December 2017 Disney Planning
So we just got back from a trip to Disney World. We have been planning this trip for almost a year. Not only was it Brad, Melody, and me, but we also went with Justin, Emily (my best friend), and Lydia. Quite a lot of planning went into this trip...a lot more than our trip back in February. February was a much smaller trip, and there wasn't as many people to plan for! Check out all of the details below!
December 2016
Emily and I really wanted to take a trip to Disney with our girls. We went with Emily and Justin to Disney back in September 2014. Emily has been back to Disney twice seen we went in 2014, and Justin has been back once. She was getting the itch to go back. It didn't help that it seemed like all of our friends had either just gone, were there, or were planning at trip to Disney (myself included, ha!). So while Emily was on board, Justin was not. He had his reasons, but we were hoping to convince him otherwise. So I put together a PowerPoint to layout all of the details of what our trip could potentially be. This included potential resorts, floor plans at said resorts, and costs. In addition I included possible transportation options and sample park day plans.
April 9, 2017
We all came to an agreement on dates for our trip [December 3 - December 9]. We also decided we wanted to stay using DVC points. I contacted Davids DVC Rentals online. I told them our dates, and that we wanted to stay at Epcot resorts. We were hoping to get a 2 bedroom so that we would each have our own sleeping space but some common ground. It would allow us to put the girls to bed at night but still sit in the living space and socialize and such. But by this point, they did not have any 2 bedrooms at any of the Epcot resorts. The only 2 bedrooms still available were at Animal Kingdom Lodge, Old Key West, and Saratoga Springs. They also did not have studios available. So we had to come up with another game plan.
April 18, 2017
Since DVC didn't work out, we opted to book directly through Disney. We booked the Beach Club. We decided we would just take advantage of the AP discount that usually comes out in September/October. We wanted to stay at an Epcot resort so that we could at least walk or take the boat to both Epcot and Hollywood Studios. This would be great with the girls, especially since we would be eating almost daily at Epcot.
June 2017
I started booking dining reservations in June. Our goal reservations were the following: Be Our Guest breakfast, Akershus dinner, Garden Grill breakfast, Biergarten, Chefs de France, Cape May Cafe dinner, and Hollywood and Vine dinner. Long story short, I had trouble getting quite a few of our reservations even at 180 days out. I found out this was due to the Candlelight Processional and the dining reservations set aside for those. So because of that, I started making all the reservations I could in case I could not get all the ones we originally wanted. This included making dining reservations 11/29 through 12/14. I did this in case we decided to change our dates if we were able to book better dining. Below are the ones I booked in June that we used.
- Be Our Guest at 8:20 am on 12/7/17
- Hollywood and Vine at 6:30 pm on 12/7/17
- Chefs de France at 6:40 pm on 12/4/17
June 26, 2017
We decided to change our room reservation from the Beach Club to the Yacht Club. I did some research, and I noticed that the AP discount was much greater at the Yacht Club over the Beach Club. We wanted to get the biggest discount possible, so we decided to see if this would work!
July 2017
In July they finally released dining reservations for Garden Grill and Akershus that I was able to snag.
- Garden Grill at 8:05 am on 12/5/17
- Akershus at at 6:35 pm on 12/8/17
September 19, 2017
Emily and I both completed a spreadsheet I made to help me determine what rides were "requirements".
After that, I made touring plans using the combination of both of our spreadsheets [Below are not the original touring plans. These touring plans were established after we finalized the dates and plans for the trip in October.].
- 12/4/17 - Epcot
- 12/5/17 - Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom
- 12/6/17 - Epcot
- 12/7/17 - Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios
- 12/8/18 - Animal Kingdom, Epcot
I then used the touring plans to determine what Fastpasses we needed. The last thing I did was enter all of the Fastpasses into a spreadsheet and ranked them by "hardest to get".
September 26, 2017
So the AP discounts came out, and we were faced with a dilemma. When I went to apply it to my reservation, it wasn't available. They were already sold out. So we had to figure out how we wanted to go forward. We went through many different scenarios. The biggest problem was that without the discount, the trip was going to be outrageously expensive.
In the end we opted to remove a day from the trip. Emily and I both attempted to do this online, but we were unsuccessful. I tried calling, but I was on hold for too long considering it was in the middle of the day and my daughter was awake. I ended up emailing customer service, but it said it could take up to 2 weeks. I needed to book Fastpasses in a week, and we still had to add tickets for Brad, Emily, and Justin. But our room situation was going to determine where we purchased said tickets.
I ended up calling again after dinner. I waited on the phone for 2 hours before getting through to someone who could help. The problem was that all the rooms were booked for our dates at the Yacht Club. The original cast member could not just cancel one day of our trip. Instead she had to rebook the whole trip. That was risky since there wasn't a single reservation available. I had to talk with someone at a higher level. I explained the situation that we wanted to simply cancel a day since the AP discount could not be applied. He asked me if we would reconsider cancelling if he could find a way to apply the discount. My answer was, of course, yes. Thankfully, he found a way to apply the discount we originally were planning, so we did not have to cancel any part of our trip!
October 4, 2017
I booked all of our Fastpasses in order of hardest to get using the spreadsheet I originally created. I woke up at 5:30 am to book them as soon as they became available at 6 am. I was able to get them all except one, but I wasn't concerned. It was Spaceship Earth. I opted for Living with the Land instead. It was just a timing thing.
November
November was a month of generally finishing up things. I changed a few Fastpasses to make them more accommodating to a few plans we changed. I also made a few checklists. One of the checklists was a general list of what all I needed to accomplish before we left for Disney. Another list was a packing list for both Melody and us. I even laid out all her outfits so that I could make sure I had all the clothes I needed for her. Another list was a grocery list. I made the grocery list by determining what all food I would need for Melody and us each day. I wanted to bring as much with us as possible.
I made a general plan for food by day. This was mainly to see what we would be paying out of pocket. This was before we decided on our 6th table service meal. We ended up canceling Cape May Cafe and book Garden Grill our first park day. This was due to us driving and being afraid we might get in later or the girls would be cranky.
I also booked two dining reservations.
- Biergarten at 11:30 am on 12/6/17
- Garden Grill at 12:10 pm on 12/4/17
One of the last things I did was make a driving itinerary. I wanted to have an idea of where we would stop on the driving route. We wanted to be sure and stop places the girls could play, so I had to do some research and map routing to plan for that. This also gave us an idea of when we would make it to Orlando too.
There were other things we did in planning for our trip, but above are the main things we did in our planning. A lot goes into planning a Disney trip for sure, but the fun is always worth it!
