Planning
Firstly, do NOT attempt WDW without a plan, each Disney park is HUGE and you will have pretty cranky kids if you’re zig-zagging all over the place without fast passes (FP). Start by picking your dates. Both Kenny the Pirate and Touring Plans have crowd calendars which can help you plan which dates to go, or if you need to go on specific dates, will help you plan which park to do on which day.
I strongly suggest staying at an on-site WDW hotel. This gives you the ability to book dining for your whole trip 180 days in advance and FPs 60 days in advance. If you stay off-site, you have to book dining at 180 days in advance of each day of your trip and can only book FPs 30 days in advance, which obviously means you might miss out on some of the most popular ride FPs like 7 Dwarf Mine Train at Magic Kingdom. Travel agents (TAs) will book WDW trips for you for no additional charge, which is definitely worth doing, especially for the first trip. They will also book your advanced dining reservations (ADRs) and Fast Passes. The Facebook mom approved Disney Planning group has a list of approved TAs.
So now you have your dates booked, where to start? Create a profile at My Disney Experience (MDE) and link your reservation. If you have a TA, they will do this for you. Once you’ve done this, you can book your dining 180 days out from your trip and FPs 60 days out, and your plans will be displayed in the MDE webpage and associated cell phone app.
Once you have your FPs booked, plan out what other rides you want to try and hit and use Touring Plans to create a touring plan. It will give you a plan in terms of what rides to do in what order based on minimizing walking around the park and typical waiting times. WDW Prep and Kenny the Pirate also provide stock touring plans for kids of different ages that can be good to follow if you don’t need to create something more custom or you don’t have a clue what rides you want to ride.
Where to stay?
There are a range of hotels ranging from value to moderate to deluxe. In the value category, the little mermaid and cars suites at Art of Animation are a good pick as they give separate adult and kid sleeping areas, and the newly renovated POP rooms are popular. For moderate, those with girls will love the Royal Rooms at Port Orleans. In the Deluxe category, the monorail hotels are super convenient, especially with strollers as you don’t have to fold them. The Polynesian is my favorite of the Monorail hotels based on theming and the ability to walk to the monorail to Epcot. Beach and Yacht have the best pool and easy access to Hollywood Studios and Epcot and are a great pick for kids out of strollers. The Wilderness Lodge has boat access to Magic Kingdom and is often the cheapest of the Deluxe options. Animal lovers will be in awe with the savannah view rooms at Animal Kingdom Lodge, but the transportation to parks is all by bus and the furthest out from parks other than Animal Kingdom. Details on all of Disney’s hotels can be found on their website.
If you want a higher end hotel experience, consider going ‘club level.’ This is offered by all the Deluxe hotels with rooms on a separate floor with access to a ‘club’ that offers included breakfast, hors d’oeuvres, dessert and drinks (both non-alcoholic and alcoholic). Most Deluxe hotels also offer 1 and 2 bedroom suites with club level access. Don’t look at this as a way of saving money by eating there all the time but as a stress-free way to not have to battle with the crowds for a quick service (QS) breakfast at the hotel, a larger room, and to have access to snacks and drinks. My favorite club level experience to date was at the Wilderness lodge, in part because they offer juice boxes, chocolate milk bottles and soda cans which you can stock in your room fridge and take in to the parks with you. The other ‘perk’ of going club level is you can pay $50 per person per day to purchase 3 additional FPs. This is an absolute god-send for Christmas week. You have to do a minimum of 3 days but all 6 FPs can be booked at the 90 day before your trip mark, meaning you are guaranteed to get anything you want. On our trip in January we had FPs for all 3 top tier rides at Epcot and all 3 Toy story land rides at Hollywood Studios plus all the mountains and 7 Dwarf Mine Train at Magic Kingdom. You could also do both avatar rides at Animal Kingdom (AK).
The other option if you want to spread out more is to do a Disney vacation club rental. While you can book these direct with Disney, the cheapest way to do it is to buy points from vacation club owners through reputable sites like David’s DVC. This is a way to get larger accommodations at the Deluxe hotels, although keep in mind that a travel agent cannot book this for you, so you will be on your own for dining and FP bookings. Due to this, I would suggest only doing a DVC rental if this is your second or later trip to WDW.
Advanced Dining Reservations (ADRs)
Yes, it does seem ridiculous deciding where you want to eat 180 days out from a vacation, but some restaurants are that popular, that this is a necessary evil. Everyone will have a different opinion on where the best places to eat at Disney are based on their own personal experience and food tastes.
You don’t HAVE to pre-plan meals. The restaurants you book in advance are table service (TS) (i.e. you are waited on) but there are plenty of ‘order at the counter’ quick service (QS) options. I do not recommend doing more than one table service meal per day as they do take up time. Even with a reservation you will likely wait at least 10 minutes to be seated and should allow at least 1 hour for a non-character TS restaurant and 1.5 hours for a character restaurant to ensure the characters get to your table.
At least one character meal is a must-do. My favorite is Garden Grill at Epcot. It’s small enough that you often get to see the characters twice and they have a nice range with Chipmunks Chip and Dale and various Mickey and friends characters. It has the added novelty of revolving around the Living with the Land ride and food is served family style, so virtually no waiting which is a god-send with impatient children, plus the food was our favorite dinner meal. Do a pre-park breakfast reservation and you can be in-line for Soarin before the waiting crowds arrive. Other restaurants that offer opportunity for early ride access is Arkershus at Epcot for Frozen (restaurant also includes Princess meets), and Be Our Guest for 7 Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom. If you’re arriving early enough the day before your first park day, Chef Mickeys at The Contemporary is a great first night option to set the excitement. Everyone needs to dine in Cinderella’s Castle (Cinderella’s Royal Table) at least once in their lives, well just because it’s a castle, and Be Our Guest is a great lunch option as while it’s quick service (QS) food is brought to your table (order online in advance and skip the counter order) and it’s Beast’s castle and beautifully themed inside.
Another dining recommendation is to do a Rivers of Light at Animal Kingdom dining package or a Fantasmic! at Hollywood Studios (HS) dining package. You can book breakfast, lunch or an early dinner at select restaurants and get priority viewing at the firework/ lightshow in the evening. This essentially gives you an extra ‘FP’ and doesn’t cost any more than the regular dining.
My next recommendation is a ‘splurge’ on an early morning magic (EMM) experience at Magic Kingdom or/and Hollywood studios. While officially a ‘dining’ booking, EMM at MK gives you access with a limited number of other people to various Fantasyland rides, including 7 Dwarfs Mine Train (7DMT), Peter Pan and Pooh from 7.45 until 9 am, followed by breakfast. When we did it we rode 7DMT seven times, Peter Pan and Pooh 3 times each, the Carousel once and then were one of the first to arrive at Thunder Mountain once the park officially opened. We were sitting down for breakfast at 9.20. The HS version gives early morning access to Toy Storyland, so I imagine you can ride Slinky dog upwards of 5 times if you wanted to.
Finally, a dessert party is another ‘splurge’ option for a great viewing spot for Happily Ever After fireworks or Illuminations at Epcot.
If you book ADRs yourself, start with the most difficult to get ones first not by ascending date. The trickiest are Cinderella’s Royal Table, Arkershus, Ohana, Le Celier, California Grill, Be Our Guest and Victoria and Albert.
Disney offers a dining plan which allows you to pay in-advance for food. The most popular option offers 1 TS, 1 QS and 2 snacks per day which many people like as they don’t have to budget for food when they arrive. There are various dining calculators to see if it’s worth doing, but outside of buffets and family style restaurants, you may get away with sharing dishes as portions are generally quite generous and it can work out cheaper to pay as you go.
In terms of what time to book ADRs for, I do not recommend booking them later than a pre-park opening for breakfast as the first two hours are the quietest time in terms of ride lines so don’t eat during that time. If you are open to a slightly later than normal lunch or a slightly earlier than 5.30 dinner, you will often experience restaurants at their quietest and be seated quickly.
Fast Passes
Each member of your party gets 3 FPs for each ticketed park day. Once you have used your 3 FPs can you book more, one at a time. For this reason, I always recommend booking your FPs whenever possible in the morning, although obviously if there isn’t availability in the morning for a ‘must do’ experience then you may need to be flexible. The ideal time for your first FP is around 9.30. Each FP has a one hour window to be used, so you can wait until 10.30 to use that one, and have another one booked for 10.30 and your 3rd one at 11.30. Then you can book another one for straight after lunch if you’re not taking a break. Once you’ve used your first one, you can actually move the next one up (if there’s availability) and then the same with the next one, so you can be ready for your 4th FP faster. As soon as you’ve checked onto the 3rd FP ride, open the MDE app to look for your next FP. As soon as you’ve used that one, you can book another one and so on. If you can’t find one for your whole party, split it up in to smaller groups. You can often snag one for 1 or 2 people in overlapping windows, and still all ride together.
Many rides have height restrictions, so be sure to check kiddos will make the height requirements. Disney is VERY strict on this. To help with this, make the most of rider swap. This allows you to book a FP for a taller child and one adult (and another FP for another adult and the shorter child could be booked for the same time). The whole party needs to check in at the FP desk and you ask for the rider swap. The cast member will ask which adult will ride the second time, and load a rider swap pass on to their magic band. You now must return within an hour (or the standby wait time) to use it (this is a recent change). That adult can bring up to 2 more people back on with them, allowing the older child to ride a second time.
So what should you FP? Assuming, you have kiddos that hit the height requirements, these are my recommendations. You should always tailor to your kid’s preferences and whether they want to meet characters or not. Personally, I prefer to use character meals to address character meets rather than a FP.
MK: 7 Dwarf Mine Train (38 inch height requirement), Thunder Mountain (40 inch requirement), Space Mountain (44 inch requirement) or Splash Mountain (40 inch requirement); or Peter Pan’s flight, Winnie the Pooh, Buzz Lightyear or Tales with Belle, all which have no height requirements.
Epcot: You can only FP one from Frozen, Soarin and Test Track. Both Soarin and Test Track are 40 inch height requirement, so with kids under that height your default is Frozen. My experience is lines are typically shorter for Soarin versus Test Track, so I recommend FP for Test Track and rope drop Soarin (I’ll explain what rope drop is below). I have even got Soarin as an additional FP on previous trips. For the additional FPs, do Mission Space (you can do either green (lower intensity and 40 inch height requirement) or orange (higher intensity and 44 inch requirement), Spaceship Earth and Nemo and Friends (the latter have no height requirement). There’s no need for a FP for turtle talk with crush in my experience.
HS: You can only FP one from Toy Story Mania, Slinky Dog Dash and Alien saucers and Slinky dog is the most popular so I suggest trying to get that. If you can’t get one, rope drop it and get whichever TS ride you can get. It is possible to get Toy Story Mania as an additional FP on a quiet crowd day. For the rest, Tower of Terror (40 inch), Rock N Roller coaster (48 inches and goes upside down) or Star Tours (40 inches). For littles, Beauty and the Beast show and Muppet 3D. There are lots of shows to choose from, but in general a FP is not really necessary.
Animal Kingdom (AK): You can only pick one FP from the two avatar rides. Do Flight of Passage if you can (44 inch requirement), otherwise choose Navii River. For the others, Kali river rapids (36 inch requirement), Expedition Everest (44 inch requirement) or Kilimanjaro safari (no height requirement) and/or the lion king show. Dinosaur can normally be snagged as a 4th FP (40 inch requirement).
Have questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.