Disney World Planning – Family Meeting Nights

Hey folks! Thanks for keeping up with my Disney World Planning Series as I plan my September family vacation to Walt Disney World! If you missed the other articles in this series you can check them out here.

I am now  172 days away from my vacation. This means that we have selected the restaurants we wish to eat at and made our dining reservations. Guests are able to make your dining reservations 180 days before your arrival and it is highly recommended that you do so. Check out Chip’s Post on 100 Disney Foods to Eat Before you Die.

There are over 100 dining locations at Disney world and picking which ones you will dine at can be a daunting task. This is why our family has a meeting to discuss our choices. My husband enjoys our trips, but he’s not a super fan as I am. He used to get sick of my non stop Disney talk so our solution was to have a few pre determined Disney planning nights where I could gush and talk Disney all night long.

Our first meeting for our September trip was to determine our dining choices and our must dos. Leading up to family planning night I make sure I have the park hours and dining menus available. Since I know the park hours and have already determined where we will be each night we can plan our dining choices accordingly.

During a family planning night it is important that everyone gets to voice their opinions. It is not just my vacation and I have to be careful to listen to the wants of everyone in my group!

Quick Tip: it is extra fun to have a Disney themed meal on a planning night! I use Disney themed place settings to add to the fun!

This trip will include our son who will be 16 months, my sister and brother in law, my mom, my husband and Me. We determined that since it is my sons first trip, this will be a trip of firsts! Too often we get stuck in a rut of doing the same things over and over. Each individual in our group picked a place to eat they had always wanted to try and never had! We ended up with some great reservations including Le Cellier, Citricos, Boma, Tusker House, Liberty Tree Tavern, and Cape May Cafe. By including everyone in the decision making we are each able to look forward to trying something new!

The next thing we did is we each submitted 2-3 must do’s.

Here they are:

Me: Splash, Kali River, Rock n Rollercoaster

Husband: Everest, Big Thunder Mountain

Sister: kilimanjaro safari, barnstormer

Brother in law: mission space

Mom: Living with the Land, Small World

Baby: Dumbo, Pooh

Quick Tip: make sure you force yourself to try a few new things during your trip! You’ll be surprised how quickly your list of favorites grows as you try new rides or attractions.

These choices become our master list of must do attractions. With this list I can do something super cool using the Lines app on my iPad. Lines is developed by the creators of Touring Plans and is my favorite planning tool. On the app they not only supply you with pre made touring plans, but you can design your own as well! Simply plug in the attractions you wish to see and it will generate a touring plan just for you!  The only feature I wish it had is a place to plug in your dining reservations so it would know when and how long your breaks would be. There is an optimize feature so when you do break you can refresh your plan. I am creating our plans right now!

How do you plan what attractions you will visit? Have any tips you’d like to share?

Related articles

• Disney World is Not Just for Kids (chipandco.com)
• Disney World Dining without Reservations (chipandco.com)

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