Ways to Plan for a Walt Disney World Vacation
Although there are lots of different methods you might choose from to plan your Disney vacation, one thing is now for certain: Planning is necessary.
How you choose to plan your Disney vacation depends somewhat on you and your preferences. In this article, we'll talk about a few common things people do, including working with travel agents, planning for themselves, and letting Disney Genie plan your day. We'll also discuss the pros and cons of each and, as always, provide some recommendations.
Do I Need a Travel Agent?
Answer: It depends. Let's talk about the range of things a travel agent might do for you. At the very basic level, a travel agent can give you some brochures, book your flights, and perhaps book your Disney trip including accommodations and tickets. They usually should be able to answer some questions about Walt Disney World for you, such as explaining what Genie+ does, how to get around the resorts, park hours, and so on.
Some travel agents will go above and beyond that, and if you plan to use a travel agent, you really need to find out if they will go above and beyond because, in our opinion, without that additional help, you're only halfway done with planning. Ask travel agents whether, in addition to providing you with information, finding you a flight, and booking your flight, hotel, and tickets, they can do the following:
Facilitate the making of park reservations
Book your Advanced Dining Reservations
Secure your Genie+ purchases
Make room requests
Insure your travel
Facilitating park reservations - This is a necessary step now to visiting Walt Disney World. You need both a ticket and a park reservation for the first park you enter that day. If you purchased the park hopper add on, you can hop to other parks, as long as they aren't at capacity, after 2PM, but you MUST start in the park for which you have a park reservation, which means to enter ANY park all day you must have a park reservation. These are usually made at the time of purchasing tickets, and can be modified as long as availability allows. If your travel agent is going to facilitate the purchase of your tickets, they should also make your park reservations, per your plans at that time.
Advanced Dining Reservations - If you can find a travel agent who can do this for you, this is a big deal. It will save you from having to get up at 5AM and use the app to secure them yourself. Yes, we said 5AM. Disney Advanced Dining Reservations are usually necessary for any table service meal. Unlike Disneyland, they do get taken up quickly and there are usually only a few last minute reservations that can be grabbed. If you have your heart set on dining in a particular restaurant, someone is going to need to be ready to secure your reservation the minute reservations open, which is usually at 5:45 AM Eastern Time 60 days ahead. If you are staying at a Walt Disney World resort hotel, you can book reservations for your entire vacation, up to 10 days, on the date 60 days ahead of your first day. If you are staying off property, you need to repeat the process for each day of your stay, 60 days ahead of that day.
Nobody says you have to eat table service meals. But there are some great restaurants at Walt Disney World, and the most popular of them get snagged the minute reservations open. A great travel agent will have your wish list of restaurants in hand and will make those reservations for you at the appointed time. A great travel agent will also understand that reservations can't conflict with your park passes. In other words, if you have a park pass for Magic Kingdom but your dining reservation for breakfast is in EPCOT, that's a mistake as you will not be allowed to enter any other park than the one for which you have a park pass until 2PM, and then ONLY if you have the park hopper add-on.
Secure Your Genie+ purchases - An amazing above and beyond service would be for your travel agent purchase Genie+ on your account for each day of your vacation that you plan to use it. They might even recommend which days to buy it and which days to let it go based on projected crowds. They would have to be doing this each day and the earliest time at which it can be done would be 12AM Eastern Time the day of.
Make Room Requests - Getting a reservation at a Disney resort is one thing, but making sure you have the best chances of getting the best room for you is another. Disney does take room requests. There is no guarantee they will be able to honor the request, but making one can't hurt. Some Disney resorts are very spread out, so if being close the lobby or close to transportation is important to you, you may want to request a particular room, building, or section of the resort. Similarly, if you pay for a preferred view, but want that preferred view to be of the water and not the monorail, you should make that request. Some travel agents will facilitate this for you.
Insure Your Vacation - In COVID times, it's become extra important to insure your vacation so that you are not out of money should you or a travel companion get sick and be unable to travel. A travel agent may have access to better travel insurance than you know how to get on your own, and maybe for cheaper rates, but you must ask them what exactly is covered. Ideally, you would want 100% of your expenses covered in the event of a travel ban, a quarantine, illness, or a positive COVID test. This is more than the standard travel insurance typically covers as many policies were written before COVID and do not include provisions for quarantine or travel restrictions.
We are not a travel agent. We write this blog just for kicks. If you choose to go with a travel agent, choose a Disney Authorized Agent.
A travel agent might be particularly useful if:
You've never been to Walt Disney World and do not want to do the research
You are traveling internationally
You are combining your Walt Disney World vacation with other destinations
You are combining your Walt Disney World vacation with a cruise with international destinations
Can I Plan Without a Travel Agent?
Yes, you can! In fact, that's how we plan all of our Disney trips, but that's because we are A+ Planners. We have only used a travel agent once for a Disney vacation and it was because we were going on a cruise with international destinations during part of the trip and we had never cruised before and weren't sure how to prepare. Even then, and this is no knock on the travel agent, but rather an illustration of the kind of people were are, the travel agent was only helpful in booking our accommodations, flights, and tickets. We ended up facilitating our own modifications to the itinerary, like requesting a specific section of cabins, on our own.
All of the above considerations can be facilitated on your own as well. Disney has a very informative website, and then there are blogs like this one with a wealth of information that can help you plan. The only thing is, it's a lot of information.
If you've done your research, can find your way around technology like the MyDisneyExperience website and phone app, and maybe purchased a guide book or at least read several blogs, you can probably plan on your own, but you can't slack in this. Planning on your own means:
Reserving a Disney resort hotel room and getting tickets ASAP
Making park reservations for each day you have tickets
Making flight reservations, if flying, and figuring out how to get from the airport to the parks
Downloading the MyDisneyExperience app, linking your tickets and reservations, and each party member to it
Making a rudimentary plan (with a back-up plan, and a back-up to the back-up plan) about where to dine if you want to use table service. Keep your park pass reservations in mind.
Using MyDisneyExperience to make Advanced Dining Reservations at 5:45 AM 60 days before your first day of travel (and if staying off-site, each day thereafter)
Research, and purchase independently, travel insurance, if desired
Contacting Disney with any special room requests if staying on property
Determining which attractions you most want to experience, and whether Lightning Lane or Individual Lightning Lane will be necessary to avoid long lines
If using Lightning Lane, purchasing Genie+ between 12AM and 7AM on the day of. You can purchase Genie+ after 7AM, depending on availability, but the first Lightning Lanes become available at 7AM, so we assume you want it loaded up earlier than that.
Making Lightning Lane and Individual Lightning Lane reservations via the MyDisneyExperience app the day of (something that most people need to do regardless of whether they went through a travel agent)
We recommend planning on your own for:
Disney Type A types who can handle all of the above details
People who can't find a travel agent who will do more than book your flights, room, and tickets, and call it a day
People who are tech savvy enough to use MyDisneyExperience
People who can set alarms and keep calendars
How Does Disney Genie Help With Vacation Planning?
When we get down to the day-to-day plans, you can choose to plan this out on your own as well, or take Disney's recommendations, or do some combination of both. What we mean by day-to-day plans is identifying what attractions you want to experience, what snacks or quick service meals you might like, what shows you might want to see, and then planning as much as possible to experience those without standing several hours in lines.
Some Disney guests. like us, are quite good at doing this on their own. They know which attractions are the most popular at which times of day. They know how crowds tend to move through various parks - for example, the EPCOT phenomenon where crowds migrate toward World Showcase as the day wears on with the morning being busy in FutureWorld and quiet in World Showcase, and evening being busy in World Showcase and quiet in FutureWorld. They know the busiest days and busiest times of day in each park. They may even have a sense of which rides or shows load quickly and which load more slowly and can use that information during busy times when all the lines look long but are not all equally long in terms of wait times.
Knowing is only half the battle. The other half is the willingness to go against the flow. If everyone enters the park and goes clockwise, this guest must be willing to go counter-clockwise. If everyone comes to the park between 11AM and 3PM, this guest must be willing to take advantage of the park before 11AM and after 3PM. If everyone is in World Showcase in the evening, this guest is in FutureWorld in the evening.
It takes time to develop a new instinct that goes against the basic instinct of the crowds. We'll call it "Disney Sense". But there are things you can do to develop it faster, or use the knowledge of those who have developed it so you don't have to. One thing is to consult the MyDisneyExperience wait times routinely and choose attractions with lower waits. Another is to use an itinerary developed by someone else based on park data, such as the fabulous folks at Touringplans.com. Or do some combination of those tricks.
Last year, Disney released their own app that is meant to give you "Disney Sense" as well, called Disney Genie (not to be confused with Genie+). Genie is free, unlike it's paid add-on Genie+, and Genie is meant to plan your day's itinerary based on your preferences. It's good for first-time visitors or those that really don't want to plan ahead but also don't want to wait in line for too long. And it gets mixed reviews, though we find negative reviews come from folks with their own "Disney Sense" and positive reviews come from those who are Disney rookies.
Disney sits on a wealth of information when it comes to attraction loading speeds and capacity, line lengths, and crowds. The difference between Disney and third party apps is that while third party apps can estimate crowds based on historical data and reports from guests in the parks, Disney can track crowds real time. All those magic bands and apps people use to navigate the parks? They are tracking devices. And if you find that a little scary, we advise you to consider your cell phone that's been tracking you for years.... It's just the name of the game these days. But given this real-time data, Disney can use Genie recommendations to redistribute crowds to less-loved attractions at busy times, providing guests with something to do without the wait.
The thing you need to do to guarantee the best experience if using Genie recommendations is to set your preferences as specifically as possible. Otherwise, be prepared to be pointed to the Swiss Family Tree House or Hall of Presidents over and over and over again. If you MUST ride Pirates, tell Genie that.
Is Genie going to save you all your vacation planning? No. But when it comes to the daily itinerary, which you likely need to figure out regardless of whether you went through a travel agent or booked on your own, Genie is meant to help provide suggestions geared toward low wait times. Perfect Disney day? Not for me, an A+ planner. Okay Disney Day? Yes, probably.
We recommend using Genie recommendations if:
You don't know much about attractions in the park but want to avoid crowds
You are more of a "see where the day takes me" person
You are tech savvy enough to use the Genie portion of the MyDisneyExperience app
You are okay with changing pre-conceived notions of what you might do based on what has the shortest wait
There you have it: Three ways to plan your Walt Disney World Vacation. How have you planned your vacation? What option is right for you? Let us know in the comments or by commenting on this article over on our Facebook page, where you can follow us to see new articles each week. We've officially changed our page name to School of Disney (yay!). Until next time...
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