By the Book

This time last week, when I started writing this blog, about 2:15 pm,  I was napping because we were back in our hotel, taking a small break from the fun craziness of Walt Disney World!  Now, some of you may be wondering why on earth were we resting when we could have been at the park doing fun things, like waiting in line.  Well, we did that because the book told us to!

I'm referring to the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012.  The first time we went to WDW was in 2000.  The 2000 book recommended a break from the park in the middle of the day, and the 2012 book still carried the same suggestion.

Traveling to a very busy theme park with more than one location and more things to do than are possible to do in one day requires a guide, especially if you are a type A personality who wants to ensure family enjoyment as much as possible (like me).  This particular guide books covers EVERYTHING from picking a hotel, to golf to things to do outside Disney. There are maps galore.  Comments, negative and positive, from people who used the book are also included.  The whole purpose of the guide is "to provide the reader with the information necessary to tour Walt Disney World with the greatest efficiency and economy and with the least hassle" (p. 1).  My family would say they succeeded!

There were quite a few parts of this guide I skimmed, simply because I did not need all the information and was most interested in the Touring Plans.  These single page plans made for cutting out of the back of the book, tell you how to get through the park, allowing you to wait the least amount of time in line plus see the things considered must-sees.  The method behind the madness is to circumvent the way Disney tries to control the crowds by criss-crossing the park instead of traveling through the park clockwise or counterclockwise.

In conjunction with the book is TouringPlans dot com.  At this website, I learned beforehand, what parks had early morning opening times.  If I had wanted to purchase the subscription, I could also have found out what the estimated crowd size would be for each day we were in the parks.  That information can be found elsewhere for free so I did not get a year subscription.  Really, the crowd size didn't matter at this point because our hotel reservations had been made and we were going.  In a couple years when we go back, we will be much more interested in crowd size estimates because we are people who like to go to places when other people aren't there.  We'll go in September after Labor Day or the two weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas but no way ever would we go at Christmas!

Knowing which park opened early set the plan in place.  What a difference that made.  Getting into Animal Kingdom an hour early meant we had NO WAIT at Expedition Everest. And when we got off, we got right back on!  Then when we headed over to Primeval Whirl, again, no wait!  We walked over to DINOSAUR and again, no wait.  How fun is that?!  Wait times in WDW can be excruciatingly long but not if you have a plan.  We walked by Bug's Life and even though it was later on the plan, we took the opportunity to see it; we did have a small wait - maybe 10 minutes but what is 10 minutes compared to 100 minutes!  The whole philosophy of the touring plans presented is  see if the wait is less than 20 minutes: if not, ride; if so get a FastPass and go do something else. That was how we rolled, at all four parks and it worked for us!

We had gotten up pretty early to shower and eat breakfast before we left our hotel to make it to Animal Kingdom so we set a time for when we would leave, based on what we wanted to see and do before we left and what we would do when we came back. We all rested and felt much better, ate dinner and then headed back to the park.  We pretty much followed this routine for all four days.

When we got to Hollywood Studios on Day three, our touring plan fell apart because Rock' n' Roller Coaster was down.  However, my ever resourceful mom downloaded the Ride Wait time App from iTunes.  We were able to use that to help us see when to return to rides we wanted to or when to get Fast Pasess.  We also used it quite a bit at Magic Kingdom on Day 4! So after you buy the Guides, download the Ride Wait Time App!  It was extremely helpful.

Now there was one part which I did not read about in the Guide, but it was in there.  The Main Street Electrical Parade at Magic Kingdom is discussed over several pages in the guide.  I missed them.  Our time viewing the parade could in no way be considered Magical.  The parade itself was wonderful.  The people who stepped on us, shouted at us, threatened to take our seats, booed when the American flag went by and generally crowded so close to us we could smell their body odor, well, that was not so wonderful.  If I'd followed the suggestions in the book, we'd have watched the parade from Adventure Land or Frontier Land with, perhaps, a lot less rudeness from those around us.  As soon as the parade was over, there was a crush of people coming down Main Street towards the Castle to try to get seats and spots for the fireworks. We were like salmon swimming upstream trying to get out of there.  That was our worst experience but it was a lessoned learned and therefore, valuable!  We will certainly not repeat that mistake.

So enjoy Walt Disney World but do it by the book!