The Top 5 Disney World Tips

Brian and I have never used a travel agent for our trips because we like to plan it ourselves.  Although it takes a lot of time to do so, no one knows what you want better than yourself!  These 5 tips are things we learned while planning and going on our trip to Disney World, and we hope you take them into consideration when planning yours!

1. Buy groceries through Amazon Prime Now

We ordered cereal, milk, oatmeal, apples, water, bagels and cream cheese. This saved us money by eating most of our breakfasts – and late-night snacks – in our hotel room!  We chose a 2-hour window when we wanted the groceries to be delivered to and they were dropped off at the front desk.  You can either pick them up there or have the hotel deliver them to your room.  All of the refrigerated items were packed in an insulated bag, which is especially great if you get the notification your groceries are ready and you are still at one of the parks!

2. Book FastPasses and Restaurant Reservations ASAP

It feels like a full-time job to plan your Disney World trip, but it is extremely worth it! If you invest time in waking up early to secure your FastPasses, arranging your dining reservations, and planning many of the other details for your trip before it even starts, it will save you a lot of time and headaches during your trip.  Make sure to book popular restaurants like Be Our Guest at the 180-day mark and the FastPasses at the 60-day mark (if you are staying at a Disney hotel).  It is 30 days if you are not staying at a Disney hotel.  For popular rides like Avatar’s Flight of Passage, you need to book them the morning your FastPass date opens up because they are booked quickly!  Brian woke up at 6:00 am California time in order to book ours.

The one downside of planning so early is that you may want to change plans once you are actually on your trip. We definitely did that a few of the days due to weather and planning our day around some of the shows we wanted to see.  You aren’t penalized for cancelling your FastPasses, but if you cancel you dinner reservation within 24 hours of the time that you reserved, you will be charged a $10 fee.  To avoid this, modify your reservation to a different date (even a week or 2 from the date of the reservation) and then cancel it later.  Then you won’t get charged the fee!

3. Dress for comfort

There were 4 things that kept us the most comfortable during our week-long trip: extra socks, a light rain jacket, a hat, and cooling towels. Extra socks are really important if you plan on going on water rides like Splash Mountain or Kali River Rapids.  If your feet get wet on one of these rides the rest of your day will be miserable due to your soggy socks!  A pair of socks doesn’t weigh much and are definitely a great thing to keep on-hand in your bag.  A poncho or light rain jacket is not only beneficial for the water rides too, but for those random rainstorms that Florida has!  Bringing your own will save you time and money in the event that there is a downpour in the middle of your park day!

A hat and cooling towels saved us from the really hot days at the Disney parks. Our hats kept the sun out of our eyes and we had no sunburns.  The cooling towels were really nice to have on our necks as they kept us really cool!  These are the ones we bought for our trip, in a size Large:

4. Get the Memory Maker PhotoPass

I was completely against the Memory Maker PhotoPass when we began planning our trip. Why spend $169 to have a bunch of photos with Tinkerbell photoshopped into it?  Brian ended up purchasing it and by the end of the trip I took back every bad word I said about the Memory Maker!  Not only did we get those silly pictures with Disney characters photoshopped into the photos, but we also received all of the photos we took with characters around the park!  We also received every ride photo that was taken, as well as normal photos taken by the park photographers.  I highly recommend buying the photo pass and taking LOTS of pictures – during the day, at night, on rides, silly photos, normal photos…everything!  The options are truly endless.

5. Check the Disney World app for ride wait times prior to park closing

We had just gotten done with the Rivers of Light show and were heading out of the park as it was about 9:30pm, when we figured we would check the app.  We saw that Na’vi River Journey, which was usually about a 75-minute wait during the day the week we were there, was shown as only 10 minutes!  When we got to the ride, we were actually able to walk onto the ride with no wait time!

I hope these 5 tips will help make your trip the best in can be.  Remember, failing to plan is planning to fail!