Last week, I talked about what got the Disney Trip started and nailing down a hotel and transportation. Now, we’ll get into planning around the parks themselves.

Tickets

After booking our room, we got out park tickets. If you’re staying at a Walt Disney World Resort, you can purchase tickets when you purchase your room as a bundle. However, I was able to use Tickets-at-Work to get a discount on our tickets. You can check if your job offers this as a benefit. The same discount is offered if you have a Sam’s Club, Costco, and/or AAA membership.  You can also get a discount if you’re a Florida resident or in the military.

My friends and I got the 4-day single park tickets. You can get park-hopper tickets to visit two or more parks in a day. This was possible but we knew were less likely to do that. And park-hopper tickets cost more.

Reserving for Parks

Update: After January 9th, 2024, Disney World will no longer require park reservations.

If you bought your tickets through the Disney website they should already be connected to your Disney account. If you buy them through a discount site, make sure to link your tickets to your account so you can reserve park spots.

Because of the pandemic, Disney adapted a reservation system to see how many people are in the park at a time.

Once you have your tickets, chose which day you’ll be in which park. Do this ahead of time to avoid not being able to go into the park for the day you want.

 Tip: Use crowd trackers to find the least busy day for each park. I used Undercover Tourist but you can use whichever is best for you.

Magic Bands

Magic bands are wristbands that you can buy that will house your park tickets. If you stay on a Walt Disney Resort you can use it a room key as well. Magic bands are not required for your park tickets but they can be a cute, convenient and fun souvenir that you can use each time you go to Disney World.

You can buy magic bands on the Disney website, from the parks themselves, or the resorts gift shops. If you buy them ahead of time, you can get a discount and have it personalized with your name.

We ordered ours online ahead of time. I wanted to ship our magic bands to the resort so we could just pick them up there but the Disney site kept giving me issues so I had to have them all shipped to me and I packed them for the trip.

The magic bands were really helpful. We used them for our room, our tickets, and our fast passes when we gave in and bought some. Since the trip, Disney added MagicBand+ which is a rechargeable band that lights up and interacts with different things in the parks.

Itinerary

After reserving park spots and getting our magic bands, I wanted to put together an itinerary for inside the parks. This will make it easier to go through the park if you have an idea of what rides you want to ride and restaurants you want to go.

Restaurant Reservations

If you want to eat at a restaurant either in the parks or at one of the other resorts, be sure to make reservations as soon as it’s available.

Staying at a Disney resort will allow you to reserve 60 days before the start of your stay at the resort (meaning if you want to go to the a specific restaurant on your last day of your week long trip, you can still make a reservation for it even though it’s technically more than 60 days out). If staying else where you can make a reservation as far as 30 days out. Reservations open at 6AM EST every morning.

I suggest having both the app and website ready. I was able to get a reservation for the 5 of us at Be Our Guest on the app. This is actually one of the hardest restaurants to get a reservation for at Disney.

If you don’t get the reservation you want, you can always check back for an opening all the way up to the day of. Anything can happen.

Tip: You can also use Disney dining trackers for openings if you don’t want to constantly check like I do.

While none of my friend or I got one, Disney also offers dining plans. This could help with savings money to have a fixed set of meals.

Park Path Planning

Once you have all of your dining reservations out of the way, you can plan your day around them. I did major planning for each park, mapping out how we get there and how long it would take.

I also tried to make a path of how we’ll go to each ride or restaurant at specific times to try and avoid as many long lines as possible.

We didn’t follow the plans to a tee but it definitely helped us ride all the rides we wanted. The Genie+ day passes helped avoid some lines (but you can’t buy those until 24 hours before you enter the park). We originally weren’t going to get Genie+ passes but after waiting in 3 hour long lines we gave in and spent the extra money in two of the parks.

Early Entrance

If you don’t mind getting up early, take advantage of the early entrance hours if you’re staying at a Disney Resort.

This especially helped us when going to Magic Kingdom. We rode about 4-5 rides within 2 hours of being there and that was without the Genie+ passes.

Budgeting Spending Money

Lastly, I wanted to talk about budgeting when it comes to spending money. I’m someone who still keeps an eye on how much I spend on vacation so I’m not stressing about not being able to pay a bill when I come back home. Now, if you got money like that, maybe you don’t have to keep as close an eye.

Make a budget on how much you might be spending each day. If you made an itinerary of where you’ll eat, use the Disney app and website to see how much certain menu items cost. This really help me know how much to budget for food. It’s about $15 per meal at the cheapest not including drinks (alcoholic or otherwise.

Be sure to budge to shopping and souvenirs. For instances, Mickey ears range from $20-$50. If you decided to buy a magic band on the trip, it can ranges from $20-$45. If you know you’ll spend more than these numbers, give yourself some wiggle room, maybe save some more extra money.

Do you have any tips for planning a Disney Trip? Share with your fellow overthinkers in the comments!