Wondering how to begin planning your Disney trip? Whether you are planning your first or your fiftieth trip to Walt Disney World, there are certain things you must do to prepare. Taking a little time before you travel will improve the quality of your trip substantially. Are you ready to plan your Disney vacation? Here are my top 5 must-do’s before you leave home.
Decide Upon a Budget
I know it’s not exciting to think about how much you want to spend on your trip, but Disney can be EXPENSIVE. Once you are on vacation, it’s also really easy to let things slide and justify purchases you’d never make at home “because after all, we are on vacation.” Sound familiar? So, take even half an hour and think about what your spending limit is for areas like park tickets, food, lodging, extra activities, and souvenirs. Even if it’s a rough estimate, it gets you to start thinking critically about your expenditures which will help you think twice before making foolish purchases.
Insider Tip: If you are looking for specific ways to save money for your next vacation (so you can do more!), check out my FREE guide 5 Tips to Help You Save Money for Your Next Vacation.
Sign up for My Disney Experience when planning your vacation
This website/app is a must for planning and executing your Disney vacation. It’s free, and you can start by signing up at My Disney Experience, but make sure to also download the app for your phone. Once you are in the parks, you can use the app on the go to check wait times, book additional fastpasses and reserve dining among other things. It’s so useful! So go ahead and create an account now and then spend some time in the next few weeks familiarizing yourself with the app – it’ll make the actual trip so much easier.
Book Dining Before Your Next Disney Trip
If there are specific restaurants you know you want to eat at, go ahead and book dining using the My Disney Experience website or app. Some of the restaurants can be very hard to get into, and if you don’t book them, odds are you’ll have to either wait several hours to get in, or you won’t get to experience them at all.
Although you can also book dining while you are at the park using the My Disney Experience app, if you don’t visit Disney often, it’s probably worth it to go ahead and make those important reservations ahead of time. These days we rarely make dining reservations in advance, but when the kids were little we always booked a character breakfast or two months ahead of our trip so we knew we’d get to enjoy them.
Currently, you can book dining up to 180 days before your trip – and some places (like Cindarella’s Castle, Be Our Guest and Oga’s Cantina) definitely require that kind of advanced planning.
If you don’t get the reservation you want, don’t fret as you can always check back frequently to see if there has been a cancellation (another reason why the app is so useful). Several times now I’ve been able to book Oga’s Cantina a few weeks out thanks to someone else canceling their reservations.
Insider Tip: One other caveat, the more expensive places do require a credit card and if you don’t cancel within the cancellation period, you will be charged a fee, so make sure you understand the policy and can adhere to it.
Book Fastpasses early when Planning Your Disney Trip
One of my favorite reasons to stay onsite is that I can book fastpasses 60 days from our vacation (versus the typical 30 days). What’s really nice is that you can start booking them on the first day of your reservation. So if you are staying at a Disney hotel starting May 1 for 5 nights, you can book your fastpasses for the whole trip 60 days before May 1st.
This is the best (and often only) way to ensure you’ll ride the latest and greatest rides without waiting in line for hours. Well worth spending a bit of time upfront plotting out your days.
Insider Tip: One of the reasons we love our annual passes is that I can go ahead and book our fastpasses 60 days out, but then when we arrive if we don’t feel like spending the whole day at the park where we have fastpasses, it’s no big deal – we just do our fastpasses and then head somewhere else. So much less stress and so convenient!
Start Saving Money
Closely tied to the first tip, now is the time to start saving money for that Disney Vacation. That way when you return home, you aren’t worried about the big bills that are to come.
Something that has worked well for several of my friends is to purchase Disney gift cards for their trip. They buy them at Target or Kroger when they have a gift card deal and save a little money.
You can also save up points with Swagbucks or My Points for merchants such as Starbucks or Landry’s restaurants and cash them in for gift cards for coffee and meals. I love both programs and can easily save up enough for a delicious dinner at Yak & Yeti as well as covering our morning coffee.
Insider Tip: Gift cards are also a great way to limit your spending. If each kid has one Disney gift card for souveniers it makes it easy to stay within the budget.
How do you prepare for your Disney Vacation?
If you’d like help in planning your Disney vacation (and booking dining, fastpasses, etc.) I’d love to help you out – contact me via my Magical Vacation Planner website and I’ll help you create the perfect Disney vacation!
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Great idea to book restaurants in advance. We’ve been faced with massive wait times in the past. I really want to see Galaxy’s Edge!
It can save so much time – and on nights you don’t have reservations you can use the app to see which places do have available spots so you can avoid those lines.
These are great tips! We asked family for Disney gift cards so we could take our son. Then found out baby number two was on the way! We will start again this year!
Great idea! Congrats on baby number two!
man you nailed it! Deciding a budget prior to going is KEY to keeping it reasonable…so so easy to get sucked into things you think you need in the moment.
Right! It’s SO EASY to justify extra spending once you are there.
Great tips! The picture of the restaurant with the bread and pate’s and such…where it that?
Cindy, that’s at Saana at Kidani Village – a quick tip on that is to eat in the bar if you can’t get a dining reservation. You don’t get the animal views, but if it’s evening it’s hard to see them anyway!
These are great tips! It’s so easy to overspend at Disney without prior planning.
I agree – there are fun ways to spend your money everywhere and before you know it, you’ve gone WAY over budget.
All VERY important must-do’s for planning a Disney vacation. As a former cast member, we appreciate when people take the time to have an idea of what they’re doing while they’re there instead of just showing up and seeing what happens.
It makes the trip so much better, right? When you were a cast member, how often did you get asked at what time is the 3:00 parade?
Thanks for posting this. We haven’t been to DW since 2011 and they have made so many changes that it is sometimes overwhelming to think about making sure you have everything done ahead of time that you are able to get done. I will be bookmarking this for when we go back.
There have been a lot of changes since 2011 – Fast Passes alone are a whole new ballgame!
These are great tips! Pinning for later….#Disney2021!
Yay! Having a Disney trip in the works is always a good feeling.
Great tips. Now the parks just need to reopen!
AGREED!
Our family has never been on a Disney vacation, so your tips are extremely helpful for someone like me, who is basically clueless. I will definitely refer to your post when we start planning our Disney getaway, hopefully soon! 🙂
Good! I have so many more, so feel free to reach out – we visit Disney as often as we can so have gotten pretty good at it!
I’m so jealous that you’ve been able to eat at Oga’s Cantina! Thanks for sharing those great tips!
Thanks! The drinks were so fun! Just keep trying to get a reservation – they do eventually come through if you are lucky.
Newbies do not realize how important some of these tips are!
Yes, they can truly make the difference between a great trip and a stressful one!
Sign up for My Disney Experience is a great suggestion.
Thanks – it’s a must in my book!
I like the fastpasses. They make a difference.
I agree! We almost never wait more than forty minutes for a ride – it’s just not worth the time!
These are great travel tips for Disney!
Thanks!
The dining plan sounds like such a great idea! Disney’s food is always amazing!
Yes, I agree!
Saving money and time together takes strategy. Thanks for the tips
so true!
I have never booked fastpasses before. I will do it for sure next time! Thanks for sharing these great tips on how to plan for your Disney vacation!
It will make your day so much better!
What great tips. All are super useful. I never thought of getting gift cards in advance to save. Great tip
I plan on taking my oldest granddaughter to Disney in the next few years. Thanks for the tips!