February 2019 Disney World Planning
Well we just got back from a trip to Disney World. Imagine that? Or at least I feel like that is what most people say, ha! I will say, this was our last family trip we have planned to Disney for awhile. Melody turns 3 in May, and she will have to pay after that. And we want to take a few bigger trips to other places. Now in a year, we will see if that statement holds true, ha. This trip is just the three of us. And it is the first trip we aren’t having to make time to visit with anyone else, so our break day was actually a break day at our resort. It was weird. Anyhow, check out all the planning that went into our trip below!
Dates
Picking dates can always be tricky. When we decided we were taking this trip over a year ago, we wanted to go in March 2019. We really wanted to attend the Flower and Garden Festival. Well as I do with all of my trips, I look at Kenny the Pirate’s crowd calendars. I used to look at WDWPrepSchool charts for when to go, but those were not as specific as Kenny’s, and I found Kenny’s to be most reliable. I say that because a lot of trips that were listed as “green” on WDWPrepSchool’s chart was actually closer to yellow/red when we went. Since we have used Kenny the Pirate, we have ran into little issues.
So the crowd calendars are updated about 6.5 months in advance, but the common thing I see online in regards to this is that you may want to already start planning and feel like you can’t. Well one thing you can do is look at his calendars from the previous year. This obviously isn’t the most accurate, but it still gives you an idea.
So when I looked at March of 2018, it looked ok, but I felt like 2019 wasn’t going to look as good. Mardi Gras and spring breaks were really going to take a hit on March. So we wanted to have a back up plan in February. We looked at February and decided on February 3-9. I even booked a room at Pop Century since we were not 100% sure where we wanted to stay so that I could get the benefits of book reservations all on the first day of my trip.
Once the March calendar came out, I was right. It was all red for when we would want to go. So we opted to skip Flower and Garden and stick with February. I would much rather go when it is slower than to go for a specific festival.
So February 3-9 it was!
Resort
So our plan was to try and stay at The Beach Club resort. We loved our stay at The Yacht Club, but we really want to try The Beach Club. But the main goal was an Epcot Resort. Like I said above, we originally booked Pop Century room only so that we could book dining all at once. Some frown upon this, but I am ok with it. I change around our Disney resorts all the time depending on discounts, so I don’t feel bad about this. We also were sure to pick a resort that if it honestly came down to it, we would have stayed there.
We patiently waited for the AP discount to be released, but the general discount was released first. We waited a bit, but when AP still wasn’t released we jumped on the general discount. Unfortunately The Beach Club did not have any rooms with discounts available. And we did not want to pay full price. So we ultimately decided to book a room at The Boardwalk Inn. This was in October of 2018. I called and booked this and added the dining plan to our reservation. I fully expected us just to keep this one and not even use the AP discount.
Well then in December we looked at the AP discounts, and they had a great one for The Boardwalk Villas (still nothing for The Beach Club). So I called and booked that with the dining plan. We got a 1 bedroom villa for only a few hundred more than the Boardwalk Inn room. And we are super excited about having the extra room! Be sure and look for a future post about how we actually liked this room and resort.
Tickets
So I have an annual pass that I bought before my trip with my mom in September. When that trip came up, I already knew we would be going in February, so the AP made sense for me. With Brad we opted to get him a 6 day park hopper. Our arrival day we would get to the resort so late, it just didn’t make sense to go to the parks. But we decided to get a ticket for each of our other days with us being so close to Epcot. We bought his ticket in October right before the new date based tickets went into effect. We also ended up buying the tickets from Undercover Tourist. It was much cheaper than through Disney. They had a special of buying a 5 day park hopper and getting a 6th day free. I was a little nervous, but I know so many that use them. And it worked out perfectly for us.
Transportation
We knew we wanted to fly to Disney this trip. Since it was just the three of us, that would just be easier. We contemplated a few different options. We could fly local and either us Delta, Silver, or Frontier. Frontier made the most sense cost wise, but we would have to rearrange our dates to fit within the dates they fly. They would increase the cost and just didn’t make sense.
Another option was flying Southwest out of Birmingham. It would be direct and isn’t too far of a drive, but the timing of the flights just didn’t make the most sense. We would be leaving our house SUPER early and would even potentially need a room the night before.
So in the end we went with flying Southwest out of Memphis. It is also a direct flight, and sense Brad’s parents live there, we have free parking. It was also the cheapest of all the options. And we get 6 bags!
Dining Reservations
So we generally planned our days based on the official crowd calendar from Kenny the Pirate. I like to put it in a spreadsheet to help me keep track.
Then it was time to make dining reservations. I made a reservation for the general area we planned to be for every meal each day. This may be another thing people frown upon, but at 6 months out, I am not 100% where I want to eat and when. So we make multiple reservations, and I cancel as I know what we want to do.
Below are all of the reservations we originally made.
Then as we decided on things, I updated my spreadsheet.
And we had to keep track of how we would use all of our dining credits.
We did book a few restaurants knowing we would pay out of pocket. And I made spreadsheets trying to help determine which we would pay. We ultimately decided to wait and see how hungry we were ha.
Below are the final dining reservations we kept:
Monday, February 4 - Rose and Crown 5:45 pm
Tuesday, February 5 - Via Napoli 6:15 pm
Wednesday, February 6 - Beaches and Cream 5:50 pm
Thursday, February 7 - The Plaza Restaurant 8:05 am AND Tony’s Town Square parade package 12:20 pm
Friday, February 8 - Garden Grill 8:05 am AND Chefs de France 6:00 pm
Saturday, February 9 - Garden Grill 12:00 pm
Fastpasses and Touring Plans
Once we knew what parks we would do each day, I made touring plans to help me determine our Fastpasses. Then I ranked the Fastpasses in order of how I needed to book them.
So I did make touring plans using touringplans.com. Those are below. Those helped me at 60 days out decide my fastpasses. Well then I made touring plans using character locator (a subscription based website by Kenny the Pirate). I basically took his premade touring plans and adjusted them to meet our requirements. I won’t share those since those are from his paid subscription though.
Monday, February 3 - Hollywood Studios and Epcot
Tuesday, February 4 - Animal Kingdom and Epcot
Wednesday, February 5 - Epcot
Thursday, February 6 - Magic Kingdom
Friday, February 7 - Epcot
Saturday February 8 - Epcot
Groceries
Even though we are not driving, we do intend to bring groceries and even buy a few things at Disney. It especially makes sense since we have a full kitchen in our room. The other great thing about that full kitchen is I don’t have to bring a lot of plastic and paper utensils. I will already have that! In order to determine what we needed, I made a list in excel. Everything in yellow are the groceries we need, green means quick service credit, blue means table service credit, red means out of pocket or maybe snack credit, and gray means unsure/out of pocket. I was able to then grab all the yellow cells and make a pivot table to make myself a list of groceries. We do plan to buy bread and milk at the market at our hotel.
In addition to the list of groceries for the day to day while at Disney, I will add to the list things to just have in the room in general.
Packing
Of course I made tons of list when it came to packing. The first thing I planned out were our airport/park bags. I made multiple checklists to print off to use. This also included food. I was sure to note things that are specific to the mornings vs evenings so I didn’t have to carry it all at once. We planned to go back to the room daily after lunch and before dinner to rest.
Then I made lists of all of our clothes to pack. Melody’s clothes are placed in bags labeled with each day. We were also able to cut down on “extra” clothes since we have a washer and dryer in our room.
Of course we have other things to bring, so I listed all of those.
And lastly, I had to make a list of just what to pack for Memphis since we would be there two days before Disney and the day after Disney.
