Planning
Useful Websites
Planning a Disney trip (whether to Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, or elsewhere) requires a bit of research to make sure your trip goes as planned. We spend a great amount of time performing research so we don’t run into any surprises. Plus, we consider planning the trip to be part of the fun of the trip itself, as this article in the New York times details. You can spend a great amount of time enjoying the planning of a trip that might only last a few days.
Updated Jacksonville Special
Before our summer trip to Universal and Walt Disney World, we started thinking about converting our Disney tickets to annual passes. In order to justify the cost, we needed to see if we could add some additional trips in throughout the year. One way we could keep the cost down for these additional trips was to look at alternate flying locations around Orlando that might be cheaper than flying to Orlando. Thus was born the Jacksonville Special.
Auto Train Part 3: The Journey
Award Wallet
Once we started to collect miles and points for free travel, we needed a way to keep track of them. After looking into several websites, we finally settled on AwardWallet.com. AwardWallet is a web site that allows you to track your accumulated points and miles across lots of different award programs. This is a huge time saver since you don’t have to log into all these different websites to see your points totals, you can access them in one place.
Auto Train Part 2: Accommodations
Making Dining Reservations
You’ve made your travel plans, picked the perfect days to visit the parks, and gotten your tickets. You’ve even planned out your outfits for the park. What’s left to do? Dining, of course! One of the fantastic benefits of choosing a Disney vacation is the multitude of dining options they offer in the parks and resorts. Disney World accepts advanced dining reservations for most of the table service dining locations up to 180 days in advance. The most popular ones may book up before the day of your visit. So, how can you get a reservation to make sure you have the best dining experience possible?
Auto Train Part 1: Booking
One of our favorite ways to get to Walt Disney World is Amtrak’s Auto Train. The Auto Train runs between Lorton, VA (outside of Washington, DC and close to our home) and Sanford, FL (very close to Orlando). The train accommodates passengers and their vehicles to make the trip up or down the I-95 corridor. So, not only do you get to and from Disney World without having to drive, but your car goes along on the ride as well. This allows you to load up luggage in your vehicle, keeping only what you need for the overnight trip with you. One train runs in each direction (one northbound, one southbound) each day.
Four Day Cruise – Part 3 – Castaway Cay
Planning Spreadsheet
If there is one thing we are consistent about when we travel to Disney, it is having a well-organized plan. It isn’t that we want to script every second of the day, but we do like to have an idea of what park we are going to, when our FastPass+ reservations are, and where we are going to eat. Our plan isn’t as complicated as a D-day landing, but does have a basic framework.