Episode 002 – Disney World Vacation Plan

Suburban Folk 0:00
This is the Suburban Folk podcast episode two, we’re going to review our Disney World vacation plan.

We’re having some real talk with some real folks. Hey, this is Greg with the Suburban Folk podcast and today we’re going to talk about our upcoming Disney trip and all the plans that went into this particular trip. The reason we’re doing the Disney World vacation, which seems like it’s a rite of passage, at least from what Angie and my background is, is because our kids are pre k, this is the last year that we can say that they are both pre K and seems like offseason is the time to go. So we chose the second full week in September once all the kids have gone back to school. And from the research that’s been done and Angie has done all of the research. It seems like that supposed to be the best time to go. So she’s joining me on the podcast today. And one thing that we’ve really discovered or I’ve really discovered is that Angie has a secret love of Disney and usually spends her spare time reading various articles and journals for her work. But once we got to the point where Disney was something that we could plan for it seemed like more of her spare time was switched over to all things Disney World and researching everything possible to get ready for this trip. So my first question for you is, what is your history with Disney? And when did you first go to Disney World? What is it that makes you so excited about this vacation?

Unknown Speaker 1:39
Hey there the Sanji we first went when I was in sixth grade, which was about 1996 I would say never ever since then. I mean, I really I really liked that trip. I really liked the parks that was a point when a lot of the Disney movies of my childhood came out like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. So ever since then I have really wanted to go back but essentially have never had the chance until now.

Suburban Folk 2:21
And any any highlights as far as the rides or particular character as you said Beauty and the Beast and so I don’t know, Bell was roaming around disney world now that probably would have been after you were there right

Unknown Speaker 2:32
now I think it was before but I don’t I don’t recall at this point about the characters. I don’t think I cared about the characters as much when I was 12 I was more into the rides,

Suburban Folk 2:43
any particular rides,

Unknown Speaker 2:44
I remember doing Splash Mountain and Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain so all the mountain rides. Animal Kingdom didn’t really exist. At that point, I think they might have been building it but I do remember like One of the waterparks Blizzard beach I think that had just opened up maybe the year before. So really enjoyed a lot of the water slides they are overall those were kind of the main rides I I remember liking.

Suburban Folk 3:12
Yeah. And I went when I was five, and I don’t really remember any of the ride. I assume I couldn’t have gotten on a lot of the, let’s say the bigger thrill rides. And so I think small world I kind of remember the Tiki Room which will assuming

Unknown Speaker 3:27
you are five you probably could have gotten on just about everything because Nicholas is four and a half and can basically get on everything except a few few of the larger rides. I mean, he’s even pretty much tall enough to get on rides like Space Mountain. So assuming you were five you could probably get on just about everything. Well,

Suburban Folk 3:47
I wasn’t very big so so who knows but I’ll say I guess I sort of remember like the Tiki Room and Captain EO. I remember getting a pin for that and then I went back in high school and also from zero Right standpoint wasn’t too much going on except some alien when that apparently is no longer there that freaked out a lot of the people that I guess wrote on it and they don’t have that anymore so I guess we’ll see what what the attractions are when we get there this time around so so I know there’s been a lot of prep going into this particular trip. So talk about when you first started making preparations or the research that went into the overall Disney experience. Started with a with a large book that was all things Disney

Unknown Speaker 4:33
and I started looking at planning a trip probably say October of 2008 teen one of our neighbors is pretty into Disney and owned DVC. So she goes there every year pretty much and she recommended getting a book called the unofficial guide to Walt Disney World and this is written by the People who also make a website called touring plans, which can help you plan your trip as well. So I basically started by reading that book, at least the highlights of it on the rides and how to do fast passes and dining reservations and all the essential things to know. And after that, I started thinking about where we want to stay. And I was, there’s all sorts of different resorts at Walt Disney World from were expensive Deluxe hotels down to what they call value resorts, which are even still good though. And it just depends where you want to be in proximity. I felt like I wanted to be closer to Magic Kingdom because of how little the kids were. So there’s a couple resorts closer to Magic Kingdom on what they call the monorail loop and one of those resorts called the Temporary, you can actually walk to the Magic Kingdom. So that’s where I decided will be a good idea for us to stay. Now my mom is going as well. So she wanted her own room. And I realized there was a tower next to the contemporary called the Bailey towers, which is a Disney Vacation Club resort. And it turns out, you can actually rent points from Disney Vacation Club members to stay at that property. And we were able to secure a two bedroom Villa there. At about, let’s say that the 10 month mark outs, I think we secured that in November. And if you want to do those rentals, you really have to think about planning at least seven to 11 months ahead of time.

Suburban Folk 6:48
And so those same rooms are available straight through Disney or through the vacation rental folks. The difference is That’s true, but

Unknown Speaker 6:58
the difference is if you rent them through Disney, they’re about twice the cost, I would say you do have the option to cancel. So the downside to running the points from somebody is once they’re rented, you can absolutely not cancel. We ran it through a company called David’s. And they they basically handle the transaction and make it good for both sides that you know that the owners aren’t going to cancel on you and vice versa. So they handle all the money and everything involved in that and just give you some peace of mind of the transaction. So that all went pretty smoothly. And we were able to secure that, that rental within a few days for a much better costs then what Disney would have had, but we had our dates locked in and there was no reason allowed that we could cancel,

Suburban Folk 7:45
which would segues pretty well to what became a major part of the preparations as far as some of the changes that you weren’t necessarily aware of until we got closer to our dates for the trip. And maybe maybe the reschedule came a little bit more into, into the picture. Specifically Star Wars, galaxies edge came out in Disneyland and may was supposed to be in December from the initial research and what you’re hearing, they ended up moving that up to the 29th which is what a week and a half from when we’re going to go So talk about when that that first kind of came up. How did you find that out? Where did that announcement first come from? And, you know, what, what the research and considerations have been so far cuz I know, when it first came out, you were definitely sweating it as far as what do we call it a crowd apocalypse or something, I think was the term that was

Unknown Speaker 8:42
so they were supposed to happen in December of 2019. They pushed it up to the end of August right before a trip. So basically, when they announced that it was all doom and gloom, Disney was going to be overrun by tourists and all the Star Wars fans. But then actually, what happened was they opened in Disneyland a few months earlier and nobody came and the parks were empty. So it actually turned out not to be terrible there. And people started to wonder if the same thing would happen at Walt Disney World. Everyone says, oh, Walt Disney World’s different maybe it won’t happen there. They have more tourists less locals at Disneyland. The locals were blocked out from using their annual passes during those couple months. But so far, we’re about a weekend to galaxy’s edge opening at Walt Disney World, and there have been zero crowds, the parks have been essentially as empty as they’ve ever been. Now, that being said, Hurricane Dorian was supposed to hit Florida it actually didn’t do anything and the Disney Parks didn’t have to shut down at all except for a few hours one afternoon and evening. But that being said, it probably did scare a lot of the Taurus off from going to the parks that week in may have had a major effect on the crowd levels being lower than they normally would have been. So it kind of remains to be seen next week, what happens and how many guests rescheduled our week and how busy those guests who are rescheduling then make the rest of the month and the rest of the season.

Suburban Folk 10:20
Yeah, I really wonder what the types of individuals could be out there. Let’s say that had their vacations planned and either while or didn’t have them planned and decided to get in on the Star Wars activity that’s going on. I know there’s supposed to be some it’s not fully functional, right. Like there’s another ride.

Unknown Speaker 10:42
Another ride that opens in December. So that’s the main ride. the lesser of the two rides opened already.

Suburban Folk 10:48
Yeah. So and then on the other end, the other big thing that of course, just recently came up is hurricane Dorian. It was in the picture and we’re recording this on the Fourth September the fourth our plane ride is this Friday on the sixth. If this was a couple days ago, we maybe have been a little more nervous about the preparation for what was going on. At this point. The storm seems to be out of the way of Florida where we fly from there’s a slight chance that wind or rain could be a factor but it doesn’t seem to be but talk about when that first came on your radar, no pun intended and tracking that and any considerations that would have occurred, depending on how that storm landed?

Unknown Speaker 11:34
Well, I mean, there really wasn’t much we could do. We had the the reservation booked and that was that our credit card does provide some trip insurance if we would have had to cancel in terms of reimbursement for the rooms but I think we would have probably say it had been last week probably have just gone and seen what happened anyway. Everyone seems to say Disney is pretty safe during hurricanes, they have generators, they keep their power. So I think we would have gone in Probably just made the best of it. So it turns out the people who ended up going this week had amazing crowds and weather and they probably couldn’t have asked for a better week overall.

Suburban Folk 12:09
Yeah, but I think it was definitely stated that if if it turned bad, we were still gonna, you know, do the drive. We live drive a bowl enough.

Unknown Speaker 12:19
Our flight was canceled. I think we would have done the 10 hour drive,

Suburban Folk 12:22
tried to at least right so I think that was definitely on the schedule if something had happened that messed up our flight. So luckily, it seems like none of those things occurred and we don’t have to worry about any issues as far as not being able to reschedule or anything like that. And I think it’s also worth noting before we get into some of the other preparation pieces that like you mentioned, there’s a lot of different hotels to say at for example, I always joke when I went when we were five we stayed I believe off resort, you know, gorged ourselves on an all you can eat buffet had an ice cream cone to share with my brothers and I and you know We’re out of the park after that. This is certainly what what we’re going to lay out here a different type of Disney experience than that. But we recognize that there are definitely different price points and different considerations for different folks. So if if what we lay out is not something that would be desirable for for certain folks, there are other things that can be researched and again, would be interesting of any other considerations that you had when planning the vacation. So so we mentioned where would be at the contemporary, the bay Lake, what is it the bay Lake tower Lake towers. So that’s the where we’re staying. The other piece of sort of the the living part I’ll call it is a meal plan. So that’s something that’s offered. I know that’s something we have talked about considerations for enrolling, I’ll call it in the meal plan.

Unknown Speaker 13:54
I mean, I would say that the meal plan is liked by some and hated by some A lot of people feel like it’s not worth the cost. And it probably in the end doesn’t save you a whole lot of money. What I liked about it was I could just pre book it I knew everything was taken care of and paid for in advance. I personally liked it because then my husband here Greg couldn’t complain about the prices of everything because everything was pre planned and paid for. Then he could just pick whatever he wanted on the menu, a meal, a dessert and a drink are all included with your sit down meals and then a drink and meal for the counter service meals. And you also get two snacks a day. So I felt like it was good to just have it paid for it out of the way and that way we could all just get whatever we wanted when we wanted it and I didn’t have to hear him whining about the Disney prices

Suburban Folk 14:53
well And to be clear to make sure I didn’t whine about this dizzy prizes. I have no idea what the meal plans cost. So If anybody listening is considering that and wants to know, I guess whatever we paid for it.

Unknown Speaker 15:06
Now it’s easy. It’s easily Google on the internet. I mean, there’s a couple different types of meal plans from a quick service one where you just get quick meals in the parks to kind of the middle plan, everybody gets for the most part to a deluxe plan where you get three sit down meals every day. So unless you’re really wanting to just go there and eat, eat, eat, a lot of people don’t end up getting that one. But we we did it and I felt like it was worth it for us because we’re doing a lot of what they call character meals. And the character meals tend to be a bit more pricey, especially for kids. And that’s where where the kids meal plans are actually pretty inexpensive where you can make up some ground in terms of the cost of things as with the character meals, so since we’re doing a lot of the character meals, I think it’s it’s worth it for us and it’s also worth it for us because we do enjoy to have it Drink with dinner and with lunch two would be nice. So the Disney dining plan includes an alcoholic beverage so if you take advantage of that then you can end up doing pretty well too. Whereas if you were just going to get a water coke or something it may not be as good of a deal.

Suburban Folk 16:16
Yeah and to clarify if I have my facts straight it’s to drinks for the dinner or for

Unknown Speaker 16:26
it’s just wondering for the quick service meal and one drink for the the asset down meal so two drinks a day

Suburban Folk 16:35
okay, well I’m going to do whatever I can to convince the other adults with us I Angie and her mom not to use their drink credit so hopefully I can you know rack up at least three or four and and something else that I don’t know how recent This is, but it used to always be said that when people go to Epcot because that’s where the drinks are, that’s no longer the restriction anymore, right like all of the parks, I believe now have some sort of options for for adult beverages,

Unknown Speaker 17:02
all the parks do

Unknown Speaker 17:04
Animal Kingdom Epcot Hollywood studios, they pretty much have alcoholic beverages in all the restaurant sit down counter service, they all have them at the meals. Now in the Magic Kingdom, the only restaurants that have them are the the quote, sit down restaurants. With the exception there’s a restaurant called be our guests. That’s a sit down restaurant at dinner. And they do account a service option for lunch and breakfast so you can actually get an alcoholic beverage there for lunch and breakfast. All the other restaurants and stands and everything. The quick service ones at Magic Kingdom. Those all do not have alcohol because traditionally Magic Kingdom did not have any alcohol anywhere in the work. Right?

Suburban Folk 17:53
Okay. All right. Well, I can I can live with that. So talk to me about the Fast Pass. masses and I believe that dinner reservations have a similar type of consideration as far as when you’re able to book those types of things. My also understanding we’re flying on Friday because that sort of gives you a little bit of an edge if you will, on when you can reserve those types of things versus let’s say somebody that’s doing a Saturday to a Saturday so when to those fast paths and I guess for people that aren’t used to theme parks because I think they call Fastpass. The same in any type of theme park, as far as I understand is, you get to the front of the line. Typically at a park you would get to the front of line for anything but the Disney version is you pick a certain number of rides or the rides that you want to be considered for the Fastpass. You get a thumbs up, thumbs down, they schedule that and again, I’m assuming that’s similar with dinner, but it’s possible that I have

Unknown Speaker 18:53
no the dinner reservations. You can book those at six months or 180 days before For your stay. And some of this depends on if you are staying on site or off site. If you are on site, you can book 180 days before the first day of your stay and book through the remainder of your trip. But if you’re off site you have to book each day separately, you can’t book for the whole trip so hard to get reservations fill up very quickly. So the people who have longer trips are able to book for that whole trip. So you may not be able to get some other harder reservations until the end of the trip. That being said, I didn’t have a lot of issues getting any reservations in September, I pretty much got what I wanted at fairly decent times. Now if you don’t end up getting what you want, for example, I had a colleague who was staying in October which is a busier time she was staying off site. So she really wanted to get a restaurant called Cinderella’s royal table but she was unable to win. booking window opened up on the website called touring plans. And there’s also a website called mouse dining where you can put in the reservation you want. And basically the computer is constantly searching for that reservation to come open and then it texts you when it’s available. So if you don’t immediately get a reservation, notice bear, you can generally pick one up if somebody else cancels, especially in the couple days or week or so leading up to your trip because a lot of people are adjusting things and canceling reservations last minute, specially some people will book multiple reservations at the same restaurant throughout the week because they’re not sure when they’re going to be where and then these all end up opening up last minute. So in general, you can kind of get what you want with those tricks. Now with the Fastpass window that opens up 60 days before the park or your stay at the parks. If you’re staying on site at a Disney Hotel in the same For the dining, you get the book throughout the course of your stay. Now if you’re offside, it opens up 30 days before, and you have to do each individual day one at a time. So staying on set, you get a really big advantage. So, each Park essentially has a ride that’s a little bit harder to get, for example, Slinky Dog is, is arrived at Hollywood studios and flight of passages right at animal kingdom and seven doors Mine Train has arrived at Magic Kingdom. Those are probably the hardest rides to book at each Park. So unless you’re staying on site, you really don’t have much of a chance of making a fast pass for those. If you’re an off site guest and those are the rides or everybody goes first thing in the morning when the park first opens, and the weights can be very long within the first couple of minutes. So you know, staying on site gives you a big advantage there with the Fast Pass booking

Suburban Folk 21:57
and sort of on topic, but a little bit Different. One of the other changes I’ll say, since I remember Disney World, the characters or at least the princesses and whatnot aren’t just walking around the park like they used to. They have specific setups where there’s lines for those as well. Now, there’s not the option for fast passes or those types of reservations for those particular lines. But that’s where like you mentioned the character dinners. You’re telling me that that’s know

Unknown Speaker 22:26
a lot. Yes, a lot of the characters do have Fastpass. So for example, Mickey and Minnie have fast passes at Magic Kingdom and some of the other parks think Tinkerbell has a Fast Pass. You can Fast Pass a lot of the main characters, for sure. Especially at Magic Kingdom. There’s a lot of characters The Fast Pass and then some of the characters that aren’t quite as popular. Like for example, Maritza from brave she does have a meet and greet time scheduled but you can’t Fast Pass it. And if you go into the Disney app, you can select characters And it essentially gives you a detailed map of where every character will be in the park and at what time they have their meet and greet scheduled. So, you know, if you want to see Maratha, you click on Maratha. And it’ll tell you when and where to see her. The character so you have fast passes there, they’re available all day long from open to close, and you just have to either wait in line for those or do a Fast Pass.

Suburban Folk 23:22
Okay, when I we don’t have many fast passes for the

Unknown Speaker 23:25
No, I didn’t do any fast passes for the characters, because the lines don’t tend to be quite as long as some of the rides can be. So I felt like it wasn’t wasn’t quite as worth it. And we also have some character meals. So if we don’t do fast passes, or do the characters in the park, it’s not a big deal. Yeah.

Suburban Folk 23:41
So that’s kind of where I was getting that. Would that be an official tip? Let’s call it if you can do those character dinners. Then we can get

Unknown Speaker 23:47
the characters out of the way with those. Yeah. So we were doing two character meals we’re doing we’re doing one that has Mickey and Minnie and some of the major characters like that called tusker house at Animal Kingdom and then we’re doing restaurant in Norway and Epcot called achar. Shoes. I think I said that right. But that one has all the main princesses like Belle and those type of characters

Suburban Folk 24:15
imagine frozen with a name like that right?

Unknown Speaker 24:17
Frozen, so frozen. No, this princesses aren’t there. But they’re actually so it’s at the Norway pavilion and the Anna and Elsa meet and greet is right next door. And so definitely you can go see them before after.

Suburban Folk 24:33
Okay and see with all my questions. We’re just proving that I know nothing about any Disney anything or everything we do on this trip is going to be a surprise apparently because because I don’t know what the heck’s going on. What about some of the other peripheral things and I haven’t even noticed these again as we’re starting to really pack up but we’ll actually one other the ride app and I know you’ve been watching that really closely, especially with the Star Wars galaxies edge and and They rank these based on time. And I think the crowds are based on like a one to 10 scale. Sad an essential thing, what

Unknown Speaker 25:09
I would say the torian plans app was actually really helpful. For the days we were there, it tells you the anticipated crowd levels based on tons of different historical, historical, statistical data. So it’ll give you a crowd level for each park for each day. And I planned my days based on what crowds were going to be in each park on each day. Now, that was before all the Star Wars stuff got announced. And at that point, I had essentially already hooked up to my dining, so I didn’t really want to change too much. I think in the end, it’s all worked out. But you just have to realize that some of that can definitely change depending on what happens over the course of the next month. But that website was great. I was able to book my dining based on the days I knew will be in each Park, and I tried to pick our day in Magic Kingdom vs. Epcot vs. Animal Kingdom based on what crowd levels we’re going to have the lowest Are the lowest number on the crowd levels for each each Park. And another tip is if you if you have the ability to do so when we’re going to have Halloween parties and those are generally on Sundays and Tuesdays and Fridays I believe if you can go to Magic Kingdom on a party day, it’s usually less crowded because a lot of people don’t want to go on those days because the party or the park closes at six for the for the parties. So if you’re a park Harper especially if you go to the parks on the party days, the crowds may be less than that you can go somewhere else in the evening if you really wanted to. So I kind of picked on my Park days based on crowd levels essentially.

Suburban Folk 26:46
Make sense. And then some of the the peripheral things of you. I’ve written down the autograph books, the shirts the make sure you’re ready for Rain because apparently once you’re in Disney, you don’t leave Disney regardless of what the weather is like, talk about some of those types of things. Obviously, none of those are requirements as far as that’s concerned. But uh, you should tell the penny story for example, because

Unknown Speaker 27:16
I mean, I’m on I’m on a group on Facebook called the Disney planning doctors and they have been a great resource and planning all this. I’ve asked tons of questions. Everyone is super knowledgeable and a type in terms of planning their trips. So one of the questions I asked was just for a list of different things that you don’t think about that will be good to take along to Disney World. So things from autograph books to retractable Sharpie pens, I have lights for the stroller so you can tell your stroller immediately which one it is at night time. I have reusable straws, the silicon kind because Disney only has paper straws, and those don’t go over so well. Kids, and just tons of different secrets like that, that you may not think about bringing stroller covers for if it rains one tip is to use just a clear shower curtain liner and get beach towel clips to clip it to the stroller anytime you go into a ride because it may pour in your stroller while you’re in that ride for just a few minutes. There’s apparently pressed Penny machines all around the parks. So I cleaned up a bunch of pennies and got a whole bunch of quarters together. So we could have quick, easy cheap souvenirs to do throughout the parks. We definitely have like I said, the autograph books and all kind of the standard things. Disney also has something called pin training. So I ordered a bunch of pins on eBay for cheap and got lanyards for those so that the kids can apparently trade on pins of cast members. And it’s sort of like if you’ve ever been in a Lego Land where you can trade the mini figures So the cast members there, and all sorts of different things.

Suburban Folk 29:04
What Of course I have to elaborate a little bit on the penny story specifically and I don’t know if this was on that particular page or not, but apparently pennies from 1982 and earlier are made of full copper versus after that is some sort of like alloy or something other than that so part of your preparation was to look specifically for 1982 and before and then make sure they were in good shape so that we can use those so that just speaks to we are prepared to have the best souvenirs and the best everything else we’ve gotten to your point and you know, get that stuff beforehand is certainly going to be a money saver for we have. I also have to mention the matching shirts because that’s what more I figured, as I’ve been told there are some interesting shirt options for people that’ll do. You know, family names or other types of monograms, stuff like that. So we met somewhere and In the middle, let’s say that we have the matching different types of shirts theme shirts will call but they’re not necessarily all the exact same. So I feel like I’m a pretty good sport, at least with that particular thing. So, you know, I’m doing my part.

Unknown Speaker 30:13
Yeah, I mean, we all have Disney shirts. So we just got them at places like Kohl’s or target. I wasn’t going to go all out and get them on Etsy where you have to spend $20 a shirt. Now I mean, those are going to be more unique shirts more themed more matching, but we were fine with just doing the cheap Kohl’s versions. We got them on sale for about $5 each, so you couldn’t really beat that. Yeah, we all have Lion King shirts. We all have Star Wars shirts. We all have Mickey shirts. We all have Toy Story shirts. You know, a lot of these shirts were readily available, because all those movies just came out. Right.

Suburban Folk 30:47
Right. Exactly. So and I’ll admit, actually, some of the shirts are pretty cool. I don’t know if I’ll wear the Mickey shirts all that much afterwards. But, you know, the Toy Story is always always a winner. So um, so before we go into like our itinerary Specifically, just a quick overview for parks. What are they? What are sort of the highlights of each one of those parks? And then I have a couple other sort of dire nomenclature I guess that gets used for the for the Disney World. So what are those four parks? What are the what are the main things there?

Unknown Speaker 31:19
So what’s the four parks The first one is the one that’s been around the longest is Magic Kingdom. So that’s probably the most well known that’s where Cinderella’s castle is. And that has a ton of rides that are good for smaller kids and even babies can get on them. So if you have little kids, that’s probably where you want to spend most of your time. There’s not a lot of height requirements there, except for some of the mountain rides like Space Mountain Thunder Mountain Splash Mountain. Otherwise, really all the rides have no height requirements. So there’s a lot of boat type dark rides and that sort of thing. But really good for smaller Kids, there’s a lot of Princess meet and greets, and Mickey and Minnie, lots of good snacks and restaurant options. So that’s kind of a good all around park where most people are going to want to spend a good amount of time. And the next Park was Epcot. So Epcot has a few different areas. One area is the road, the world showcase that doesn’t have quite as many rides. There’s a couple. But mostly you can kind of tour each quote, world or country. And there’s different food and drink options and restaurants. So what’s good for eating and drinking? There’s a couple rides in Epcot. There’s rides, there’s one clubs sore and one called test track that are popular that people really like. And apparently over the next couple years, Epcot is going to have a lot of major renovations. A lot of new rides. There’s a guardian ends of the galaxy roller coaster coming in and a Ratatouille ride coming in. So a lot of I mean basically that whole parks going to be different a couple years down the road they’re redoing it all. There’s Hollywood studios, which that park has already mostly been redone. They just made a toy story land with three new rides opening there, including Slinky Dog which has been the hardest to get Fastpass. They’re just opening the Star Wars land galaxy’s edge, which we’ve talked to a little bit about. There’s going to be two rides in that land. And they’re going to be opening a Mickey and Minnie runaway railway there sometime next year. And they have some classics like Tower of Terror as well and a lot of shows at Hollywood studios to the newest Park is Animal Kingdom. That one has a lot of animals, but it’s more than just a zoo. They they do have a pretty neat Safari. They have a lot of shows. They have a land based on avatar. And the the main right there is called flight of passage which is supposed to be the best world and all of Disney World and some people will say the best ride that they’ve ever been on. And they have a couple roller coasters there as well. Like there’s one called Everest and one called dinosaur. Overall Animal Kingdom has a lot more height requirements, so may not be quite as good for little kids. But again, there are a lot of shows and animals and things like that to see to. Then there’s some waterparks and just some other little things to do like Downtown Disney where there’s a lot of shops and restaurants. And the four main parks are Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood studios and animal kingdom.

Suburban Folk 34:50
Okay, and the other couple of things to cover is the concept of extra magic hours. Back to the Star Wars peace. Understanding is this is specifically for folks that are staying on the resort, or one of the resort hotels. I don’t recall what the normal hours are for it, but they extended those right and then expectation for the crowds that may or may not be coming. So what’s the strategy or what’s the What does that look like as far as starting the day with these extra magic hours,

Unknown Speaker 35:26
so most of the parks normally open at around nine and then each Park about once a week has an early opening at 8am for on site guests. And my my regular strategy originally was to avoid the park that had the early opening because statistically that park gets more crowded than for the rest of the day because more people go there to start. However, a couple months before trip, Disney announced that animal kingdom would be opening at 7am every day As well as Magic Kingdom and that Hollywood Studios while the Star Wars land is opening will be opening at six every day, Epcot would have normal normal openings. So that that changed things a little bit because essentially every Park every day was having these extremely early hours. I think what they were trying to do is get a lot of people in the parks earlier to kind of disperse the crowds out, especially knowing that most people probably aren’t getting up on vacation at five or 6am. This is actually working out really great for us because we can get up that early because our kids get up that early. And we’ll be able to go hopefully with lesser crowds get everything done, we want to by about noon or one o’clock and then be able to go back to the hotel every afternoon for a longer break for swimming and that being in that sort of thing.

Suburban Folk 36:52
Right. And then the only other thing that I can think of was the you mentioned, I think the only park that we can’t get to walking is in Animal Kingdom

Unknown Speaker 37:01
know, the only part that we can get to walking is Magic Kingdom. Okay, and then we can take the monorail to Epcot. But for Hollywood studios, I guess you could technically take a monorail to Epcot and then walk but that’s like a over a mile walk. So basically for Hollywood studios and for Animal Kingdom, you’ve got to take a bus there. And Disney does provide all of that transportation. And that being said, I got a little bit nervous about trying to get to the bus parks, the ones that we would have to take a bus to early in the morning or get home late at night with all the crowds. So based on the recommendations of my Disney planning doctor group, there was a private driver that I did end up hiring. That’s going to take us to a couple of those early mornings and bring us home on a couple of the late nights so we don’t have to deal with the buses. And another option from Disney or something. Cotton minivans. And that’s if you need car seats and if we didn’t need car seats, we’d probably just use a regular a regular Lyft or Uber.

Suburban Folk 38:08
And and this man’s first name,

Unknown Speaker 38:11
his name is Orlando. Sound

Suburban Folk 38:13
legit? Hmm. Well, we’ll trust him. He has good reviews. Right, right. Yeah. Okay. So on to the itinerary itself. And we won’t spend a whole lot of time on this except to say, we are looking at posting it for folks again, that are maybe getting ready to plan a Disney trip with some of the specifics of the types of rides that you mentioned, that have been booked for fast passes to see at least from when you’re going through this. What you ranked is the harder things to get on or the more desirable rides to get to as well as just the overall schedule but so just get in on Friday. Saturday, we start at Magic Kingdom. Any highlights from from the Saturday itinerary that’s worth mentioning.

Unknown Speaker 39:04
Um, basically we’re going to, we’re staying at a different hotel Friday night. And then we’re transferring over Saturday morning to our main one at the Bailey towers. So we’re going to transfer there and then walk over to Magic Kingdom. I don’t have too much plan for that morning, besides just kind of walking around doing whatever really the kids want to do. It’ll be our most relaxed morning. We do have a breakfast that morning at be our guests scheduled at 820. And we’ll just kind of relax and walk around that morning essentially, then we’re going to go back try to check into our hotel. And then that evening, we’re going to go over to Hollywood Studios where I have our fast passes for that day booked. And we’re basically going to stay until about Park close and that will allow us to see their nighttime show called fantasmic at 830. And then at 10 o’clock, they have Star Wars fireworks, which I’m sure that our four year old will love He loves fireworks and he loves Star Wars. And then we’re gonna, you know, Jetta back to the hotel because the next morning we’re going to be at Magic Kingdom at about 7am or that’s the plan.

Suburban Folk 40:13
And you mentioned Slinky Dog before so that day one

Unknown Speaker 40:17
is yes, we have a fast pass for Slinky Dog. And then they actually just changed the Fastpass structure at Hollywood Studios. And they’ve made it more of a tiered system where basically all the rides are a tier one and you can only get one Fast Pass for those. And then the shows as well as a ride called Star Tours and their nighttime show. fantasmic are off tier tier twos. And so we ended up having to get a fast pass for Star Tours and then the frozen show since we couldn’t do more than the the Slinky Dog for rides. So we have fast passes for all those and we’re only going to be there for a couple hours and that includes trying to do the fantasmic show and the Star Wars fire. works right so we have a lot fit into those couple hours. Yeah. And then the next morning on Sunday we’re going to get up and go to the Magic Kingdom that’s that’s kind of our bigger Magic Kingdom day. We are going to try to do most of what the what the Fantasyland and tomorrow land lands are. I got fast passes for that day for seven dwarfs mine chain and Peter Pan. And then I also got one for and Shannon tells with Bell, which may not be the best Fastpass to get but I’ve heard that lines for that can get a little bit long as well. And it just kind of depends on the age of your kids. If you don’t really have little kids that may not be a good one to get. But that day then we have lunch at the restaurant Be Our Guest. And then we’re going to stick around till about two o’clock when Disney has their parade. At that point, we’ll go home do our napping and cool thing. And then later that evening, we’re going to go over to the beach club. resort for A dinner reservation at a place called the Cape May buffet. And this restaurant is really good if you like seafood and crab legs because they have all you can eat crab legs. So basically all of us are pretty excited except for Greg.

Suburban Folk 42:16
But I’ll find something else than the crab legs or have somebody, you know, do all the work. And

Unknown Speaker 42:21
yeah, I am an expert crab leg. So I cannot peel for all of us. There you go. Right. And then after the caveman buffet, there’s a show at Epcot called illuminations, and that’s at nine o’clock, and at cuts right next to the beach club. So we’ll just walk over there. Then the show has been running for many, many, many years. And it’s actually ending in September of this year. So we’ll be one of the last people that will be able to see that show. And then after the show’s over, we’ll be able to take the monorail back to our our resort.

Suburban Folk 42:57
Okay, and Monday is Epcot,

Unknown Speaker 42:59
man Day is Epcot will take the monorail over in the morning this will be a little bit of a quote later morning for us since Epcot doesn’t open until nine. And we have fast passes for test track mission space and Spaceship Earth. Again Epcot got a tiered system going on so their top brides are test tracks sore and frozen. So you can only get one of those rides to Fast Pass so we picked a test track because it has the longest wait times typically. And then after after we do our rides will probably be able to get most of what we want to do down there in the morning. There’s not tons of rides at Epcot. We’re going to go over to the world showcase and walk around and see the Food and Wine Festival and just take use of a lot of our snack credits eat around the world there.

Suburban Folk 43:51
Yeah, gosh, I’m gonna need some time after that. The whole theme of this vacation is me like getting my money’s worth Out of this meal plan and then just be miserable, walk around the whole place. And that’ll I’m sure just be typified when we get to the evening around the world at Epcot.

Unknown Speaker 44:09
And then we’ll go back and again, do our pull a nap for a few hours in the evening, around seven, we have reservations at the California grill. And that’s going to be our more fancy dinner reservation night. That’s a much nicer signature restaurant. And the nice thing about California grill is is at the very top of the contemporary resort, and you can see the fireworks from there and it’s apparently a really, really good view. So we’ll have our dinner and then we’ll be able to see the fireworks from the viewing area on the restaurant. And then we’ll go back after that and go to bed fairly early that night. All things considered

Suburban Folk 44:47
right and then back to Magic Kingdom on Tuesday.

Unknown Speaker 44:50
So on Tuesday, we will try to get there around seven o’clock again for the early morning hours. And then That day we’re planning to do frontier landed adventure land. So we have fast passes for Thunder Mountain Splash Mountain and then again, I got fast passes for seven doors Mine Train, just because I knew unless I had fast passes for that it will be the hardest ride to ride. So we’re going to be able to hopefully do that twice. Once on each of our Magic Kingdom days. We’re going to go for lunch and then back to the naps and pull probably right around noon, one o’clock after we have lunch that day. And that day, we’re not going to have quite as long to relax because around four, we’re going to get picked up to be taken over to animal kingdom. And I have a reservation for the tusker house character meal at Animal Kingdom at around 530. So we’re going to try to get a few rides in that evening like possibly the safari at dusk, and then I’m planning to have us to the Lion King show that night and then we’re going to stick around for the rivers of light show which is their nighttime light show. And then try to get home as early as we can or back to the resort by about nine 930 so we can get to bed for the next day.

Suburban Folk 46:09
Okay, and then back to Hollywood Studios on Wednesday. I know this. This will be the challenge if I’m reading

Unknown Speaker 46:19
I mean the plan is to get to Hollywood Studios early. We’re technically going to be picked up at our at our resort around 530 5:30am. Hollywood Studios is apparently letting people in right at the DOD at 6am right now. Because of the galaxy’s edge opening and my my game plan is to avoid the masses that are going to be going there and try to get everything else done in that first couple hours. And then if we have time and we feel like it, we can go over and do the galaxy’s edge ride if we decide we want to wait for that. But I think it’ll be a good opportunity to be able to do the Toy Story land ride Multiple times without too much of a weight, at least based on how things are going so far. And then we have fast passes later in the morning for a Beauty and the Beast show Slinky Dog and the Indiana Jones show. Again, Hollywood Studios changed their tears. So we were only able to get one ride and had to do the other two fast passes that shows if if we were more people who wanted to stay at parks all day long and not do the afternoon, the evening breaks, I think a better plan would be just getting no fast passes for Hollywood studios and do all the stuff from six to nine. And then just you know, walk over to Epcot and be able to be there for Park opening. Then you can have your fast passes at example Epcot and be there all day. But you know, we do want to do a lot of the shows and everything so and we barely not intervene at the parks all day long. So that’s how we’re going to do it. That afternoon. We’ll be back for Our standard pulls in naps for a while. And then that night we have dinner at ohana, which has a restaurant at the Polynesian which is the resort next to where we’re staying. And that’s that’s kind of an all you can eat type, family style meal where they bring things like shrimp and steak and Polynesian type food to your your table.

Suburban Folk 48:22
So I’m going to end like the long like Texas neighbors. Oh man, I’m gonna be miserable.

Unknown Speaker 48:29
And then you can see the fireworks from the Polynesian beach. That’s what we’ll plan to do that night.

Suburban Folk 48:34
Okay. And starting at Magic Kingdom on Thursday,

Unknown Speaker 48:38
so Thursday. Well, we’re not doing magic kingdom Thursday, we’re actually doing Animal Kingdom. So Thursday, we’re going to get driven over to animal kingdom in the morning and that opens at seven. We will start with basically the couple rides that we don’t have fast passes. And then I ended up getting fast passes for the three most popular rides, which are Everest, the safari ride and then flight of passage is the hardest ride to get there. So we do a fast passes for that in the mix of all that will fit in any shows that we didn’t get to do with our other night at Animal Kingdom, eat lunch there, and then again, go back for our daily afternoon relaxation and nap and full time. And then that evening, we’re going to go back over to the Magic Kingdom. Because up until now, we really haven’t spent any evenings in the actual Magic Kingdom. We will have seen fireworks from the California grill or the Polynesian beach, we won’t really have seen them up close where you can see the projections on the castle. So that evening I booked a dessert Party, which is basically like a special party where you get a special viewing area. You don’t have to fight the crowds to watch the show. They give you all you can eat desserts and a few appetizers like like egg rolls. Okay, so we will gorge on desserts and then be able to watch the fireworks from a private viewing area. And this may or may not be worth it. It’s pretty pricey, but can really be nice depending on the crowd levels

Suburban Folk 50:22
right. Make sense. And then the final day is at Epcot,

Unknown Speaker 50:26
so at Epcot on Friday. Since you’ve already done Epcot, the main ride area. This will be the day we focus more on doing the world showcase. We’re going to have a later morning, this day since we’re going to be at Magic Kingdom pretty late the night before. I have our first Fastpass scheduled at about 11 and that’s the frozen ride and that’s actually over in the world showcase. And after we do that will again kind of walk around the world showcase, see all the different countries do the Food and Wine Festival. And then we have dinner scheduled at achar shoes at five. And that is the princess dinner. And after that of note, Tiffany has a concert at 630 that we may or may not stick around for. And then we’ll be going back to the resort and going to bed because we fly out at eight o’clock in the morning.

Suburban Folk 51:29
Yeah. Yeah, early out. So Tiffany, I’m sure you’re great and all but I’d like to get back and relax if possible. So So anyway, so that that’s it. So overall, because we’re going to do some check ins I think whether just on the website or maybe even a recording or two while to see how the week is panning out. What do you think you’re the most excited to do or C and then what do you think is going to be the biggest challenge to pull this itinerary off

Unknown Speaker 52:02
Well, I think I’m most excited to eat all the snacks. And, you know, we get a couple ice creams in every day and desserts at every meal. I’m pretty excited about that. Yeah. So that’s the thing I’m most excited about. Also, obviously most excited to see the kids being excited to see everything that they’re going to see there. And they’ll probably be our biggest challenge when they get tired and have meltdowns and we’ll see how that goes. Overall at our local amusement park, they hang out pretty well there until the afternoon when they get tired, which is why I kind of build in all the breaks that we did. I knew we could not go to the parks every day for more than a couple hours in the morning and then go back for the naps and then go back at night.

Suburban Folk 52:45
Right? Yeah, well, I tend to agree from the food standpoint that the there’s going to be plenty of it and it’s supposed to all be pretty good. So that’ll be good as far better than Kingdom as far as rides are concerned heard that the flight of passage is supposed to be a pretty cool thing. So I guess I’ll mark that down as a potential highlight. And then yeah, like you said, I, I feel like if we, if we can get the kids to wind down on day one, then we’ll be alright if they can’t sort of get themselves settled down from all the activities going on on day one, that that may be a bad omen for the rest of the week. So we’ll see how it goes. So On a final note, obviously a lot of preparation here. There are people even friends of ours that we’ve joked with that have gone not that long ago that just go right. So what in your estimation is the difference in experience between all of this amount of preparation versus people that gets a bucket a month out because there was a special deal or something like that and didn’t do all the fast passes and didn’t do all the rest of the preparation?

Unknown Speaker 53:50
I mean, my my online group likes to joke that we do Disney right? profile, the preparation, but I guess if you know what you’re doing, you can go go fairly long. minute, but apparently 50% of the people who go to Disney don’t even know that they can get fast passes. And then they’re stuck waiting and all the lines all day long with no clue what they’re doing. So, I mean, you can definitely go last minute and have more flexibility than what we’re doing. But I still think you kind of need to know the basics to have a better time. Because if you’re like my kids, you do not want to wait in lines all day.

Suburban Folk 54:26
Yeah, that’s that’s for sure. Well, I think that’s it anything we missed as far as the preparation leading into the the big epic Disney trip?

Unknown Speaker 54:36
Um, I think that’s pretty much the basics of it. Cool.

Suburban Folk 54:41
Well, thanks, everybody for listening to this podcast, a couple of just general updates. We submitted the podcast to Apple to Google Play to Spotify, Stitcher and pod bean and have been approved. Actually, I just got the email before we started recording that we been approved on Apple, iTunes, so should be able to search for Suburban Folk, and it should come up on iTunes. So, subscribe there. That’s definitely where I listened to most of my podcasts. So that way, as soon as a new episode comes up, it comes out. And hey, if you’ve got a few minutes to leave a review and comments that will actually even bump it up. So that maybe more people can even discover what we’re what we’re doing here. So that that’s some exciting news is those things are starting to come out. And again, thanks for folks that have interacted already on Facebook and some of the other social media places that that we’ve registered for. So like I said, we will check in either via podcast or via the blog at Suburban folk.com to publish the itinerary that we talked about. See how the plan is going and how the kids are doing during the vacation and then even afterwards, you know, recap of everything that went on and see if the highlights that we were expecting to be highlights. Were still the things that we were the most excited About So, thanks, everybody for listening, Angie, thanks for going through all of that work that led up to to this particular week, and we’ll check in with, with everybody later. Cheers. Thanks

Transcribed by https://otter.ai