PLANNING MY FIRST TIME TRIP & USEFUL PLANNING TOOLS / WDW SERIES

Welcome to post number two of my Walt Disney World series! This one is all about how I've planned my first trip to Florida, and I'm going to speak a bit about some of the most useful planning tools I've used too. I'm hoping this will be the most informative post of the series - the others will likely be a bit more 'chatty'. So let's jump straight in!

So as soon as Cameron told me he'd booked for us to go, I started planning like 15 minutes later - no beating around the bush here! The first thing I did was have Cameron forward me every single email to do with the holiday that he'd been sent - he'd booked the flights and the hotel, and said everything else was down to me to organise - which was perf as I do have a penchant for organising things! So I set to on a 'to-do spreadsheet' if you will, which I split into three sections - Travel, Disney, and To-Buy - I included space next to each item so that I can tick the off as I go. I've included a screenshot of it below so you can see what I included. This list became the opener in my 'Florida Documents' folder - which is what I'm going to go through in this post.

Next I downloaded the My Disney Experience app - if you've got a trip planned, and you haven't downloaded it, make sure you do ASAP! You simply create an account on it, and through that you can make all your dining reservations, fast passes, and also view all your PhotoPass pictures once you're in the park, amongst other useful bits like viewing queue times, where the nearest restrooms are etc. It really is so useful, and completely free so 100% worth getting, even if you don't end up using it much. I'm definitely one of those people that wants most of the days planned - which park we're in, where we're eating, what we're doing etc just so that I know that we're fitting as much in as we possibly can. I have left room for spontaneity though - for example when making dining reservations, I've made a maximum of one per day (some days I haven't made any), which just gives us the chance to visit the quick service that we fancy, or if we want to eat at our hotel we can. 

First thing's first with the day-to-day planning - I had to decide where we're going to be on each day. This obviously called for another spreadsheet - this time a colour coded one! From this I would be able to make the dining reservations, and eventually book our fast passes when they're available for booking. In the spreadsheet I've got the date at the top, which park we're going to spend the morning & afternoon in, which park we're going to spend the evening in, what the opening hours are on that day for the parks we're going to be in, any breakfast/lunch/dinner reservations, and there's an 'other' section at the bottom for anything else we've got planned - for example our park tickets came with free tickets to Cirque Du Soleil so that is in the 'other' section for the day that we're attending the show. I've included screen shots of each of my two weeks so you can have a better look at what I've planned.

I'll be taking copies of the spreadsheets with me so that I know exactly what we're doing each day, and I can quickly see what our dining reservations are. As we're staying off-site, we can't book our fast passes until 30 days before the holiday, so once I can book those I'll be referring to this to see what parks we're in at what times, and when we're eating, so I can try and get fast passes around that information. You'll see we do have a few non-Disney excursions booked in, which I'll go into in more detail in the next blog post in the series. We have also got a full day shopping at the malls - coz you know, girl gotta shop! Apart from these spreadsheets, and the to-do list, my Florida Documents folder is then made up of printed confirmation of all our bookings - hotel, flights etc, print outs of all the dining reservations and our ticket bookings. I'll be putting the fast pass confirmations in here too once we've got those! 

Other than the app, some other useful planning tools I've used is The Little Big Book of Magic which you can order here for free from The Walt Disney Travel Company, and the 2017 Brit Guide to Orlando which you can order here for £10.49 from Amazon - I have't finished reading this yet, but it honestly has all the information you could ever need in it! I'll definitely be keeping it close to me for the whole trip, just in case I need to reach for it! 

As someone who's never been to WDW before, I did need some inspiration when it came to kick starting my planning, so I must just give special mention to Ellie Steadman, and Sophie from Tom & Sophie on YouTube, whose planning videos really helped get my head around how to plan for this sort of holiday!

You can watch Ellie's video here.

You can watch Sophie's video here.

If you're new to planning this kind of holiday, then I would definitely recommend starting with those videos, just so you can get an idea of what to do. Obviously it is completely up to you how much you want to plan, and how spontaneous you want to be. I actually haven't filled our days in too much, as I still want time to be able to go with the flow, and just soak everything in. Like I've mentioned before, I am absolutely not an expert on planning for WDW - it is my first trip, so I'm actually a complete novice, but if you're currently planning for your first trip, I hope this post has been of some use to you!

The next post in the series will be all about tickets!

Thanks so much for reading 😊