I am about to embark on my next family Disney vacation and we are busy planning go ride!  Last week we started my countdown of the seven steps to planning the most magical Disney vacation you can have.  We only made it through number 4 before we ran out of time so this week we are bringing you 5-7. If missed last week’s episode, be sure to go back and listen to that before proceeding with today’s podcast.

Here is a quick review of all 7:

• 1. Select Your Dates


• 2. Choose Your Resort


• 3. Book Your Trip Early


• 4. Create a Touring Plan


• 5. Make Reservations


• 6. How to Pack


• 7. Review and Go!

5.  Make Reservations

As we discussed last week, there are some distinct advantages to staying in a Disney resort hotel.  Chief among those perks are the early dates for making Advanced Dining Reservations and Fastpass+ Reservations.  Let’s tackle these one at a time and start with Advanced Dining Reservations, or ADR’s for short.

Advanced Dining Reservations can be made 180 days in advance for on property guests.  While you won’t need to book every restaurant that far out, there are a few that usually require you be up bright and early on day 180.  Here are a few of the restaurants that you need to plan on booking at the 180 day mark:

• Cinderella’s Royal Table


• Be Our Guest


• Chef Mickey’s


• Victoria & Albert’s (especially the Chef’s table)


• Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue & Mickey’s Backyard BBQ, both at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campgrounds


• Spirit of Aloha Luau Dinner Show & O’hana, both at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort

These are just a few of the hardest reservations to book, but that list is by no means exhaustive.  There will be others that fill up fast like Garden Grill in Epcot, the Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom, and the Sci-Fi Dine in Theater at Hollywood Studios to name a few.  My tip is to book any restaurant that you think you might be interested in as early as possible.  It is far easier to cancel a reservation than it is to obtain a hard to get booking after the 180 day mark.  One caveat with this, some of the hard to get spots like Cinderella’s Royal Table require advanced payment on a credit card.  You can still cancel the reservation 48 hours in advance and have the amount refunded, but you should be prepared to have the amount charged to your card at the time of booking.  This is also true if you are on a Disney Dining Plan.  You can still use your Dining Plan at participating restaurants like Cinderella’s Royal Table, but the Credit Card is required up front for booking purposes.

Of course, you need to know where you will be each day before you can make these reservations.  That is why we listed “Create a Touring Plan” as Step 4, putting it just ahead making reservations.  With your Touring Plan in place, you can then begin to compile your list of restaurants you want to enjoy.  Again, this a time to involve the whole family or others in your travel party.  Find out what experiences they are most looking forward to.  Is there a specific character they want to meet?  A Character Meal is one of the best ways to interact with the characters.  If you know someone loves Pluto, then you might want to consider Chef Mickey’s.  If you are smitten with Mary Poppins then you need to look at breakfast at 1900 Park Fare at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort.  If great food is the top priority, look at the different Signature Dining experiences, the wide variety of options in the World Showcase at Epcot, or the incredible new offerings at Disney Springs.  Let desired experiences be your guide.  Once you know this, you can create your list of restaurants and then see how they can plug into your existing touring plan.

Our niece and nephew are in love with Beauty & the Beast right now.  So, eating at Be Our Guest was our top priority when it came to making ADR’s.  Now, I didn’t want to take up too much time on our first day at the Magic Kingdom with a big sit down meal, so I scheduled this experience for the last day of our trip.  By then we will have been on most of the rides and seen most of the shows in the Magic Kingdom.  I was able to score a breakfast reservation and I know we will enjoy it more on our second Magic Kingdom day because we won’t feel the need to rush through the meal and get back to the rides.  I can’t wait for my family to see the inside of the Beast’s castle, they are going to be blown away!

Before we move onto Fastpass+, real quick let’s cover the basics of how to make reservations when the day comes.  You need to have your My Disney Experience account set up online and make sure your reservation is linked in your account.  This is how Disney will know your window should be open and the dates will become available.  The morning of day 180 you can begin making online reservations at 6:00 am (EST).  Phone reservations will open at 7:00 am (EST) that same day.  I much prefer the online system, but sometimes you may have to call in if there are issues booking online.  If it works the way it should, you can have all of your reservations made before 7:00 am even rolls around.  Have your list ready to go, but don’t make the reservations in order of day.  Instead, make them in order of reservation difficulty.  For example, you may not plan to visit Be Our Guest until your last day, but that could be the most popular restaurant on your list.  In that case begin at 6:00 am with Be Our Guest and then move onto the next hardest to secure and so on.  This gives you the best chance of success.  One other quick tip, you can actually book from multiple devices.  If you can, have someone help you split up your list and each make reservations going from hardest to secure to easiest.  Just be sure you are both logged into your My Disney Experience and you have a Credit Card handy for securing the reservations.

O.k., let’s move onto Fastpass+!  To me they are a little easier than ADR’s because there aren’t as many options to choose from when it comes to rides vs. restaurants.  Plus, if you booked early you will have had more time to prepare for FP+ reservations.  The window for FP+ on site guests starts at 60 days.  Just like ADR’s, I recommend having your list of rides that are most important to your group and then pair this with your touring plan.  Don’t make the mistake of booking the most popular rides if nobody in your group plans to ride.  If you think you have to have a FP+ for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, but your kids aren’t tall enough to ride, or someone in your family hates roller coasters, this won’t make sense for you.  Our upcoming trip includes FP+ for Enchanted Tales with Belle, Winnie the Pooh, and the Jungle Cruise on our first day.  I probably wouldn’t have selected these 3 rides if I wasn’t taking a 2-year old and 4-year old to the Magic Kingdom.  However, with no height requirement on all three, these are great selections for us.  So, build your list of rides, determine which ones fit onto each day of your touring plan, and then be ready at 7:00 am (EST) 60 days in advance.

Just like the ADR’s, you want to make these in order of priority, not in order of your visit.  The online system now allows you to book one ride at a time.  When that ride is booked you have the option to continue on the same day or change days.  I just went through this for another trip we will be taking this summer and I changed days in each case.  I made a FP+ for Avatar Flight of Passage first thing, then moved over to a different day for the Na’vi River Journey, followed by a different day for Toy Story Midway Mania!  After my top priority rides were secured, I went back day by day and filled in the remaining two FP+ selections for each day.  This worked well and I was able to get everything that I wanted.  If you want more FP+ tips, we have an older episode you can go back and listen to.  I will be replacing this episode with an updated version a little later this year, but for now that will give you a little more information on making these reservations.

The other reservation a lot of people don’t know about is online check-in.  This can also be done at the 60 day mark for your Walt Disney World resort room.  This is another option in your My Disney Experience, and by checking in early online, you can bypass the resort counter altogether on your day of arrival.  This also gives you the opportunity to make room requests and note any special celebrations if your travel agent hasn’t already done so.  You can pick from several items here, things like ground floor, near transportation, near main lobby, etc.  You won’t be able to select everything, just a couple of your top priorities.  Keep in mind too that these are only requests and Disney will not guarantee that they will be able to accommodate everything.  Still, it never hurts to ask and hopefully you will get what is most important to you.

If you will be arriving after 4:00 pm and have completed online check-in prior to your departure, you should receive a text or e-mail the day of your arrival with your room number.  Thanks to Magic Bands, you can take Disney’s Magical Express, get off the bus and go directly to your Disney resort room.  With your room number and a provided map of the resort you can go straight to the room, touch your Magic Band to the outside of your room door and voila, enter your room!  The online check-in process makes your arrival day super smooth and you can start your vacation right away!  Be sure to take advantage of this anytime after the 60 day mark arrives.

6.  How to Pack

If you use Disney’s Magical Express, your luggage will also be delivered straight to your room.  What’s inside that luggage is entirely up to you.  That brings us to how to pack as you are planning to ride.  Notice I said how, inst