is about how much water you should be drinking. Pic Source |
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| In other words...this is a terrible idea. |
A little-known fact is that you can ask for FREE tap water anywhere that has a faucet. This is by design--Disney does not want you getting dehydrated and passing out on their property and possibly suing them, so we get to reap the benefits of free water. Never pay for a bottle of water--the free stuff comes with ice in it and we tend to just pour it right into our camelbaks. It will save you money in the long run (and honestly, water is so expensive on Disney property that it won’t be that long of a run) to just buy a reusable bottle, even if it’s a last minute purchase in one of the gift shops.
Grab a map
I don’t have a good transition for this one. Maybe you’re like we are and you've been to Disney a collective 22 times. Maybe you’re a n00b. Either way, grab a map. Unless you live in Florida and go every single weekend, a map can clear things up and save you from wasting valuable time arguing over where Pirates of the Caribbean is located.
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| Pic Source |
There is a lot of information on the maps, including showtimes (which occasionally change with the season), character locations (which change all the time), and the locations of lesser-walked paths. If you’ve got the maps app on your phone, then great, you can skip carrying around a sheet of paper which will inevitable wind up soaked or ripped by the end of the day. Bonus: a Disney map can make a great FREE souvenir, or background for a fun scrapbook page or collaged poster once you’re back home.
Hopefully that's enough for you all today.
Enjoy, and share your favorite planning tricks below!
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