To someone who leaves today for their first trip to WDW since being a child, with her fiancé and 5 year old daughter in tow. Staying at Saratoga. They’re driving so will arrive tomorrow. They have 4 days of park hoppers but no park reservations yet. Leaving next Wednesday. (So guess it’s Wed-Tue to use the tix). They don’t know anything about anything it seems. No ADRs. No idea what parks they even want to go to…
I’m literally dying of anxiety for them. (My husband says they’ll just have different expectations so not to worry. But I want them to have a great time!) If you could give them like three pieces of advice on such short notice, what would you prioritize so close to arrival? Go.
My best advice would be to send me a text if you have any questions, and also:
You have no reason or right to be frustrated for not planning anything, so just go with whatever flow you have, and be happy with what you’ve got.
They might just be a group that is happy going with the flow, and they might have an absolute blast.
Ugh. Oh, this is what I was afraid of… do you think their hotel guest services may be able to help out with this?!
Can you imagine showing up and not being able to go into the parks???
It’s my daughter’s preschool teacher. Sounds like she thought she had to wait to get to the hotel and get physical tickets before making park reservations…
argh… seriously… ask if she has an MDE, highjack it and get them set up b/c these are the ppl that will HATE Disney… they go and can’t get in. I don’t think GS can help since there are all kinds of notifications about needing a park res.
I have to question why they haven’t booked parks. The info has been there from day one of re-opening. Unless this is a postponed trip so they already had tickets, but even so …
But:
Book what they can NOW and suggest they park hop (upgrade to PH tickets if they have to)
Ask for help when they get there. Maybe there will be some pixie dust.
Suggest other places they could visit - Seaworld, Legoland, Universal, Kennedy Space Centre.
And finally for @eeeevah, stop stressing. This isn’t your fault in any way and they’re adults. They have to salvage this as best they can.
Oh man I have so much secondhand anxiety FOR you and also for these strangers! But ugh, I’m thinking of you - it must be so hard to know so much about Disney and watch somebody obliviously heading off into what could be a disaster, knowing you could have helped if you’d known…
Anyway. Yes. I’d ask for their MDE and, if you have time, keep an eye out and try to get them some park reservations, ADRs, etc.
How coachable are they? Do we set up shifts of liners to monitor Lines for them and they just go where we tell them to go next? (“Go ride X now. Your MO will be ready for pickup when you’re done.”)
I’m only half kidding.
My first trip in 1988 I just wandered aimlessly with no clue. As a party of one, it actually worked out because of Single Rider queues, but I can’t imagine with a 5yo!
What’s done is done. It will be interesting to see if they do get help from guest services. It’s 100% in their ability to make this work for the guests.
On one hand, I understand that people would think they have hotel tickets and that would insure access to the parks. On the other hand, these pandemic days find people needing to reserve places at the zoo and local museums, so the idea of needing a reservation is commonplace now.
When you make your reservations you are reminded a million times over by the system that a park reservation is required for park entry in addition to a ticket.
I can’t feel bad for people who don’t pay attention to details
