I'm so excited!

[reveal]

I've done Disney a few times and IMO, the perfect age is 5-7. Little ones tend to get tired. Disney makes for some long days and there is a lot of walking.

Then I guess we'll just have to go back again.

 

[Desdichado]

Duncan will be 3 and a half, so it's the perfect age.

Three year olds will tend to love DisneyWorld, I agree, but they also can't ride on half of the stuff that you'll want to ride on. I think my 8 and 6 year olds (at the time, both a year older now) were able to get a lot more out of it.

But yeah, it is my three year old who seems to cling to the memory of it the most. He watches the Disneyworld tour DVD a couple of times a week, he still mentions it nearly every day (it was March that we went) and he still inserts "please help us to go back to Disneyworld" in his prayers every night before bed.

 

[reveal]

Three year olds will tend to love DisneyWorld, I agree, but they also can't ride on half of the stuff that you'll want to ride on. I think my 8 and 6 year olds (at the time, both a year older now) were able to get a lot more out of it.

But yeah, it is my three year old who seems to cling to the memory of it the most. He watches the Disneyworld tour DVD a couple of times a week, he still mentions it nearly every day (it was March that we went) and he still inserts "please help us to go back to Disneyworld" in his prayers every night before bed.

But that's what grandparents are for. They watch Duncan while me and the missus ride the cool rides.

 

[der_kluge]

One word (I think it is one word) of advice: FastPass.

No, silly!

Multi-Pass!

 

[reveal]

1. Don't fall into the scheduling trap. Tour books and such encourage you to run your WDW vacation like a well-oiled machine, get the this by 9 a.m., move on the this area before lunch, etc. I have enough of a schedule and deadlines at work, I don't need them on vacation. Just go with the flow. You can't do everything in one trip anyway.

I just finished making reservations for breakfast and dinner. I usually don't like to schedule too much on vacations but, in this case, I had to since dinners are only available at certain locations since it's inclusive in the package my parents bought. But the plan is to visit a certain park for the day and go to dinner there. Beyond that, screw the schedule. I only make time for FastPass.

 

[Desdichado]

1. Don't fall into the scheduling trap. Tour books and such encourage you to run your WDW vacation like a well-oiled machine, get the this by 9 a.m., move on the this area before lunch, etc. I have enough of a schedule and deadlines at work, I don't need them on vacation. Just go with the flow. You can't do everything in one trip anyway.

I somewhat disagree. I mean, I see the point, and I agree that adherence to a strict schedule, and stressing out about the schedule, are counter-productive, but in my experience, not having a plan is a recipe for wasting tons of time, standing in lots of lines that you can otherwise avoid, and generally having a sub-par experience at the park.

A really strict and detailed plan that covers your entire day is probably a bad idea, but having a good idea of which rides you want to run to as fast as you can, which you want to do using FastPass later in the day, and which you can just fit in whenever you happen to be in the area or have some downtime is important. Going with a three year old makes this even more so. I don't know if Duncan still takes naps or not, but even if not, after a couple of long days in the sun he'll be ready to cash out at very inopportune times. If you don't have some kind of plan, expect to end up ditching a lot of the attractions that you otherwise might want to see.

 

[reveal]

I somewhat disagree. I mean, I see the point, and I agree that adherence to a strict schedule, and stressing out about the schedule, are counter-productive, but in my experience, not having a plan is a recipe for wasting tons of time, standing in lots of lines that you can otherwise avoid, and generally having a sub-par experience at the park.

A really strict and detailed plan that covers your entire day is probably a bad idea, but having a good idea of which rides you want to run to as fast as you can, which you want to do using FastPass later in the day, and which you can just fit in whenever you happen to be in the area or have some downtime is important. Going with a three year old makes this even more so. I don't know if Duncan still takes naps or not, but even if not, after a couple of long days in the sun he'll be ready to cash out at very inopportune times. If you don't have some kind of plan, expect to end up ditching a lot of the attractions that you otherwise might want to see.

Well, we've got the dinner and show reservations. What will probably happen is we'll get a map ahead of time and pick out the rides we really want to go on and try to do them. Then we'll just meander until it's time for dinner or a show.

He doesn't take naps anymore but I know he's gonna be exhausted at a certain point. The first 4 days we're there will be in specific parks each day (Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, MGM Studios). The last 2 days will be spent at wherever we haven't been or just relaxing in general. We only need to be at Cirque de Soleil at a certain time on one day and dinner on the other.

A good, general outline of where you want to go never hurt. BTW, do they rent strollers down there? Duncan doesn't use one but if he does fall asleep, I don't want to have to carry him everywhere. The little guy's heavy.

 

[Dominic]

My wife and I stayed at the Animal Kingdom Resort just when it opened and it was great. The animals really are right there. Ask the front desk for the feeding schedule, and make sure to get up early because we found that was a good time to see them. There is also a sort of viewing platform where you can get a closer look that is between the two wings of the hotel. I distinctly remember seeing the giraffes walk by as we were sitting at the pool.

Only thing about the Animal Kingdom lodge is that while it is close to the Animal Kingdom it is a ways from the other parks, so plan some time on the Disney bus system, and we seemed to a lot of switching at downtown disney.

We also really liked Boma - the restaurant at the lodge. Lots of cool new tastes. And they have a lot of great african art placed throughout the lodge - also very cool.

Have fun.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, we've got the dinner and show reservations. What will probably happen is we'll get a map ahead of time and pick out the rides we really want to go on and try to do them. Then we'll just meander until it's time for dinner or a show.

Well, that's probably good enough. The only thing I'd recommend above that is to run not walk to the headline attractions the moment the parks open. At MGM, for instance, we did Tower of Tower and Rock'n'Roller Coaster three times straight first thing in the morning before the lines showed up; both were impossibly busy, even for FastPassers, just a few hours later.

He doesn't take naps anymore but I know he's gonna be exhausted at a certain point. The first 4 days we're there will be in specific parks each day (Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, MGM Studios). The last 2 days will be spent at wherever we haven't been or just relaxing in general. We only need to be at Cirque de Soleil at a certain time on one day and dinner on the other.

We ended up having to take an entire day off, even. The kids were so exhausted they were sick. Having six days is great though--the longer you have in the park, the less in a hurry you have to be to still see everything you want to.

A good, general outline of where you want to go never hurt. BTW, do they rent strollers down there? Duncan doesn't use one but if he does fall asleep, I don't want to have to carry him everywhere. The little guy's heavy.

Yes, they do rent them. They're great, too.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

My parents are treating themselves, me, my wife, and their grandson to Disneyworld this October!

We just finished going through the list of approved locations that we can eat at since they paid a package deal (there were a LOT of restuarants to choose from). I haven't been to Disneyworld since I was 12 and I'm very much looking forward to Duncan experiencing it for the first time.

BTW, we're staying at the Animal Kingdom Deluxe Resort in a room with a view of the savannah. Anyone else stayed in one of those? Are they as cool as they look in the pictures?

Animal Kingdom Resort is awesome. I didn't get to stay in a savannah view room, but the hotel itself is fantastic, be sure to take one of the hotel tours. Also I will highly recommend the breakfast downstairs at Boma. In my opinion, the best breakfast in the entire DisneyWorld complex. Their buffet dinner is really good as well, but I may be biased since my wife is vegetarian and the head chef, who is (or was, maybe he's moved somewhere else now) also vegetarian prepared us a special dish when we asked him about ingredients used on the buffet. Not that he needed to since there was plenty of fantastic vegetarian fare already there.

One thing to keep in mind with the AK resort, if you don't have a car you will spend a good amount of time on the buses getting to and from parks, it is pretty far from everything except Animal Kingdom.