Disney - With Short Notice

Last Tuesday, my husband (a teacher) told me he really wanted to head to Disney for Spring Break.  If you know me at all, you know that I would never turn down a trip to Disney!  The rest of the night was a roller coaster of emotions for me.  I was beyond ecstatic at the idea of going and simultaneously mortified that I would have to do 181 days' worth of planning in just a week!  I felt a little bit like Rapunzel in her "I can't believe I did this!" scene...

First, we needed a place to stay.  Since we had not set aside any money for this trip, I needed to find a cheap place to stay and quick! We have 5 daughters whose ages range from 3 up to 17, so a quick room at the Holiday Inn wasn't going to cut it for the 7 of us.  I found a two-bedroom villa that sleeps 8 at the Westgate Palace for $50/night in exchange for doing a 90-minute timeshare presentation.  So for a total of $225 including tax, we got 4 nights/5 days in Orlando.  If you're interested, call Nancy (407)692-7727.  We already had tickets, but they had great offers that included tickets if you are willing to sit through a 90-minute timeshare presentation.  It benefited our budget that we decided to do it this time.

The second thing I did was hop on DisneyWorld.com to print off park hours and decide which parks to head to each day.  Since we were not staying on Disney property, I was looking for parks that did not have extra magic hours in the morning, since the lines are shortest right when the park opens.  I would probably do the opposite if we had decided to stay in a Disney resort.

We decided to surprise the girls again so I started doing laundry and putting the items I wanted to pack aside immediately.  I printed out a copy of my Comprehensive Packing List and got started.  Then I ran around the house hunting down my Disney pins, lanyards, hair bows, etc.

With a full kitchen in the villa, we found some great buy-one-get-one-free snacks and drinks at our local Publix and then I headed to Disneyworld.com/dining to see what kind of dining reservations were available. There were still options.  I urge you to always make dining reservations in advance.  It's always nice to have a cool place with a guaranteed table large enough for your party in the heat of the day when you've been up since early and plan to continue to play into the evening.

Today, the My Disney Experience app released an update that allows all park guests to access the Fastpass+ feature, even though they can not use the magic bands.  I am ecstatic and will head to Downtown Disney as soon as we've settled our belongings in the condo to get our tickets converted so that we can use this feature.  Although the Magic Bands still have a few bugs, the Fastpass+ feature is amazing!

I will update as I finish out the last day of preparation tomorrow and I will fill in the details of how we tell the girls we are going as soon as we tell them.  They are going to be so surprised!