5 Things to Make Your Disney World Trip EASIER and MORE FUN

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5 ways to make your Disney World trip EASIER and MORE FUN

We just returned from the “happiest place on Earth”, and it was a blast! Walt Disney World is really just an incredible, amazing break from reality and I can’t adequately describe all the fun that we had on our big family vacation. What I can say is what we learned – both before and after we arrived. Like any other trip, information is your friend; at Disney World, this is doubly true.

Five tips I’d like to share:

 

Plan

1. Plan ahead. No, really, PLAN AHEAD.

No amount of planning is too much when it comes to Disney World. Whether deciding where to stay, which meal plan to get, whether or not to add “Park Hopper”, etc., there are so many permutations that it really requires thinking through what you want to do and how you’d like to do it.

The FastPass+ system lets you reserve access to expedited lines for attractions and events, and resort guests can book FastPasses 60 days prior to their visit (30 days earlier than those staying off-property). You can book up to 3 FastPasses in advance for each day of your visit, and once you’ve exhausted a day’s worth you can book another one at a park FastPass+ kiosk.

Reservations can seem to disappear in a heartbeat. If you really want a hot attraction (like Epcot’s Soarin’ or Magic Kingdom’s Seven Dwarfs Mine Train), and you have to go “Stand By” (aka “on the line with the normal folks”), aim for when the park opens, when it closes, or during some big event – like a parade (something that siphons off large quantities of people). Dining reservations open 180 days before your visit, and you actually need to be online at 6:00am (ET) to book some of the most popular or exclusive dining options, like a Princess character meal at Cinderella’s Royal Table or an über-fancy dinner at Victoria & Albert’s.

We used two books in our trip planning, and we consulted them nightly as we considered the next day’s itinerary. I can’t recommend them highly enough: The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World and Walt Disney World with Kids.

Just call!

2. Talk to the nice people on the phone.

The Walt Disney World website is a decent source of information, but if you REALLY want the skinny, go straight to the mouse’s mouth: call the nice people. Bring a magazine, since hold times can get long, but expect LOTS of help when you talk with the reservations folks on the phone. You can only get limited assistance via webchat, so just skip it and call from the get-go. Deals are listed on the website, and the folks in their call center can explain how you can take best advantage of the deals (even applying deals after you’ve booked, if you’re eligible for a special offer/promotion).

Also, if you book directly through Disney, you may get much better – and more personalized – communication pre-trip than if you book through someone else. My parents, who booked through an agency, didn’t get any of the print-on-demand pieces that we got (like the fridge magnet customized with important dates), and those little touches can really help in big ways.

My Disney Experience

3. There’s an app for that!

The My Disney Experience app is your best friend during your trip. Available free through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, My Disney Experience has some great features, including (but not limited to): setting up FastPass+ selections, making dining reservations on the fly, and seeing wait times for attractions at all of the Disney World parks. We used ALL of these features, and the feature that allowed us to look up our reservations for FastPasses and dining helped us manage our time efficiently. For example, many FastPass attraction timeslots run about an hour long; we looked up our FastPasses, checked wait times for other attractions at the same park, and then we figured out what we could do Stand By before or after our FastPass’ed attraction. When bad weather was forecasted for one evening, and I wasn’t sure we wanted to venture out for dinner, the app helped me make a reservation at one of our hotel’s restaurants just a few hours before our preferred dinnertime. It was brilliant!

Hydrate early and often!

4. Water, water, everywhere!

Going to Central Florida at the end of August, we routinely experienced daytime temperatures of 90°-97°F. Dehydration was always a risk. We brought our own (empty) water bottles and filled them each morning before heading out. Throughout the day, we frequently refilled our bottles at the water fountains sprinkled liberally throughout each park. Avoiding caffeine also helped (remember: caffeine dehydrates you!); and using a dining plan snack credit to buy Powerade helped on days when the heat index reached 101°F.

Shade can be hard to come by, so hydrating is really important and will make your day last longer and be less likely to be interrupted by a visit from the EMTs (which I saw happen to another park visitor, on one day at Magic Kingdom). Don’t have a water bottle handy? Go into any park restaurant and ask for a free glass of water; they’re REQUIRED to give you at least a glass of ice at no charge. As one park cast member told me, they’d much rather comp you ice or water than have you get sick from dehydration.

Pink sock - it really worked!

5. Stroller sock’er!

The ubiquitous strollers can be hard to tell apart. When you rent a stroller from Disney World, you get a name card to slide into a holder on the back – but all of the Disney World strollers look identical. Making matters worse, even when you park in designated “Stroller Parking” areas, cast members are known to move strollers around to optimize the use of the space. If you leave your stroller in another area, they may move it to a designated “Stroller Parking”, where your stroller may share space with sometimes a hundred other similar vehicles. Make yours stand out by adding a sock! No, seriously, a sock. Before we left, I went to Target and picked up the most ludicrously fluorescent pink knee socks I could find, and we knotted one on our stroller handlebar every day. Even when cast members put our rental in the middle of a sea of other strollers, I easily picked out that bright pink knot.

No matter how you approach your trip to Walt Disney World, as long as you go in with a plan to HAVE FUN, you will. There’s always an attraction to ride, good food to eat, and a cast member nearby who would really like to make you smile. So go ahead…and enjoy. I know we did!

Stress Test Sneak Attack

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If I keep looking, I think I can find my joy

I’m not one to get depressed on a frequent basis – at least not anymore. My job is good, my home life is fine, and some of the typical stresses are just humming at the average level. There was even that usual jarring – back to reality – feeling that came when I returned from BlogHer, where suddenly the blue skies and perfect weather of San Jose faded and it was back to traffic and day care pickups and meetings upon meetings.

The last few weeks haven’t been perfect, but I have to find a way to climb out of this emotional rut. Vibrating not-so-silently in the background, there’s the stress of the health issues of a family member and watching them self-destruct at a faster pace than in prior decades. I walk marathons not just because I want to raise money for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute but also because I have some things to prove to myself: namely, that I can control my own body and what happens to it. This past weekend I hit a personal record for the 9mi distance, sub-16-minute miles. In any given distance, a sub-16 is decent for walking, but when you’re going 9 miles, that’s pretty damn fantastic. I can never run thanks to my busted knees, but I never want to stop walking. I don’t want to self-destruct.

MapMyRun cap of 15:48min mile average for 9.04miles

Then there’s everything unfolding in Ferguson, which is like watching a slow-speed crash of a tractor trailer and an LNG tanker. You know things are going to go horribly wrong, but it’s hard to say when it will hit some magical tipping point where there is no return. There are people protesting to have their voices heard, to question that justice is being served by drips and drops of information, to challenge the idea that ~whatever happened~ is okay. There are police (of varying denominations) fighting to keep the peace and establish order in a town that can’t seem to settle down and where they know they’re operating in an atmosphere of minimal trust.

Bad actors exist on both sides: cops who persist in calling protestors “monkeys” and “animals” and hooligans who are using the protests as cover to loot and destroy (read Bill Buford’s “Among the Thugs” to learn about the psyche of hooligans – it’s an excellent read). There are good actors on both sides, too – like the head of the state police who started first with handshakes before escalating to tougher tactics and like the protestors who are organizing food drives to feed the children shut out of lunches by the postponement of the school year. This is by no means a cut-and-dry case, but it’s giving everyone an excuse to vent their bile at their target of choice – and there’s too much friendly-fire going on in the process. We need to not self-destruct.

 

Give love

I’m going to find a way to post other things on the blog over the next couple of weeks, seemingly incongruous posts that are, in fact, a return to the type of material I’ve posted before, because I’m trying to find a way out of the funk that’s gripping me. Anyone who wants to be positive is welcome to come along. It’s time to put down the sticks, short or otherwise.

Peace and love: if you want it, you can have it.

 

We need to not self-destruct. 

Art and the week of awfulness

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artheader

 

This week has sucked. There are just no two ways about it. It’s sucked.

First, there was Robin Williams’ untimely death. It seemed like a sucker-punch to the country’s collective gut, losing such a gifted and talented person. Images and sounds of some of his roles are seared on my brain, like the scene in “Moscow on the Hudson”, when his character – a defector from Soviet Russia – collapses in tears in the coffee aisle of the grocery store, overwhelmed by too much choice. He made me laugh SO MANY TIMES, and he made me cry SO MANY TIMES, and always he was this brilliant gorgeous creature. We were so lucky to have him. As so many other people, he had his share of demons to battle – depression among them – and now news that he was also in the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. I know what it’s like to have a family member commit suicide rather than lose themselves to PD and, whether that was his particular motivation or not, it’s always sad to lose someone who meant so much to you.

We were all so sad at the beginning of the week (soon to hear of Lauren Bacall’s passing, as well as Charles Keating and others…), and it seemed like this week would be measured solely in its body count.

At the same time, I managed to get a free app from the App Store – the featured app of the week – Autodesk’s Sketchbook. Ever since seeing JC Little speak at BlogHer about the use of visuals in storytelling, even when those visuals are rudimentary, I wanted to find a way to draw. So, I grabbed a stylus pen I’d gotten from some conference or another (OH THAT’S WHAT THAT RUBBERY THINGIE IS ON THE END OF THAT PEN) and started drawing.

Day 1, I made this:

elephant butt

Day 2 wasn’t going much better, so I wanted to try to cheer people up. I’m still getting the hang of the app (more detailed Help files would really make me squee in delight), so I couldn’t make a rose, like I’d originally intended. But a tulip is one of my favorite flowers, and I think it works:

a tulip

Day 3 and I’m just done with this week. I stayed up way too late last night seeing tweets and photos from reporters being illegally arrested by militarized police in Ferguson, Missouri. I saw a picture of a man picking up a tear gas canister and throwing it back at the police to get it away from people who’d been standing stock still, arms linked. I heard the deafening, unbearable silence from Martha’s Vineyard as President Obama partied rather than making calls to diffuse the boiled-over situation. I read the account from the editor of my hometown newspaper, The Washington Post, as he explained how one of his reporters was physically assaulted and then arrested by a police officer who wanted to keep him from recording, photographing or otherwise telling others what was taking place. And then today I read way too many posts of how the “thugs” who inhabit Ferguson are the cause of all of this mess. They’re no longer Americans or humans, to some; they’re just thugs. Dehumanizing these people doesn’t help and it doesn’t solve a damn thing.

And so today, this is what I drew.

tears

There’s a part of me that wants to curl up in a ball and make it all go away, but I have to bear witness because my white skin doesn’t exempt me from feeling sorrow at a trampling of human rights. This week has reminded me of days when my depression hounded me, though never so much as the days when I considered driving off the road to end my pain. If I lived in Ferguson or if I lived somewhere that wasn’t as nice as where I am now – where I can smile and wave to the police without fear – my depression might be all-consuming.

I am lucky, and still I cry.

This week has been awful, and I’m lucky that I can shut it out by turning off Twitter and Facebook. Not everyone is so lucky.

This art is becoming a channel of sorts, and I suspect I’ll get better at it the more I do it, though I never expect I’ll be as good as my artist friends. But if it helps me channel my rage and fear and sadness, I’ll keep doing it.

So many thanks to whoever made that app free this week – and thank you SO MUCH to JC Little, because without her I never might have downloaded that little app and started making art of my very own.

Express yourself.

Even your sadness.