Disney With a 1 and 3 Year Old... TIPS!

So this topic will be separated into multiple posts as there is so much to talk about. We are by no means aficionados in all things Disney; however now that we've been twice (once with kids 4 years ago, and once a month ago) we've learned a few things. Knowledge is power and I'd love to share what little we know. First up, I will give you a few tips that we found very helpful.

Henley has been obsessed with all things Mickey/ Minnie Mouse since she was about a year old. She watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse every.single.day. Then, sometime last year she moved from the Disney, Jr channel to the Disney Princesses (and their movies). For the past year she has been bugging my dad "Grampy" to take her to "Mickey's House" so she could meet the princesses. Well he finally caved, and we had an awesome time!

Tip 1. Pick your travel time frame. We picked a week that was between spring break and Easter. Research through multiple Disney travel websites (there are many solely dedicated to which days/ weeks/ months are best to go to Disney). The time we traveled wasn't overly crowded, but it wasn't empty either. The only miserably crowded park we went to was Animal Kingdom, but I'll get to that in another post. Next time, I will probably go after Thanksgiving/ before Christmas, because I would love to see the parks decorated for Christmas, and the crowds are supposedly pretty light during that time. 

Tip 2. Decide which parks and tickets you are getting. Disney had an awesome promotion while we were there, which was a 4 park ticket for $279 (plus tax) per person. Last time we went to Disney, we only went to Epcot and Magic Kingdom, so we wanted to experience the other parks too. The 4 park ticket allowed you to go to one park a day (multiple times a day). You could not park hop, but with the kids being so young, we didn’t need to. Hindsight being 20/20, I may have gone 2.5 months earlier since kids under 3 are free, and we wouldn’t have needed to purchase a ticket for Henley (our 3 year old).

(Jasmine and Henley at Cinderellas Royal Table)

Tip 3. Make any dining reservations ASAP! You are allowed to make dining reservations up to 180 days in advance, and let me tell you… the top spots go FAST! Once we had selected which day we were going to what park (based on the Disney travel websites recommended days- what parks were less crowded on which days), then we made the dining reservations. My number 1 priority was to take Henley to dine at Cinderella’s Royal Table, which is a princess character dining experience. Unfortunately, everything was booked, and even though I checked online for reservations nearly every day (in hopes of nabbing a cancellation), my efforts turned out to be futile. HOWEVER, I called two days before our planned Magic Kingdom day, and they had had a cancellation at 4:40pm for 3 people the day we were going. I will do a full review of that restaurant in another post, but let me just say that I’m glad I could only get 3 of us in (Henley, my husband, and me) as it was very expensive. Dining priority number 2 was to get us a breakfast reservation somewhere in Epcot so we could go ride the popular rides that we couldn’t get fast passed since they start taking reservations at 8am (the parks don’t open until 9am, so if you eat fast, you will beat most people into the parks). I got us reservations to Chip N Dales Harvest Feast at the Garden Grill. We ended up having to separate our reservations because they didn’t have availability online for a table of 7. When we arrived they combined the reservations and all was good (although Everly didn’t think so… she hated the characters). I will also do a separate post on our breakfast at Chip N Dales.

Tip 4. Fastpass! Once you know which days you will be going to each park, it’s time to fastpass the rides you want to go on. If you stay on Disney property, you can make your fastpass reservations up to 60 days in advance. However, we stayed off property (more on that later), and you can only make your reservations 30 days in advance. You can make your fastpass reservations starting at 7am eastern time, which was ok for me as I am central time—sorry if you are on the West coast as this will be more difficult. Luckily, we were able to fastpass everything we wanted to ride. On the less popular rides, you can make same day changes easily. The top ride that we *needed* to ride was Frozen Ever After in “the Netherlands” at Epcot. I was refreshing the fastpass page on my phone at 6am. There was only 1 time left for all of us which was at 6:30pm. 

Tip 5. Planning your park hours. If your kids are still nap age, I would highly recommend getting to the parks first thing in the morning (arriving at the gate no later than 30 minutes before they open), staying for a few hours, grabbing a quick lunch at the park (I wouldn’t recommend waiting to eat at your house/ hotel as our kids would fall asleep in the car on the way home and if we skipped lunch they would wake up starving), head back to your house/ room for naps, then hit the park again late afternoon/ early evening. We would eat breakfast at the house (except for the first day), lunch/ snacks at the park, and dinner at home before we headed back. We would also grab a late night snack before heading home (ice cream, fries, etc). The parks are less crowded and less hot (a biggie being in Florida) first thing, and they start to “pick up” about 11am. You can avoid the greatest crowds and hottest part of the day if you break the day up into a morning and afternoon session.

(cooler hanging on our stroller)

Tip 6. Food. The Disney parks let you bring food, drinks (non alcoholic), and a cooler. UTILIZE this feature!! Being such a young age, our girls snack a lot. We made sure to take lots of non-perishable snacks and water every day to the parks.  Goldfish crackers, animal crackers, applesauce pouches, baby carrots, and water were all things we would take. We ended up taking sandwiches in our cooler once but they got mushy and smashed, so it wasn’t worth it. Having the cooler with drinks was a life saver. But a good tip is that all food vendors (if they have it) will give you as many free cups of ice water as you want. We took spill proof cups of water for the girls (I also took the 2oz bottles of formula for Everly as they don’t have to be refrigerated and pack easily), and cup tethers so if they dropped (or threw) them out of the strollers, the cups weren’t lost. 

Tip 8. Magic Bands. If you stay on property they will send you magic bands in the color of your choosing. However, if you stay off property, you have to purchase those separately. On our first trip in 2013 we didn't purchase the MB's as we didn't fastpass many rides and only went to two different parks. This time they were a necessity! When you enter a park, or go through a fastpass line, you have to "scan" either the card you get (that acts as your ticket) or your magic band. I can't tell you how many times I tried to pull my card out in 2013 only to have contents of my purse or wallet fall out everywhere. It just isn't practical to need to whip your card out every time. Since you wear the magic band (it's water proof) all you have to do is put your wrist up to the scanner. You can get magic bands that are solid colors pretty reasonable (about $12 each), but they start to get pricey if you want a character/ design on them ($22+). We purchased solid colors for the adults and got Henley a princess magic band.

Tip 7. Rent car. If you rent a car (not needed if you are staying on property), be sure and call a few times the day you are arriving to make sure your car is ready. We had two rent cars on hold (one wouldn’t fit all of us and all of our luggage), ours was reserved at Hertz (my parents are Gold members), and my mother in law’s reservation was at Avis. It took us both 1.5 hours of standing in line, then waiting for a rent car to be returned for both of us to get our cars. I can’t imagine how long the wait would have been if we didn’t have Gold status. 

Hopefully these tips will help in the planning of your trip to Disney. Next I will post a day to day breakdown of what we did!