Tips for Planning Your Magical Holiday

When planning a Disney holiday in Walt Disney World it might be a bit overwhelming, at least for first timers. There is so much information on Disney's own website and recommendations from people who has been going to Disney many times, the most important thing is to make the holiday the most magical for your family

Here are few tips that I found useful when planning our first Disney holiday from home last September. I'm not saying I'm an expert of planning Disney holidays, it depends so much of each family what experience is the most important and the highlight of the holiday

1. Using my Disney Experience app. It is available for smartphones, Android and Apple and it is so useful before, during and even after your holiday.
Beforehand you can make your dining reservation through the app, choose your magicband colour (if staying on site) and reserving your fast passes, depending if they are included in your ticket or you have purchased it as an extra for your tickets

During your holiday it is so convenient in case you want to change your fastpass choices or to check if you are eligible for extra fast passes after you have used your daily fastpass choices or you can even see the daily show times on app and opening times for each park.

There are so many ways how to use my Disney experience that it would take long post to go through all its functions, but I can guarantee that not using the app will make your holiday planning more complicated

2. Dining Plan. This is a subject that can be worth of the price or not. If you know your family loves to go for Character dinings and are planning to do several of them, I would recommend to add Disney Dining Plan on your reservation, it will become cheaper than paying them out of pocket, but if you know you will do only one Character dining, maybe it is better to have only Quick service plan and just save the extra cost for the dinner

This is how we have done for all of our previous Disney holidays, but our next upcoming holiday in November, we have decided to upgrade the Quick service dining plan to Disney dining plan and make several character meals throughout the holiday.
And in case someone is having a Disney holiday on a budget the best way might be packing your own meals and snacks for the park and maybe have a one lunch/ dinner at park and share it with children or buy one or two snacks on the holiday

3. Photopass. Another extra which may not be included into your ticket, or additional purchase to your ticket. I do believe it is worth of the money, even it may be a bit pricey additional magic to your holiday. In Walt Disney World there are so many photo pass points and you can have amazing magic shoots, regular photos and even some rides has their own photopass point which will be loaded on to your magicbands and there later you can download all of the photos on any of your devices which you like through My Disney Experience

4. Special Event Tickets. Depending what time of the year you are going to Disney World, they are arranging several special events which requires you to buy a separate ticket on top of your tickets you have purchased for your holiday. This depends so much of each family, do they think is it worth of paying extra or not. We did go for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, which was amazing for us, we loved it so much and so we have also purchased tickets for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party.  These are the only special even tickets we have considered worth of the money. I do recommend to buy the tickets in advance in order to secure your place on the event if you are willing to attend to these events, since they do tend to sell out. I find it the best way to book these tickets are through Disney and by phone, but some of you may use travel agents which is where you can also add these tickets on your reservation

5. FastPass + service. If you have this service utilise it. It is such a great feature to arrange and secure your spot at least on the most popular rides in Disney. You don't want to be spending all your holiday in line, this is great way to minimise the waiting lines and as I have mentioned before everything you can do on your phone, choose the fast passes and change them in case your plans has changed and you feel like you can't make your fast pass slot, but before changing your fastpass choice remember, you have one hour time to touch your magicband and join the queue

6. Rest Day. This is really important, I would try to do the rest day, which you can spend at the resort enjoying the pool and other facilities of the resort and/ or go to Disney Springs for a day for shopping, relaxing and eating out. I made this mistake on our first trip, we didn't have a proper rest day at any point, we only had one evening few hours time to go through Disney Springs which wasn't enough, first because we were so tired being in the parks from morning till evening everyday and we just didn't have enough time to explore all Disney Springs

When we are planning our Disney holidays, My Disney Experience app and Walt Disney World website are our best friends. I do not really like to call to Disney and do bookings, I'm do it myself girl and only call if there is a problem. But there are many ways to book your holiday, wether it is directly from Disney or through an agent. It doesn't matter how you plan your family's holiday in Disney there is magic and it will create unforgettable memories

- Tiia