Travel Tip Tuesday

As I approach our Spring Break trip to the World, I am actually getting a little anxious for the first time in a long time about the crowd levels. I have never been at Spring Break before, and in fact the last time we went at a highly busy time was our honeymoon in 1998 which was the week before 4th of July. Our last seven trips have been in low times and we have frankly gotten very spoiled with crowd levels. However, it looks like that is all going to change in two weeks. The crowd levels are predicted to be 10 out of 10 on almost every day we are there. Yowza! That is going to force me to plan even more than I ever have in order to outmaneuver the crowds. With a little help from Touringplans.com, I accept that challenge.

Today's tip is simple....make touringplans.com your best friend! As you begin planning for your trip, visit the site and register. It is a very minimal $11.95 cost for a year long membership (sometimes there are coupon codes to lower this price through allears.net newsletters, so subscribe to those as well). In the past, you had free access to the planning features on this website when you bought the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, but I think now you get half off the $11.95 charge (I haven't bought the book in two years, so I am uncertain if this has changed or not). This website is my absolute favorite for trip planning and helps me out in so many ways. I will try to break down the benefits below.

The first benefit is helping you know what to expect as far as crowd levels for every day of the year. It will tell you the expected crowd number (on a scale of 1 to 10) and also tell you which is the best park to visit every day, and which park to avoid. It also lists the park hours, Extra Magic Hours, and show schedules for each day. There is also a place to click on each day so that you can "track" that day. If any changes are made to the crowd expectations, you will receive an email alerting you to check it out.

The second benefit is access to a very large number of touring plans that will help you ensure you see everything that you want to see in any given park. You choose the one that fits your family the best and it takes you step by step through each park telling you what ride to hit next so that you will have the shortest possible wait times at each attraction. If you don't find a plan that fits your family, the site allows you to create your own customizable plan. You tell it what rides and shows you want to see and it tells you in what order to see them. I assure you, if you follow these plans to the letter as they are written, you WILL get everything done, and then some. When we were on our honeymoon it was unbelievably crowded. However, I had printed a copy of a touring plan ahead of time and we gave it a try. We were done with Magic Kingdom at 1:30 in the afternoon! Now granted, we probably skipped a few things that they had listed, but we did everything we wanted to do. We were then able to go to the hotel and swim, then head out for more fun that night. Although we haven't needed one of these touring plans in a few years due to crowds, I am going to revisit them for the trip in a few weeks. One note about these plans....if you are not willing to get to the park at opening for rope drop, don't bother with the plans. I hate to hear people http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifsay how these plans don't work when really it is their fault because they didn't follow them as they are intended (to start at park opening). I know some people don't like the thought of planning out their every move of their vacation, but I would bet these same people hate the thought more of their children screaming at the end of the day because they didn't get to see everything that they wanted.

One final huge benefit is access to lines. This is an app on your smartphone that tells you actual wait times at every attraction in each park. If you are at Buzz Lightyear in Magic Kingdom and are thinking about heading to Splash Mountain, you can open up Lines and see what the actual wait time is before trekking all the way across the park. It will also tell you the crowd level expectations for that day and the crowd forecast for 10 days. It also has a chat feature on it that allows you to ask questions to fellow "liners" and get help while you are in the parks (or at home planning your trip). I love reading these discussion threads from home as it makes me feel a part of the magic even when I am far away from the parks. Another thing on the lines app is access to the park touring plans I discussed above. It is much easier to read the steps on your phone than it is to keep up with a printed piece of paper all day long!

So, if you are planning a trip to Disney World, check out touringplans.com before you go. Even if you don't pay for the subscription, you have some access to trip planning advise on the site, and you can read blog posts by the staff of touringplans. It is one more way to experience a small piece of the magic away from the real magic of the parks! Happy planning!