Help a New TP User Plan Her Kids' First Disney Trip!

Really? We didn’t have much planned and always seemed to be running around. However, we learned a lot from these forums, which puts us ahead of a lot of people.

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How many times did y’all get to Epcot? :grin: seriously, that was four parks and a room switch midway, right? I remain impressed.

Anyway – I just booked my first restaurant reservation (Tusker House at 8:50 am). I feel like I should get some sort of badge.

(I’ll go ahead and add that I’ve been flirting with the idea of eventually running one of the Disney races, so any tips that end up not applying to this trip I may end up using on a future trip.)

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I lost count…

Yay! We loved Tusker House. You should get a badge. All I could find was a badger, though.

:badger:

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Have no tips for you, but wanted to say welcome and have a great time

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I am also planning our first trip to WDW, though I’ve been to Disneyland a few times. My DS8 is autistic and sensitive to noise as well. He wears headphones in the park after an hour or two as ambient noise increases and his tolerance decreases.
We tried ear plugs this last trip. I was hoping to have him look more “normal” in pictures and avoid some of those looks. They were a fail for him, as he continued to put his hands over his ears even with them in. I was glad we brought his usual headphones (he wears headphones in PE, music and church). My girls DD6 & DD10 both tried the earplugs and they were abandoned as well as they felt “weird”.
Here’s a link to the headphones on Amazon (I’m sure you can get them elsewhere, but I live in Seattle and this is where I shop ;-)).
HearTek Kids Earmuffs Hearing Protection with Travel Bag- Junior Ear Defenders for Children, Padded Baby Ear Protection, Infants, Small Adults, Women - Adjustable Protectors Noise Reduction Ear Muffs https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015HJHE8O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_4KUmCbZ1NTP0J

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Assuming you have 6 park days (if you stay until the 10th), I would suggest given the things that you list as important:

2 days at MK
1 day at Epcot
1 day at DHS
1 day at US/IOA
Last day at either US/IOA or AK depending on what you think is most important. If you go for 5 park days, then drop this day.

There will be varying opinions on these boards, but I think it takes 3 full days at Universal to see it all, but 1 day is enough for Harry Potter and some highlights of the rest of the parks.

I prefer AK to DHS right now (we skipped DHS on our last trip), but it sounds like there are some attractions at DHS which are important to your daughters.

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I think things are starting to come together… slowly.

Right now I have the following reservations:

Saturday 5/4: Prime Time Cafe dinner at HS, 5:45 pm Garden Grill dinner (character), 5:45 pm
Sunday 5/5: Tusker House CB, 8:50 am & 1900 Park Fare dinner (character), 6:55 pm
Tuesday 5/7: Akershus dinner (character), 5:10 pm

Before you say, “You’re not going to make two meals in one day, what are you thinking,” I’m going to be cancelling and revising as we go along.

Here’s my thinking. Current plan is to leave as soon as the kids get out of school Friday 5/3. Google Maps predicts ~seven hours of driving; that is almost certainly not factoring in that by 3 pm Friday rush hour in Atlanta will have already started. So I don’t think we can make the trip in one day; it’s more realistic to plan for dinner at the Cracker Barrel in Valdosta and spend the night north of Orlando. (Besides, the Valdosta Cracker Barrel is a family tradition, from when we used to drive down to see my late grandmother in south Florida.)

Therefore we should plan not to get to WDW until 11 am Saturday. Therefore, my thinking goes, we CANNOT do Hollywood Studios on Saturday. We need to sign up early for Jedi Training Academy, and especially with Saturday being May the 4th, it will almost certainly be filled up by the time we arrive, and even if it’s not that adds stress to Saturday morning we don’t need. HS needs to move to a different day. My dad will either love or hate Prime Time Cafe; I’m going to make him watch a YouTube video of the description, and if he likes the idea, I’ll get a different reservation, and if he hates it, we can drop that idea and the girls will be none the wiser.

So the current plan is that Saturday is Future World Epcot day; we can do it in 1/2 day, and my dad and I will be more nostalgic for Epcot. Get FPs as necessary, don’t plan on going to any other park or even see much of World Showcase that day, have an early dinner (in general I’m going to try to get dinner reservations on the early side whenever I can), crash.

I will probably cancel the Tusker House reservation now that I have the Garden Grill one, but I’m going to hold onto it just in case while I see how things shake out – if for some reason we have to wait until Saturday to start driving, for example, then the Tusker House CB may be the unofficial start of our Disney experience.

My hope is that HS can be a half-day – go over early to get signed up, do something else for a little bit, go back over in the afternoon, end with dinner at Prime Time Cafe. I need to do more research to see how realistic that is.

I now have a reservation at Caribbean Beach as well (via CheapTickets); I think the B Resort is the better choice in the long run but once I look at a map I can get a better idea of which location makes more sense. If I have a car the bus lines at Caribbean Beach don’t worry me so much.

EMHs for our current days:
Saturday 5/4 and Sunday 5/5 - 8-9 am HS
Monday 5/6 - 8-9 am AK
Tuesday 5/7 - 9-11 pm Epcot
Wednesday 5/8 - 9-11 pm MK
Thursday 5/9 - 8-9 am Epcot
Friday 5/10 (unlikely we’ll be there this long) - 8-9 am MK

So maybe plan for MK Wednesday afternoon/evening.

So much more to work out! I need to get on the phone with my dad (he’s traveling this week) and get some more info from him w/r/t food preferences, that sort of thing. (I.e. does he want to try more upscale restaurants?) Anybody else use Disney planning as a way to procrastinate on other work? :grin:

@Kracinda thank you for the headphones recommendation! I’m going to talk to our pediatrician’s office and see if it’s worth having DD7 seen by an audiologist. My husband and I were talking about it last night and he thinks she got her ambient-noise issues from him, so he’s really in favor of finding out more if we can.

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Something to keep in mind: HS will be celebrating its 30th year on 5/1. There will be a new night time show and most likely a few other things?

Are there any free dining offers for your dates? Are you all going to stay together all of the time, that might dictate on or off site. Have you checked out Swan & Dolphin, excellent location and you can normally get a good deal. There’s a post on Cava about how to get an incredible deal on Priceline. I’d recommend Akershus, I wouldn’t do a 8:50am ADR as that’s the best time to hit rides. With only 6 days and trying to keep the cost down I wouldn’t do both WDW & Universal could you plan a trip next year to do the other one?

@Tate: I appreciate you looking out for my wallet :grin:. Thing is, my kids have been obsessed with Harry Potter for most of the past year. Bringing them down to Orlando and not going over to UO seems like a terrible idea to me. “Save it for next year” is a good reminder, but I’m not sure we’re going to be in a position to go next year, especially with my husband not being a Disney fan, and what if Harry Potter isn’t as special to the kids next year? So goes my thinking.

My plan is to get one-day passes for UO, in anticipation of not planning to do anything beyond HP, with the possible exception of my dad getting bored and sneaking off to do the Jaws ride or whatever.

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I think you could do more than just HP if you spent a full day at UO. My suggestion would be:

(1) decide which park had more that was of interest to you
(2) start at HP at the other park (which is of less interest to you)
(3) after you finish the first HP areas, take Hogwart’s Express and tour the second park’s HP area
(4) hit a few non-HP highlight at the second park

Also, have you checked the height requirements for the HP rides? If your daughters are big HP fans, you may want to check in advance if they are tall enough for Forbidden Journey and Gringott’s. As I recall, Forbidden Journey had a relatively high height requirement.

Any chance of adding a couple of days to your trip and spending a few days at Universal, or does the budget def say no? You can usually get a 4 day ticket for the price of 2 and when you compare the price of 4 days to 1 day, you might start checking out their hotel prices. At universal you can pool hop if you are staying onsite.

So it turns out DD9’s orchestra has a concert scheduled for May 9th at 5:30 pm. This’ll be her first violin concert; suddenly spending the week beforehand at Disney looks a lot less attractive. Time to find new dates!

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Porg stuffed animals spotted at world of Disney at Disney springs

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@cjandres my wallet is glaring at you right now. :grin:

Welcome! Although I don’t post a lot, I read and learn so much from everyone here. @OBNurseNH, @PrincipalTinker, @missoverexcited, @profmatt are just a few liners that I continuously refer to whenever I have specific questions or need advice. Of course, everyone here is wonderful and full of valuable information…so don’t hesitate to ask for help!
Sounds like your trip is much like many of ours…ever changing to fit whatever new thought or idea pops into your head. :slight_smile: You’ll become a pro at modifying! LOL Looking forward to seeing your plans unfold.

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Thank you, it’s lovely to feel that you’ve helped someone!

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More than y’all realize. I post some but quietly read and learn more than anything else. It’s amazing how much combined knowledge is available here. I couldn’t imagine going to WDW without this site to help me plan.

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It’s amazing how much there is to learn!

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