Jul 10
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WDW Vacation Planning Tips: Part 1
Normally, this is a site dedicated entirely to Epcot, however it’s that time of the year where for some of us, we’re starting to plan out vacations for the latter half of the year and it’s no surprise that many people and families will be considering heading to this little place in Florida that some of us are totally nuts about (me included). Regardless if you’ve been 10 times 2 times or never, its often easy to overlook all the little things about a Walt Disney World vacation that you wouldn’t normally think about planning ahead on. So over the course of this week we will present a short list of various tips and links each day, that we find incredibly useful when planning a WDW vacation!
1 – Make ADR’s! – With the extension of the Free Dining Promotion into the holiday season, I cannot stress this one enough. Disney lets you make Advance Dining Reservations (ADR) 180 days out starting with the first day of your vacation. If you have a booked vacation, you can book your entire trips dining (up to 10 days), at the 180 day ‘mark’ from the first day of your vacation. If you don’t have a room booked on property you have to do it 180 days from the day your wanting to make an ADR for and repeat for each day you wish to make an ADR.
Why do this you ask? Many of the most popular dining spots fill up extremely fast and during busy days at the parks, it will be almost impossible to get a walkup seating spot. I’ve been trying to get an ADR for Le Cellier for December and I’ve had no luck.. and its July! If you are wanting to dine in Cinderella’s Castle, you had best be on the phone at 7am rapidfire dialing Disney Dining or you won’t be getting into the Royal Table (its hands down the hardest ADR to get). If you don’t get the ADR you want, never give up though, people cancel all the time, and even on the day you’re at the parks, it never hurts to go to Guest Services and check for an ADR thanks to someone else’s late cancellation. To help you in deciding where exactly to eat, there are two great websites that offer insights into Disney Food: The Disney Food Blog and Allears.net has literally every menu from Walt Disney World.
Disney also has a newly revamped Online ADR system that I used to book my family’s ADR’s and a friend of the site, Amanda (The Disney College Blog) did a great review of this new system and you can read it here!
2 – Guidebooks – Go to amazon.com and type in “Disney World Guide” you will get somewhere in the ballpark of 600 suggestions! Obviously that’s way more than the average person will need in planning their WDW vacation, so please allow us to suggest our favorite two, “The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World” and “Birnbaum’s Walt Disney World”.
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, or as some have come to call it the Disney Bible. Simply put this 900 page book has anything and everything when it comes to WDW. In depth looks at accommodations, restaurants, tickets, travel advice, price estimates on just about everything, basic touring plans and so much more is included in this book, and honestly I always read something I didn’t know every time I pick it up. (Yes, I read this for fun as well as planning.. You guys should take me seriously when I say I’m a Neurotic Disney Dad.) Co Author Len Testa also is a regular on the WDW Today Podcast, and quite possibly has this entire book memorized.
Birnbaum’s Walt Disney World is a wonderful guide that is designed around giving information about the parks as well as touching on the various resorts at WDW and also mentioning things like dining and the extra things you can do outside of the parks. Full of colorful pictures and information, everyone from the adults to the kids will enjoy looking over the book time and time again!
That’s it for today! We hope you’ll check back throughout the week as we look at more things that everyone should keep in mind when planning a WDW vacation. Below are some links that are associated with some of the things we hit on today!
Walt Disney World Online Dining Reservation System
Disney College Blog takes a look at the new online ADR System
The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World
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We’d like to mention that our thoughts on our favorites are just that.. our thoughts. We are in no way compensated by any of the authors of any books or websites that we mention. We’re just simply fans of their work.
Want to read the rest of this blog series? Check here! Part 2, Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
