The Secret to a Relaxing Vacation: Meticulous, Detailed Plans

I love this. I love planning and I plan everything! People scoff at the planning but honestly I can’t be bothered with the negativity. And I will argue to my grave that the high level of planning makes the resulting vacation more relaxing and flexible because the knowledge I gain in the planning makes it easier to know when and how to change up the plan to make the vacation more enjoyable to everyone.

Having said that, this is also why we are careful with who we vacation with and we are vocal and upfront about our plans. Don’t want to go along with my plan? That’s fine - but it’s our plan and we will be following it (for the most part). We joked that we knew we had made the right decision when traveling with some friends to WDW when their reaction to our (my) itinerary spreadsheet was to make their own! They even color-coded it to reflect where our plans overlapped and where they deviated. :rofl:

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That’s unfortunate. I find that the more I plan, the more info I have for adapting on the fly and that is what saves the trip because things WILL go wrong–we will run late, the ride will break down, the lyft will take a wrong turn-- but planning helps me figure out what to do next. And to me planning lets me enjoy my vacation longer since I start so far in advance.

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This! I had not thought about printing the QS menus so everyone can pick their meals while waiting in other lines! Brilliant! Particularly since there are food sensitivities for my grandkids that make QS meals a little more challenging.

BTW, my family refers to Liners as “my imaginary friends”:grin:

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I think I see ‘the plan’ as more of a strategic rough guide. Some of it, the proper timed stuff - ADR’s and FP’s, if the stars align - are set in stone, but even then I’ve changed ADR’s on a whim. The vast majority of times I’ve not had a problem getting a booking (and I think there’s a lot of panic that it’s necessarily needed when it comes to changing/scrapping ADR plans). Sure, getting spots at BOG and CP, might make it seem that ADR’s are like rocking horse poo and that it’s the same for every destination, but in my experience it’s not the case. But even so, for all the other times in between ADR’s and FP’s, I try to just roll with it.

Fancy an afternoon at the pool if everyone is frazzled? Sure, let’s do it. But we DO have to hit Sanaa later. Sack off that ADR for Expedition Everest as AK is hotter than the sun? Sure, it gives us more time to get to DS for dinner. It’s just compromise, really.

One could plan to the hour and expect way too much and reality will boot you into next week, quite easily. If I came across as a Plan Nazi then I couldn’t see myself enjoying the trip either, but for 14 days, one of us has to be in control! (That said, I planned so much, so heavily invested that I got a whole day out of kilter and missed a booking of 4 for Cirque du Soleil - that was an expensive mistake!)

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[quote=“mostlybobbins, post:24, topic:68151”]
But even so, for all the other times in between ADR’s and FP’s, I try to just roll with it.
[/quoteWhen DH and I were on our dream WDW trip in November, we awoke our first in-park morning with detailed plans and ADRs only to find that our car had a pancake-flat tire. After several hours waiting for a tow truck (DH’s car does not have a spare tire) we were fully 4 hours behind schedule when we finally got to AK. No worries, though. We had re-grouped, Uber’d as needed, checked into CBR a little early, and even made our lunch res at Yak&Yeti. Not according to plan, but we rolled with it. In all it was the dream trip we had imagined and planned.

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We are not imaginary!
We are virtual!
There’s a difference.

Ouch!

I also agree with you about the plan being a rough guide. I think you could dump it entirely and still benefit from having done it, especially if you don’t go frequently enough to have already memorized the pertinent details. You will have by the time you’ve made (and altered) your TP a hundred times.

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I LOVE trip planning - so much that I sometimes plan fictitious plans in great deal for ‘someday’ if I have no current trips to plan for.

This will be our first Disney trip - and I really knew very little about it until beginning planning (like didn’t even realize Disney world was four separate parks - I thought Hollywood studios was its own entity etc). As I read I realized quickly planning this trip was going to be crazy fun for me.

I have planned some amazing trips that have gone near perfectly (across Europe for three weeks for about $1500 each including airfare from north America) - and a few that have had a few (major) hiccups. I still loved the Experiences.

Here’s an example of a beautiful plan gone so very far off track. I meticulously planned and took a month long trip to Africa to do a safari and volunteer with my sister. We had flights cancelled without notification, reschedule by an ever so helpful (:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:) flight agent and flown to the wrong side of Africa (and that’s a decently wide continent lol), which almost experienced an emergency landing to a near full out brawl occurring on the flight. We landed at an airport the flight attendants said we shouldn’t get off at if we were going to miss our connection because it wasn’t safe (this airline just stopped there but apparently didn’t get off/have agents there). One of the workers wrote us a hand written ticket on a scrap of paper (no joke), and sprinted us through the airport to try to make the ready to leave plane. We made that connection (and they let us on presenting only our sketchy hand written ticket), but missed the next one - in the process of this they lost all our luggage, had to sleep in a ‘closed’ airport in the mangers office lol, and so on - that actually doesn’t scratch the surface. At the time it was super stressful, we shed a few tears, but then pulled ourselves together and laughed at the craziness and moved on. Now it’s a really funny story and some great life lessons.

There is so much you can’t control, no matter how much planning you do. The good plan just sets you up for success - vs starting as a list cause lol

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Disney is the only time I plan. DW is a teacher, so we generally have to go during the busiest times of the year, and we don’t go enough to be able to say, “we’ll get that next time.” Planning is the only way I can see us getting the most out of our vacation and not waiting, waiting, waiting.

On every other vacation, I hardly know what state I’m in. “Oh, I’m on the beach? Guess I’ll sit here until someone tells me to move.”

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Wow! That was certainly a very trippy trip.

As my son’s Scoutmaster always told him-“Whatever doesn’t kill us makes for some great stories.”

A kindred spirit.
Waiting is anathema to me, and to be avoided at all costs. Planning, $$, tricks & tips, whatever it takes- I hate it with every fiber of my impatient being. I realize WDW is about the last place a person like me should go, but I can’t help myself, we always do have so much fun.

I go on an annual weekend trip with 3 friends from college. I’ve always been trip captain, but 3 years ago I brought my baby because we were nursing. I would give them a heads up ‘in 20 minutes we’re going to be ready to leave. Pick somewhere to eat for lunch.’ And they never did. I got so annoyed at them because I was trying to keep my baby happy and getting his naps in a new place and I didn’t want to mother them too.

Every time we talk about this trip, I tell them how stressful it was for me. And they just keep saying what a great job I did. Like, did you not hear the part where I didn’t have any fun?

And I’m trying to convince this group to do WDW with me. I might need to rethink that.

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Much respect to you @Cgerres for trying to arrange things, under the circumstances. Perhaps next time it would be less stressful, if your child isn’t coming (or is just older).

Otherwise, if nothing is really going to change, I’d definitely rethink the trip, too. Vacations tend to stress out everyone & people will usually revert to form.

In my case, I did pick the lunch spots and there was always one person who didn’t like the food, or it was too hot (I mean, it was autumn in Italy- who knew? :roll_eyes:) or too expensive, too far from the subway, etc. etc. Although I personally don’t like tour groups, I was relieved when the tour part of our trip began so someone else could tell them where to go and what to do. My family knows they can’t complain since they don’t contribute anything to planning, but friends are not so easy. There is one good friend that I absolutely will never travel with again- our styles are just not compatible.

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I’m sorry to hear that you are so stressed about trips. Maybe you could tweak something about what or how you plan so that it would be fun for you again? It’s supposed to be fun and if it’s not then something’s wrong. For example, in my case I’ve learned that certain people (both friends and family) will act a certain way and I have to lower expectations if they are with me. Like, lower expectations a lot. I make sure to do the top couple of things on my list and if we get to more than that’s icing.

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The writer makes an excellent point about alternative entrances and ticket booths other than the front entrance. Many first timers don’t even know EP IG exists. In Paris, after reading numerous guidebooks, I avoided the front entrance lines’ craziness at The Louvre by entering the museum through the mall underneath it.

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At the time we visited, the Louvre had one day a week when they were open in the evening. We went then, and the place was nearly empty. Some of the lighting there is natural, but crowds would have had a much worse effect on our experience than a little bad lighting. Advance planning even can pay off for almost any attraction, I think.

We went to Versailles on a rainy day in the summer, and it was literally SRO. I don’t know how it met fire code. Also, the absolute nastiest desk agent (but offset by some of the nicest desk agents) I have ever encountered in my life- the good guys let the bad one have it- in French. But I understood the gist of it, believe me! :rofl:

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I can relate completely to the article. I do all the planning and I love it.

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Nobody who hasn’t nursed a baby understands how much of a time commitment it is, and how hard it can be to bend to the baby’s needs. I get it. Traveling with older kids just doesn’t compare.

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That was the only trip he came on, because he was just 7 months old. Fast forward 3 years and I have a new baby. We (I mean I) haven’t planned this year’s trip yet but he will be about the same age that his brother was. Planning to leave him home and pump instead so I can enjoy myself a bit more.

Oh and the restaurant choosing is definitely tough! Between the 4 of us, we have a health nut, a GF preference, and a budget conscious gal. That can lead to a lot of polite deference.

@Kitty_Ellas_Mom That is so true. At the time i was the only one with a child, so I kept reminding myself that they were completely clueless and not intending to be a pain.

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Thanks for reminding me that I’ve always traveled this way! I’ve just as obsessively planned trips to Italy (thanks Rick Steves!) and had a great time without wasting money or time! That is one place where I eat all my meals out and get gelato multiple times a day! Nothing like planning around which towns have market days! Looking forward to going back!

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I have to tell you, our next big vacay is a competition between WDW (with a stay at the new SW hotel) vs. Italy, because I never made it to northern Italy, and my kids have never been there at all. Also, my grandparents were from Slovenia, which is right next door, so we want to go there.

It kind of blows my mind that the costs of those two vacations are similar, but there you have it. That’s why planning is essential. For those of us who travel far and invest a lot of time & money, mistakes can be expensive and cause a great deal of disappointment, because we’re not going to be back again next year to see what we missed this year.

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I find that having a very specific itinerary for everything allows me to relax once I’m on the trip. I agree with those who schedule breaks for “free time.”

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