Monday, January 19, 2009

Disney World

Yeah! We have booked our next trip to Disney World and Julia's first trip to Disney World for the week of Thanksgiving 2009. We are so excited. Julia is so excited about going to see the Princesses.

Now, we have been once as a family and I went many times when I was in junior high and high school, but there are always so many changes and everyone has a favorite. I am going to list a few of our favorites at Disney, but I would like for everyone to send me their favorites so we can compile a list of things we should be sure to do on this trip. I know I am posting this early, but we don't want to miss anything.

1. Always stay in a Disney resort. A value resort is fine with us b/c we are not in the room for long periods of time.

2. Purchase the Dining plan.

3. Eat at Cinderella's castle and at Chef Mickey.

4. Make sure to ride:
a. The front car of the monorail. (Jack and Savannah still have their driver's
license from our last trip.)
b. Toy Story.
c. Everest
d. Safari at Animal Kingdom
e. Dumbo
f. Space Mountain
g. Tower of Terror
h. It's a Small World

5. Buy the photo pass cd. Did not do this last time, but Rhonda did and it is well worth the money.

6. Pretend to be a kid.

7. Do not ride Stitch's Great Escape, very gross. Jack and Savannah both cried the entire ride, then did not want to see Stitch when we ate breakfast with him.

8. Make sure someone in your group has a cellphone with them if you seperate.

9. If you go during winter months, pack for winter and summer. The weather changes in a matter of hours.

10. Dinner with the Princesses at Epcot. The food is gross. The breakfast there is American breakfast so that is what we are doing there this time.

Please send me your favorites or things to avoid.

5 comments:

The Dunavant Family said...

Lion King show at the Animal Kingdom. Awesome!

Lianne said...

Yea! I loooove Disney World! We are probably going to go a week or two after you are there. We usually go every two years or so.

Must do list for the Robinson family:

1. Eat at O'Hana's at the Polynesian Resort. Food is AWESOME, and Dining Plan covers it. It is all-you can eat, brought to your table on skewers and platters. It also has contests for the kids--Hawaiian themed stuff like Hula Hooping and push the coconut with a broom. It's wonderful food, great atmosphere (dining on the lagoon), and lots of fun.

2. Stay on Resort property with monorail access. Sooo much faster than buses. We stayed at Animal Kingdom once. It is so far out of the way. Only thing it's close to is Animal Kingdom park, which has never been our favorite park.

3. Book dining reservations ahead of time. Skip the wait!

4. We go around Christmastime so that we get to see the Christmas parade being filmed and all the decorations. (It's also not crowded, except for where the parade is being filmed on Main Street.) We also make sure we buy tickets for the Christmas party at night. It is a special parade, followed by free cookies and hot chocolate at certain dining establishments. Yes, something free at Disney. Wow!

4. Plan out daily where you are going to go--before the "day of." Know which parks open early and know which parks have extra magic hours. Sometimes, you can get dining reservations in a park that is not yet open to the public. As soon as you finish breakfast, you are good to go...beat the crowd!

5. Start at the back of the park and work forwards if you arrive early. No lines! Do all the kid stuff during parade times if you can stand missing a parade.

6. Buy the refillable mug at the resort snack shop. It always ends up being worth it.

7. Take me with you! :)

thewilliamson.family said...

Yeah! I am so excited that my people are responding. We did Ohana's last time, but not for sure about this time. Our big concern is where to eat Thanksgiving dinner! We are thinking Chef Mickey's. We get to book our Thanksgiving dinner 180 days in advance. I already have it in my phone to remind me the day before. I don't want to eat too late.

Lianne said...

There is a really good place in the Magic Kingdom that serves Thanksgiving type meals every day. Googling....Liberty Tree Tavern. It's really good. I think they do one character meal per day, also. It's in the Frontier area.

Here's a great link for more ideas:
http://allears.net/tp/h_thanks.htm

Merry said...

We ate at Garden Grille in the Land at Epcot one night for the character dinner. It is only one table service mean on the dining plan & the food was great. It is served family style & we had turkey, cornbread dressing, steak, mashed potatoes & broccollini. It would be a great Thanksgiving meal!

We really enjoyed the character breakfast at Tusker House in Animal Kingdom. The Animal Kingdom parade was our favorite by far.

That's all I can think of right this minute. I have one more day of blogging about our trip. It's easy to write the first few posts but now I'm bored of it. :)