Davis Family Newspaper
The Mark A. Davis Family in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania
Our Disney World Guide
We have quite a bit of experience going to Disney
World and Universal Studies in Orlando, Florida
and we love to share our experience with others.
We've experienced Disney with our kids,
with our extended family of 24 people, and as a romantic getaway with
just Mark and Jeanne.
We've stayed at several of the resorts, have rented a townhouse, a full-sized house, and condos. We've never had a bad experience, but we have learned quite a bit on what works best for us, and what some of the trade-offs are.
If you are going to Disneyworld for the first time, or if you just want to improve your experience, we highly recommend the Dave Birnbaum official guidebooks (see ad at right). The guidebooks are easy to read and comprehensive. I do NOT recommend the "Unofficial" guidebooks as they take a pessimistic, negative view on almost everything. If you're going to spend thousands of dollars on a vacation, why go into it with a negative outlook? Disney really is the happiest place on earth unless YOU decide that you want to be miserable anyway.
Animal Kingdom (coming soon)
Planning Your Trip
I use this website to plan our trips, setting out some ideas and refining until we get to the final itinerary. Some people might think that this is too rigid, or is overplanned. However, my philosophy is to do all the planning ahead of time so you never need to stop your trip and try to make some sort of group decision on what to do next. Start with a plan, and then if something comes up or people just feel in the mood for something different, be open to changing the plan on the fly. For example, we sometimes make a reservation at a restaurant, and then change our minds based on the way the day is going. We are always courteous and we cancel our reservations so that others have a chance to enjoy the restaurant.
We do the same thing with the park schedule. For example, if the weather is threatening we might change our plans to make sure that we can see the EPCOT fireworks during our stay rather than risking a bad experience. I've spoken with many people who did not do this advanced planning and ended up with only a so-so vacation. They've missed out on some of the best attractions, and they have no plans to return to Disney because of it.
This worked especially well with our large family trip to Disney in 2008. We had 24 people on the trip and it went flawlessly. People did not feel rushed, nor did they feel that they were tied to my agenda like a ball and chain. They appreciated the pre-planning, and also seemed to appreciate that we kept a reasonable pace because we knew what we wanted to do next at nearly every step. I have to admit, we were very lucky with more than one attraction - walking right in to The Lion King show, and being able to get fit our fastpasses with walk-ons efficiently.
Here are a couple planning pages that we've used to set the itinerary. Some of the rationale for the days that we chose for each park are described in the park tips for each park.
Don't expect to get everything perfect the first time. Relax and enjoy the experience, and learn what you can for the next time. At this point, after so many trips, I know what attractions need fastpasses, what a decent wait time is for most attractions, whether to get in the left queue line or the right queue line, how many people the vehicles handle, where to stand to get the best view and where every restroom is. A quick real-time look is all I need to do a quick assessment and make a fast decision on next steps. I was remarking to my family just last week that sometimes I miss the story-line build up that comes from standing in a long line (Disney is great at building the story as you wait). How weird is that.
Disney Pages