5 Steps to Plan Your Itinerary

Disney World is huge. Ginormous. Disney-owned property in Orlando encompasses the same square mileage as the city of San Francisco. So to say there is a lot to do there is an understatement. Newbies sometimes ask me with skepticism if there is enough to do to fill their proposed 4-day trip. Enough to do? You could fill a two-week trip and still not see and do everything.

At the beginning of the planning process I suggest making a list of your must-dos. Depending on how much you know about what you’re getting into, this list could be extremely long, or it might only have a few items.

Ask your family members to name the #1 thing they are looking forward to. For some families, if you manage to do all that, your trip is a success and the rest is gravy. If your must-do list is longer than that, you might need some help deciding on priorities and a plan of attack.

Step 1: How many days at each park?

If you’re staying 5 days or longer, this is easy. You’ll have time for a full day at each park and a second day at a park of your choice. Most families will want to go back to Magic Kingdom for a second day. It has the most attractions by far and is the hardest to cover in a day.

If you are staying 4 days or less, you’ll have some choices to make. Depending on your family’s preferences, you may want to consider ½ days at some parks (if you’ve got the Park Hopper) or even cutting out one or more of the parks to have more time at another park.

Step 2: Which park which day?

There are a couple ways to approach this question. You can order your days based simply on your personal preference. For example, some people want to start with Magic Kingdom as it is the most “traditionally Disney.” Others want to end with it.

If you are planning less than 6 months in advance, your best choice may be to decide on the order of your days based on when you can get the dining reservations you want. You can start booking dining 180 days in advance. If you missed that window, the restaurants you want may be more limited.

If you’re booking less than 60 days in advance, the same principle applies to Fastpass availability.

You can also choose which parks to go to each day based on crowd predictions. There are several websites online that specialize in making these predictions. However, their predictions are often conflicting and can end up being unreliable.

I use a combination of these methods to help my clients choose which day to go to each park. If you have a Park Hopper ticket, you can always leave one park and go to another if it becomes too crowded, but you’ll still need to do some advance planning if you are going to book Advanced Dining Reservations and Fastpasses.

Step 3: Planning Dining Reservations

Timeline: 180 days prior to arrival
The order of these steps assumes you are planning your trip more than 6 months in advance. If you’re planning less than 6 months in advance, you may want to decide on your dining reservations before you plan the order you’ll visit the parks, as mentioned above.

Step 4: Planning Fastpasses

Timeline: 60 days prior to arrival
Now that you have your dining reservations booked, you have a basic outline of your schedule. The next planning task is to book your Fastpass reservations. This window opens 60 days prior to your arrival date (at 7 am Eastern /6 am Central). If you want one of the harder to get Fastpasses like Flight of Passage, you’ll want to be logged on and ready to go 5 minutes beforehand. Many days you’ll find me sitting in front of my computer at 5:55 am getting ready to make Fastpasses for my clients because if you snooze, you’ll lose out.

If you miss this window, don’t stress out. Most attractions will still have availability until at least 30 days before. And I have strategies for how to ride the super headliners without too much of a line if you aren’t able to obtain a Fastpass.

Step 5: Filling in the Blanks

With your dining reservations and your Fastpasses booked, you have a pretty good itinerary already. For some, this might be all the pre-planning they want to do. Other families want a more detailed plan of attack.

My general recommendations for creating a touring plan go something like this:

• Arrive early. BEFORE the park opens. 20 minutes to an hour depending on what your plans for the morning are.
• Ride the high priority attractions that you DON’T have Fastpasses for in the first two hours before the heavy crowds build.
• Schedule your Fastpasses between 10 and 1.
• In the afternoon, take a break back at your resort for a nap or some pool time
• OR, if you have a shorter stay booked, stay in the parks and use the busy afternoons to take in some shows and lower priority attractions.
• After dinner, wait times will decrease – especially towards the end of the night. Use this time to ride any high priority attractions you missed.
• Give yourself about 30 minutes to find a spot to watch the nighttime show.

How do you know which attractions are high-priority? Check out my Fastpass planning page. I have the attractions for each park grouped in order of priority. By that I mean the rides and attractions that will get the longest lines during the day – those are the ones you want to do very early or very late.

A good idea is to have each family member pick one or two beyond those you have Fastpasses for. Of those picks, take the high priority choices and add them to your morning to-do list, grouping them by location. Take the low priority choices and fill them in between your Fastpass attractions and in the afternoon.

As a free service to my clients, I provide personalize itinerary planning upon request. Let me know if you’d like help with a more detailed plan.