As I said after our trip to Disney World in 2017, there are thousands of people who make a living out of Disney planning and tips, and there is not a lot that I can add to what the experts have already said. Although I am a travel planning enthusiast, I am not a Disney planning enthusiast (especially at this stage of our lives). So below I will make some notes on things I stressed about and wish I had a better grasp of before our trip. Not really tips per se but more FYIs. Hopefully they are helpful to the people out there who don’t necessarily want to plan every minute of their trip but do want to have a better understand of how some things work before they go.
Staying at a Disney resort vs off-site
The first decision we had to make was whether or not we were going to stay on-site at a Disney Resort. I have to admit that originally I didn’t even consider anything outside the Disney resorts. The resorts have fun themes and offer benefits like early park admission, transportation to the parks, and earlier access to book things like individual lightning lanes and dining reservations. But then when I really started to think about where we were in our lives, it wasn’t such an obvious choice after all.
We have two teenage boys who would easily sleep past noon every day in the summer if we let them. Even when they were young, we were not a rope drop family. So extra magic hours were worthless to us.
And those two teenage boys? They’re adult sized! So the small rooms at the resort seemed like they’d be really crowded for our family of 4.
My husband was adamant that we had outgrown the theming of Disney resorts, and he was the one who started pushing for an off-site hotel. I started to ease into the idea by looking at some of the Disney Springs hotels. They are quasi-Disney so it didn’t same as sacrilegious as fully staying off-site. They have some of the benefits (extra magic hours and transportation) without all of the Disney hoopla.
Then I stumbled across the Wyndham Grand Orlando Bonnet Creek and got excited about a room with bunk beds for the boys so they could have a little more space. But you know what is even better than a little more space? A lot more space! Right next door is Club Wyndham Bonnet Creek, which offers suites of all different sizes. A kitchen, living room, laundry, two bedrooms, two bathrooms. AMAZING! I cannot tell you how much we appreciated the extra space after being cramped into a single hotel room at Universal for two nights. Plus we cooked some easy meals, packed some lunches, and did some laundry. Without a doubt, our trip was more enjoyable because we stayed off-site. The only downside was having to pay for parking at the parks every day. But for us the extra space made it well worthwhile.
This decision is so individual to families but I would just encourage you to think outside the (Disney Resort) box and consider some of the nearby off-site properties. The tradeoffs may be worth it for your family. They were for ours.
Tickets
To park hop or not? The age-old question of park goers. We actually didn’t think it made sense to park hop on this trip since we had a day available for each park so that was an easy decision to check off. Once it was settled that we were staying off-site and not eligible for a package, I priced tickets every which way to try to find the best deal. I looked through CostCo, AAA, work perks for both my husband and myself, Undercover Tourist. At the end of the day, nothing could save us more than a few bucks per ticket. There was nothing compelling enough to make me “risk” any complications from buying outside of Disney. When I got an email from Disney advertising their 4 Park Magic Ticket, I jumped on it. It was actually a decent savings over sticker price on 4 individual tickets and it fit our itinerary perfectly so it was an easy decision to make.
Parking
This was the only major heartburn I had over staying off-site. Aside from the extra $30 expense every day, I worried about traffic, parking logistics, distance from the entrance, etc. But I have to say that parking was SO easy. Bonnet Creek is actually inside the Disney gates and was really close to all of the parks. We never hit any traffic and navigating to the different parks was a breeze. Some of the posts I had read about parking were overly detailed and made it seem complex and stressful. It was not. They will literally point you to the exactly the row and space to park in. Then if it’s close enough or you just feel like it, you can walk to the entrance. Otherwise you hop on a parking lot tram that is waiting at the end of your aisle and get a ride to the entrance. The only thing you have to do is remember where you park, and Disney made even that easy. You can use the Car Locator in the My Disney Experience app on your phone and it will remember your section and row for you. And once you pay to park, it is valid all day at any of the parks. Two of the days we actually went home for dinner and went back afterwards.
So bottom line… yes, it stinks to pay $30 to park each day but it is so easy and convenient. I actually preferred to drive over waiting for a resort shuttle. We were completely on our own schedule and didn’t have to worry about shuttles or lines. I’m certain that driving ourselves saved us time over waiting for Disney transportation.
Magic Bands
Are these still a thing? I struggled to figure that out before our trip. We received them in the mail before each of our other two trips and they were used for pretty much everything – park tickets, room key, retail charges, linking photos. No longer included for resort guests, Disney seemed to be phasing them out but still sells them so I wasn’t sure how useful they were. I was worried about being tied to my phone and the app for everything and was worried about how we would get our ride photos. I even briefly considered buying one of the basic ones but ultimately decided to trust the system and that I could do everything through the app. Magic bands were 100% not necessary and I didn’t see anybody wearing them so I’m glad I didn’t waste any money on them. The app is functional and well designed.
Memory Maker
At the advanced purchase price of $189, Memory Maker is undeniably expensive. Again, this is totally a personal decision. I definitely wasn’t thrilled about the cost but knew for sure that we would get it. For me, I love having photos of all four of us in each park. And it’s especially neat since we have them from all 3 trips so we can see the same photo with the boys as preschoolers, elementary schoolers, and now teenagers. I knew there wouldn’t be any character photos this time and that was totally fine. I also knew there would be more ride photos than on previous trips and I was excited to get those. As long as we had one family photo in each park and all of the ride photos, I knew it would be worthwhile for me.
My big stress around this was how they would link our photos to my account. Magic bands were no longer a thing and the articles I read before the trip made it seem like a daunting process to link your photos in the app. It wasn’t. We did our first family photo op in front of Tower of Terror and then the photographer showed me how to activate my Memory Maker account on the My Disney Experience app and link my photos. Once it was active, any photographer we used around the parks just scanned either our park ticket in Apple Wallet or the PhotoPass code in the app. Some of the older rides still used the old system where you find your picture on a screen at the end of the ride and scan your app (or Magic Band if you have one). The newer rides rely on Bluetooth technology to automatically link the photos to your account. For that to work, you need to have Bluetooth enabled for the app on your phone, have the app open on your phone, and have the phone with you on the ride. This worked pretty well but not perfectly. We got pictures of the group behind us on TRON but we were able to submit a support ticket through the app and they found the photos and added them to our account within a week. (Note that if you purchase Genie+, ride photos are included with your purchase.)
We ended up with about 60 photos without trying very hard. That puts each photo at a little over $3. Without Memory Maker, a single photo download costs $16.95. Although I could live without all 60 of the photos we got, I would certainly want more than the eleven I would get for $189 worth of individual photos. I absolutely love having these photos and they were worth the money to me.
Genie+, Lightning Lanes, and Individual Lightning Lanes
This was the biggest stress I had before the trip. Genie+, Lightning Lanes, Virtual Queues, oh my. The lingo is completely different than it was when we went 7 years ago. Gone are the days of Fast Passes that you can book 3 at a time in advance for free. In its place is a dynamic fee system with major limitations. Many of the things I wrote about above I said sounded complicated but turned out not to be. Genie+ is the exception. It is complicated and you really need to know how to use it to make it worthwhile.
To begin with, you cannot purchase it until the morning of your visit. And the pricing is dynamic and individual to each park so you won’t know the price until you login to the app the morning of your visit. Prices can range from $15 to $39 per person. Yikes! That is adding a significant cost onto what is already an expensive park ticket, especially for families. So what do you get for your money? The short answer is that you get to skip the long lines and go in the shorter lightning lanes. The longer answer is that there are a lot of stipulations around that. Generally, you can only hold one Lightning Lane selection at a time. You can book your first as soon as you purchase Genie+, which is available as early as 7 am. You cannot book another until you have either tapped into that first ride’s lightning lane, or it has been two hours since your last booking (or park opening if you booked prior to opening). To me, the math on this just didn’t add up. Even the Disney website says “On average, Guests can enter 2 to 3 attractions or experiences per day using Lightning Lane entrances if the first selection is made early in the day.” An extra $39 for 2 or 3 rides? It seems like a rip-off to me.
But wait! We can’t forget about Individual Lightning Lanes. The more popular rides are not even included in Genie+ and have to be purchased as an Individual Lightning Lane. That means a separate cost for the individual ride. The purchase is independent of Genie+. You can do either one without the other. Individual Lightning Lanes become available for purchase at 7 am for resort guests and at park opening for non-resort guests. The pricing for ILLs is dynamic too but tends to range from $12 to $25 per person per ride. Oof.
For me, I just didn’t see how spending the extra money on Genie+ for a family of 4 would be worth it for a shorter line on 2 or 3 rides. And an extra $100 total for one ride? No. Way. But on our third day at Disney (and 5th park day including Universal), my husband suggested that we try Genie+ for our Animal Kingdom day. We knew we would have to wait on line for Avatar because we didn’t want to buy an Individual Lightning Lane so he figured that it would be nice to breeze through the other rides and make it a shorter park day. Animal Kingdom tends to be the cheapest Genie+ ticket so we paid the $17 per person and booked our first Lightning Lane for Expedition Everest. We rode Expedition Everest first thing and then got on the line for Avatar and booked our next Lightning Lane for Na’vi River Journey for the next available time, which was around 2:30. This is where the timing worked in our favor and we were able to work the system a little bit. Between the long wait for Avatar and the later time we booked for Na’vi, we were able to book another Lightning Lane for Dinosaur that actually ended up being before our Na’vi time slot.
So was it worth it? I say absolutely not. We did get to use it for 3 rides but for Expedition Everest and Dinosaur, it saved us very little time over the regular line. And we didn’t even bother booking a Lightning Lane for Kilimanjaro Safaris because the walkup line was so short. I will say that when we rode Na’vi River Journey, the wait for that was almost two hours – longer than Avatar! This is actually where I joke that we got our money’s worth. We thought that ride was terrible and we would have been furious if we had waited 2 hours for it! Seriously, it was visually impressive I guess but it was boring and the boats kept backing up and bumping into each other. I can’t imagine waiting that long for that ride so I guess the hidden value of Genie+ was that we didn’t waste time waiting for a ride we didn’t enjoy. We had time to fit in one more lightning and wanted to ride Expedition Everest again but were super disappointed to find out that you can’t book the same ride as a Lightning Lane more than once in a day. To me, that devalues Genie+ even more. If I spend the money and wait the two hours, I should be able to ride whatever I want as many times as I want. So for us, Genie+ turned out to be exactly what we thought it would be – a big waste of money.
Virtual Queues
In case it wasn’t confusing enough to have some rides available on Genie+ and others available as an Individual Lightning Lane, Disney has thrown in one other option – Virtual Queues. These differ from Genie+ and ILLs in that they are free. Yes, free! But it is not a time saver in most cases. It simply gives you the right to wait in line. The newest, most popular rides do not offer a standby line or a lightning lane. The only way to ride it is to get a spot in the Virtual Queue. Starting at 7 am (and not a second later), you can try to get a spot on the Virtual Queue for either TRON in Magic Kingdom or Guardians of the Galaxy in Epcot (or Tiana’s Bayou Adventure when that opens at the end of the month).
Getting a spot in a virtual queue involves waking up early and being lucky. At 7 am on the dot, you can attempt to add yourself to the Virtual Queue through the My Disney Experience app. If you are lucky, you will get a number, known as a Boarding Group. You do not get to choose the group or a time. You are just randomly assigned a number – it could be a really low number and you have to hustle to get to the park at opening or a really high number that doesn’t end up getting called. As they always told our kids in preschool “you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.” We were lucky and got numbers for both – 100 for Guardians of the Galaxy and 40 for TRON. We were called for Guardians at 4:15 and TRON at 11:45. Once your group is called, you have an hour to get in line. The wait – both for your group to be called and the time spent in line – varies by ride and day so it’s a little tough to plan around. You just have to keep watching the app to see what groups are boarding to get an idea of when your turn might come up. Once on line, we waited over an hour for Guardians of the Galaxy and only about half an hour for TRON.
It’s tough to know how to feel about Virtual Queues. I love that it is a free option to ride some of the most popular rides but don’t love that it’s all about luck and if you miss out on a spot in the virtual queue, you have no other way to get on the ride. It worked out for us but not everyone is so lucky. (Note that they open up a second window to book virtual queues at 1:00 but you must be physically in the park at that time to reserve them, and you will obviously get a high number and have a greater chance not getting called.)
Bags
This seems like a silly one but all amusement parks handle bags differently (what size is allowed, what you can bring in, where to store during rides, etc.). I knew I wanted to carry a small backpack, mainly to carry refillable water bottles and some snacks. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it on rides. (When you have little kids, it’s easy to just leave everything in the stroller!) This is a complete non-issue at Disney. You can carry your bag on to every ride except TRON, and TRON offers free, easy-to-use lockers right before you board. For all other rides, I was able to easily and safely keep my bag with me. No worries!
Dinner Reservations
For some people, dining is a big part of their Disney experience. Whether it is a favorite restaurant or a beloved character meal, Advanced Dining Reservations (ADRs) are really important to some people. Everyone (whether staying on resort or off) can book dining reservations starting at 60 days out from their trip. If you are staying at a Disney Resort, you can book reservations for the entire length of your trip at the 60 day mark. For those staying offsite, you can only book reservations one day at a time (so basically a rolling 60 days). On our second trip to Disney 7 years ago when the kids were younger, character meals were important to us so we got the Disney dining plan and booked all of those meals in advance. On this trip, we didn’t care about dining. We also had no idea what our schedule would be – we didn’t know which park we were doing which day, let alone if we would be there in time for lunch or stay late enough for dinner. So ADRs were in no way on my radar.
And true to form, we really didn’t eat any meals in the parks. After the extreme sticker shock of the food at Universal, we took advantage of the kitchen in our Club Wyndham studio and packed lunches every day. On our Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom days, we left the park for dinner and went back afterwards. The night before we went to Epcot, we decided to let the kids sleep in and go after lunch and then stay until close. That meant dinner in the park – our one sit-down park meal! When my oldest declared that he had always wanted to eat at the restaurant in Mexico next to the Three Caballeros ride, I logged into the app to see if there was availability. I was able to get a reservation for dinner the next night with no problems. Except… when we arrived I had actually booked at the restaurant across from the ride. Although I googled “restaurant next to Gran Fiesta ride in Epcot”, I wasn’t observant enough to notice that all 3 restaurants in Mexico have San Angel in the name. Who does that??? So I accidentally booked La Cantina de San Angel instead of San Angel Inn Restaurante. Thankfully, they were kind enough to let us cancel the reservation at La Cantina without penalty and were able to sit us quickly at the restaurante. So all of that to say, we didn’t have a problem getting a reservation the day before or walking in the day of. If you have your heart set on a place, definitely book as far in advance as you can. But don’t stress too much if you don’t plan that far ahead. There are always options!
Weather
This was a big one. We went in June so we fully expected super hot days and afternoon thunderstorms. We had two beautiful days at Universal and then a terrible forecast for the rest of the week at Disney. This wasn’t just afternoon pop-up storms. This was “locally heavy rainfall”, “chance of rain 90%”, “rainfall over an inch”, etc. Every. Single. Day. A forecast like that definitely stressed me out. Should we wait it out at the hotel or go to the parks and hope for the best? If one day was a complete washout, should we skip it and save our park tickets for the day we leave? All kinds of questions swirled around my mind. When we woke up on our first morning and headed over to Hollywood Studios, it started pouring rain as soon as we parked the car. We sat there and debated going in or saving the ticket and extending the trip. But a quick look at the forecast brought the realization that every day could be like this so we decided to just go for it. It let up a little and we headed to Tower of Terror first and waited in line in a light rain. We headed to Millennium Falcon next. That line was almost entirely indoors, which proved to be fortunate since the skies opened up shortly after we got there. It just rained buckets and buckets. I’m not sure if this was good luck or bad but the ride actually broke down and we were on line for almost 2 hours. But it wasn’t even worth leaving the line because we were inside and dry and we had packed our lunches. So we waited it out – both the rain and the ride malfunction.
But somehow, miraculously, that was the worst of it. Every day the forecast continued to look horrendous, but we never had another downpour like that. In fact, we got very little rain the rest of the time while we were in the parks. (The same can’t be said of our pool time in the evening or our dinner in Disney Springs but that’s better than the alternative.) I wish I hadn’t spent so much time every night worrying about what the weather would be the next day. It was completely out of my control and even when it was at its worst, it didn’t ruin our day. We left everyday prepared with an umbrella and a good attitude, and that’s the best you can do.
