Let the Planning Begin...

One of the hard parts about taking relative newbies to Disney World is impressing upon them the sheer amount of planning and the endless decisions to make the trip magical. Brianne’s first questions to me was, “How much money do you think that we will need for the week?” How do you answer that question? It is almost impossible to succinctly answer that question. So instead I begin to ask her questions. I asked her how many days she thought they would like to go to the parks. What kind of eating habits do they have on vacation? Do you see yourself wanting to do a lot of side things like Disney Quest, Pleasure Island, the Water Parks, Cirque…? Well you get the idea.

Her eyes got big and she said she had no clue as to how to answer any of those questions. So I replied that I didn’t have a clue how to answer her question either because it is not a simple equation one does to come up with a definitive number. My suggestion to her and request of her was to educate herself on Disney.

I pointed her to Mousesavers and Allearsnet to start her research. She called me a few days later in awe. It never dawned on her that Disney was so big and offered so many things to do. As she started reading she started making a list of the places they might like to eat, rides they would be at the top of their wish list, and nighttime activities they wanted to check out.

Let me digress here for a moment. My DH and I have taken quite a few people to Disney with us over the years and we always end up being the designated tour guides. The “keeper of the schedule” as it were. Everyone blindly follows us everywhere we go and never once volunteers preferences or opinions. So every trip we feel responsible for everyone’s’ good time. That is a lot of pressure on two people who are struggling with their own good time. So DH decided to make one condition on Brianne and LJ if they were to come with us. Their vacation happiness was dependent upon them. We were going without our children and so we aren’t planning on babysitting anyone else. Does that sound harsh?

Anyways, Brianne decided that she liked the process of getting ready for our trip, so I ordered her a Passporter to do some serious planning. I also through a recommendation from timandlesley decided to sign up for Tourguidemike. The jury is still out on whether or not I feel like this was money well spent.