Sunday, December 15, 2013

My Top 10 Tidbits of Advice On Touring Disney World [With Four Little Boys]

I have not updated in quite a while, I have been working on this post since we took our four kids to Walt Disney World over fall break in October. It was fun, exciting, overwhelming, and exhausting, all at the same time! I spent the better part of a year planning for this trip which was a huge undertaking with twin toddlers in tow. The reason for attempting a trip with these two? Kids under the age of three get in FREE! This was our last chance to go without having to take out a loan just to pay the admission fees for all six of us.

I spent a lot of time reading blog posts and advice from Pinterest. Pins that should have been titled, "You have failed as a Disney-going parent if you don't do these 29 things with your toddler," or "If you don't plan your trip this way, it is doomed to fail."

I cautiously entertained this information, but found that I should have probably talked to people that actually know my family and can tailor the advice to my own situation.

So without much ado, here are my "top 10" tidbits of advice from my experience touring WDW with four rambunctious boys. I have four positives, five negatives, and one indifferent to share with you. Pin it, delete it, or take it to heart and use it for your own planning purposes. Just please remember the most important thing is to give yourself a break! The kids will have fun no matter how much stuff you try to pack into less than a week.

Positive # 1: The Food and Wine Festival--- WORTH IT!! With the help of the grandparents, the hubby, the sis and I got to go to Epcot's World Showcase one evening and partake in what the festival had to offer. My only regret was not having enough time. All of the food was awesome and the atmosphere was great. I don't know what World Showcase looks like when it isn't set up for the festival, but we were not disappointed at all.

The Illuminations show that ended the night was pretty spectacular too! Just be sure to stock up on any food and drink you want prior to the start of Illuminations because they shut down the shops and kiosks once the show begins. I could have used another drink to enjoy while strolling out of the park.

Negative #1: Fast Pass Fail! I am debunking all of the fast pass posts I read. I did my best to navigate the system using what I had learned from blog posts on Pinterest. I don't know if I was working with out-of-date information, but it was a lot harder to work with than I had anticipated.

The only time it actually worked to my benefit was when we stopped for lunch at Pacos Bill's in Frontierland and I ran nearby and got fast passes to Splash mountain. Once we finished eating, we had 45 minutes until our return time, so we went to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad which had a 35 minute wait. By the time we waited and rode, it was nearly time for our Splash Mountain turn. So we pretty much waited in line a total of 35 minutes and got to ride two awesome rides out of it. So, if I was planning the day again, I wouldn't rely as much on the Fast Pass system. It is pretty inconvenient to run across the park to get them, and run back to where your party is waiting in line (pretty much having to cut the line to get to where your party is). We have little ones with us, so we really require a lot of hands, and it was difficult to spare them for someone to run around collecting the passes.

Positive #2: The best treat! I read about it in almost every Pin there was dedicated to food at WDW. We saved it until our way out on our last day. I am talking about the Dole Whip at Aloha Isles in Adventureland at MK. We sampled all there was to offer, pineapple, orange, and vanilla. At the start of our trip, $3.75 seemed like a lot for this treat, but by day 4, in 90 degree heat and the humidity of the rainforest, I would have paid $375.00 for this! Enough said!

Negative #2: The Jedi Training Academy, do NOT, I repeat, Do NOT talk this up until the kid is actually donning their Jedi robe to perform. This was the most disappointed I was the entire trip. I struggled to get our party to Hollywood Studios right as the park was opening and ran to the place to sign them up, dragging my two Padawan behind me. The line was already very long and had already filled up before even half of the line had gone through. The boys were disappointed, so was I.

I didn't plan meals with characters or a pirate makeover, this free activity was just about the closest thing I was going to be able to give them. They cheered up with a visit to Star Tours 3D. Even if we had gotten on the alternate list, you had to keep checking in, and your performance time could be later in the day, like 5:00 pm! So, my plan to spend half a day in Hollywood Studios would have been foiled by this. Unless you are willing to camp out the night before at the gate so you can be one of the first in line (not sure you are allowed to), be warned about this activity.

Negative #3: Hollywood Studios is NOT for toddlers. While I was dealing with the fall out of being cut from the Jedi Training Academy, hubby took all of our passes over to the Toy Story Mania ride to get Fast Passes. Keep in mind, it was only 30 minutes after opening and all of the passes were gone for the whole day!

We ended up waiting in a 90 minute line and once that was over (great ride, though) there was pretty much nothing else for the little guys to do. My last shot at redeeming the day was to go to the Disney Jr. Live show and do the "Hot Diggity Dog" dance with Mickey and the Gang.

Well, we were 2 minutes late for the show time because we were getting lectured on proper stroller parking etiquette by a cast member and they wouldn't let us in. So all in all, Hollywood Studios was a wasted morning for us. I can see it being great once the kids are older. The big boys enjoyed the Indiana Jones Stunt Show and the Toy Story Mania ride was a pleaser for all ages in our group! The redemption for the day was E&F earned their Mouse Ears from a shop underneath the Sorcerer's hat.

Negative #4: Dining at Disney left nothing to be desired. I am talking about most of the counter service for lunch which only gives you a few choices and none of them are very good or healthy. Compared to Disney food, it makes hospital food look gourmet! With the prices they charge, it should be! So pack lunches if you can, save your money for a nice dinner when you are tired and want to sit down and relax.

Positive #3: In my opinion, the best place to eat lunch at Epcot's World Showcase was in Mexico. Like a mirage in the desert, La Hacienda provided a great place to sit down and take a break. It was large, the tables were square, which makes it much easier to spread out. It was counter service that was fast and efficient and there were tortilla chips and churros that the kids could enjoy while the grown ups had the other cuisine that was all very good. It was air conditioned, had a great view of the lagoon, the banoes were close by, which made it easier for me to run back and forth to do potty and diaper changes. It was quiet and peaceful. I know it wasn't the real Mexico, but I might as well have been in San Lucas by how happy and relieved I was!

Negative #5: Being at the park in time for "rope drop," which translates to get up at the crack of dawn and drag the family to the park, wait in a really large crowd just to have the park open and still be stuck in that large crowd.

The system to get into the parks requires you to touch your pass to the Apple-looking Mickey Ears and then press your finger on the plate. BE SURE to pay attention to what finger your child uses the first time you go to the park and set that fingerprint with that pass! it does matter and can really slow things down if you don't.

We spent more time waiting in the line to get in than we did at any ride the whole time we were there. It just wasn't a good precedence for the day. The other days, we would get to the park 15-30 minutes after rope drop and avoid that entire scenario. It is a whole lot more satisfying to walk up to the gate and not wait long before scanning your ticket and finger print and walk right in.

The indifferent one: Character spotting is another animal of it's own. The older two weren't that excited about it, I think they are on to the fact there are real people inside of costumes, so besides a quick stop by to say "hi" to "Phineas and Ferb," which had virtually no line, they really didn't care about the characters.

F&E, however, were borderline stalkers of the characters! They acted as crazy as a bunch of girls at a Bieber concert upon spotting any character. Of course, their favorites were Buzz and Woody. They saw the Lego versions of these characters at Downtown Disney the night before our first day in the park. F had an absolute fit over seeing these familiar friends, he couldn't stop smiling, until we took him away, that is. Thereafter, he was on a mission to spot the characters and act out when he saw them.

It might have been fun to actually wait in a line to get a picture with more characters, but they have what can only be described as near-seizures when they are that close to a character and can't get to them. So instead of being slapped with a restraining order from Disney, we decided to abstain from visiting characters on this trip.

Positive #4: The Wishes firework show in Magic Kingdom was worth the crowd and uncomfortableness. We had a spot just before the bridge over to Adventureland, right up to the fence that blocks the path from the landscape, so we could sit on the ground and not have an obstructed view. The images they project onto the castle of Disney movies old and new were very impressive, the boys liked "Wreck it Ralph."

The fireworks were amazing and more than made up for our rained-out fireworks at the 4th of July back in the hometown. I had a moment during the show when I looked at my kid's faces that were posed in amazement and illuminated by the lights and fireworks. It reminded me of the end of the Disney commercial when the family was watching the fireworks show and the words, "wishes really do come true" would pop on the screen.

It really was kind of emotional for me to realize how quickly they are growing up. Right now they see magic and wonder, not crowds and astronomical prices for food and souvenirs. I saw Disney through their eyes at that moment and I remembered what it was like to be a kid.