 Recently we took a trip to Disney World in Orlando, FL with our (soon to be) 12 month old. It was about a week or so before his birthday! It was April and it was HOT. It was actually very abnormally hot for this time in April but you just never know how it'll be so we needed to come prepared! Plus being 4.5 months pregnant!  Now, a little background on me and the last time we went to Disney. It was 2015 and I was actually working in the parks! So it's been a LONG time, roughly 8 years *can't believe I just said that*. The last I went and knew how all of it worked was when they had things called fast passes and they were free. I believe you got about 2 or 3 free fast passes each day you visited in the park you are visiting. When I was doing my research for this new trip with our child and family, I came to realize that these "fast passes" were gone and replaced with something called Genie+. From doing many days to weeks of research, I tried to come up with a plan on the best way to go about our day at Disney with my family and our son. I knew it was going to be a long and hot day and we only had that, ONE DAY! For reference, it was my husband, mom, dad, Cal, and myself. I knew we would not want to be waiting in lines all day long especially with a 12 month old so I had to come up with something! So this is how our day went: Our Schedule: The day before: I reached out to representatives on the Disney app to make sure I was able to connect all the members of our party to my app so I had full control/access to get everyone passes. This helps so that there is ONE person who is in charge of it and you all get the same rides at the same times. It can sometimes get intense so I would definitely recommend doing it this way. Night of/Midnight: You can actually purchase your Genie+ passes after midnight (12:01am) the day that you go. I read and watched many videos on this that said to wake up at 6am and set your alarm to do it then and that's fine you can do it that way too but I was actually already up so I went ahead and tried it and I was able to do it that way. So instead of waking up at 6 or 6:30am, I just went ahead and did it after midnight. The Genie+ option does cost additional, it ranges from $15.00-$35.00 per person per day. Not going to lie, I was a bit upset when I found this out because we used to get FREE fast passes (which this is kind of the same thing) but I'm SO glad we did because it was very much worth it! We ended up paying $20.00 per person so it wasn't too bad. Also with the Genie+ that's different than the fast passes, you can get them all day long vs just 2 or 3 so that was nice. I'll go more into that later. Morning of (I'm talking around 6:30am or so): you will want to make your list in the Disney app (called Tip Board) with your TOP 2 or 3 attractions or shows. I know you have more than that that you want to ride and see, but it's important to just pick your top ones to go to in the morning that are very popular because if you just choose all of them your Tip Board will get bogged down and you may actually lose out on your top choices first! For our top tip board the morning of, we picked
Genie+ Info: You cannot choose another Lightning Lane pass until 2 hours after that LL appointment OR until after you've gone through the line and used it. *Pro tip* if you are staying on a Disney property, you can get into the park(s) early called Rope Drop and just walk around. Some places might be open for you to roam around. So even though it says the parks open at 9am, that usually just means the rides and attractions but sometimes you can get in early and take your pictures and what not. We were not staying on a Disney property so we couldn't do that but that's okay with us! ALSO, when you stay at a Disney property, they typically have great transportation options for you to get to the parks, especially Magic Kingdom so definitely check on that before you drive and park! As mentioned, since we weren't staying on property, we had to drive and park. Magic Kingdom is the largest park and because of that when you park (which is usually around $50) you have to take a tram to the monorail, then get on the monorail all before you even enter the park! Timing:Day of: 7:00am: made Genie+ reservation on the app for all (4) of us. Cal doesn't need one since he's under 2 8:30am: Out the door all packed and ready to go to Magic Kingdom. See below for what we packed! 9:00am: Got parked. Tip here is to NOT set up your stroller for the walk to the tram after you park because you will have to unfold it. Unless it's super easy like umbrella stroller, just carry it compact or at least don't put the kid in it because you'll just have to take them right back out for boarding the tram. From the tram, this is where you will find the ticket office to Magic Kingdom and also the monorail! At this point, you can put your stroller together and your child can ride in the stroller. Your stroll DOES NOT have to be broken down on the monorail! *some hotels have direct access with the monorail, which is SOOO nice* So when parking with Magic Kingdom its; Park ---> Tram ---> Monorail ---> MK Entrance 9:30am: Arrived to Magic Kingdom! From here, we used our magic bands to scan in (Highly recommend so you aren't fumbling through all your stuff to find a physical card to scan in for every ride and potentially lose) 9:40am: Went directly to meet Mickey at Town Square! 9:50am: We were able to secure another lightning lane pass for Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor so that's where we headed to next. This was nice because from all the hustle and bustle of getting just physically to Magic Kingdom, this attraction was indoors and air conditioned!  10:10am: At this point, Cal was so tired and needed a nap so we got him in the stroller, turned the fan on, turned on the portable sound machine, gave him a quick bottle, and used the stroller breathable nursing cover and he went right to sleep! They also have a nursing room we could had utilized at MK. During this time, we went back to Town Square to Starbucks and got some coffee. About 11:00am: During the time Cal was taking a nap and we were in line for Starbucks, I kept trying to get a good time for our next LL. I was able to secure our next LL for Peter Pan's flight! He was still sleeping when our time came to to do our LL so Devon and I went and rode the ride while my parents stayed with Cal. Then we switched! 12:15pm: While my parents went on Peter Pan's Flight, I got us another LL for Pirates of the Caribbean! I was trying to also be cognizant of the time because we did have a lunch reservation at the Crystal Palace at 1:20pm. 1:20pm: We went to the Crystal Palace for lunch and a character interaction! I thought this would be a great way to cool down and slow down for a second as it was in the middle of the day. Take a break in the A/C! This was honestly a fabulous idea and I'm so glad we decided to go this route. I did make the reservation about a month or two in advance so I highly recommend checking on that if it's something you want to do. REMEMBER to include your children, no matter how young they are in your reservation number! 3:00pm-7:00pm-After our lunch, we did a combination of the following rides:
Some of the rides we didn't do that I wish we could had done were (obviously) the roller coasters but being pregnant it's not advised, Enchanted Tales with Belle, The Riverboat, more Character Meets, and watching the parades. We only had one day though and Cal is so young so some of the other things didn't really make sense to do for this trip. Cal got in one more nap mid-day after we had lunch around 4:00pm. We did a switch with my parents for Haunted Mansion when he took his second nap. We hung around that area of Rapunzel's bathrooms for charging our phones and his naps because it was close to a lot of things! Another thing we did was made sure to get the amazing and famous Tropical Serenade at Aloha Isle.  Around 7:30pm, we were trying to make the decision on if we wanted to stay for the fireworks or not. It would be at 9:00pm and we were starting to get exhausted and we actually did not have Cal's earphones so we decided to go ahead and start heading for home! Not only that but, if we stayed, there always a mad dash for the parking afterwards and we probably wouldn't get home until around 10:30-11pm But before that we got some pictures of all of us in front of the castle, of course! It was a true 11-12 hour day but so worth it and we had so much fun! I truly think going in with a plan but also understanding that you need to be a bit flexible here is KEY! There are some folks so prefer to plan the day based on the different lands and that's fine! For us, we wanted to ride certain rides and didn't have many days to do it so even though we may had walked a bit farther to get to those rides, we BARELY ever waited in line! We did end up getting magic wrist bands for all of us. We did this THE NIGHT BEFORE actually, haha! Which I wouldn't necessarily advise doing it that way but we did. We went to Disney Springs the day before and all the google articles said we could get them at World of Disney. I want to let you know that you CANNOT get them at World of Disney anymore. DO NOT go to World of Disney if you are looking for magic bands. You CAN get them at Disney PIN TRADERS! The Things We Packed for our Day at Disney
Things we did not pack but should had:To see the FULL list of everything linked above, just go here to my amazon storefront! Some things are not on amazon though so they have separate links! Kayla's Amazon Storefront Here are just some more fun photos that didn't get a spot above! :) **if you click on some the photos with links, it may take you to a website on where to purchase the items. When doing so, I may receive a small commission on the products. I am not paid to advertise and have not been asked to promote specific items. These are my real opinions, ideas, thoughts, plans, and items purchased because I wanted to purchase them. Only items purchased here with links are items that I would want to share with you!*
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2024
Categories |
RSS Feed