Well friends, we are back from our very first family vacation to Disney World, and I wanted to write a follow up post to share with you some things I learned on this trip. Some of them are big and some of them are small but I hope all of them will help you as you prepare for your family trip to the most magical place on earth! Don’t miss out on my other Disney vacation posts where I show you where to start when planning a Disney vacation, a Disney budget breakdown, and our Disney World Fastpass strategy!

Let’s start with the BIG lessons I learned on our trip.

1. Once again, having a Disney travel rep is worth its weight in gold! Working with a Disney travel rep is actually FREE (no, seriously!) and the value just can’t be underestimated, friends. I texted and emailed my rep, Leanne, several times during our trip, and she was 100% on the ball and quick to respond to me and help with any issues that came up during the trip (such as realizing we were going to be late for a lunch reservation). I just can’t emphasize enough that you are doing yourself a HUGE favor by working with a Disney travel rep. You can read more about the process and who we worked with on an earlier post I wrote about getting ready for a Disney World vacation.

2. FastPass Strategy. We really messed up our FastPasses, and if we had gone at a busier time of the year, it would have been a disaster. Fortunately, we went during a low crowd time, so it wasn’t a big deal. Here’s the mistake we made: we thought that once you use the first of your 3 pre-booked Fastpasses, you could go ahead and sign up for another one. WRONG! You have to use all 3 of your pre-scheduled fastpasses before you can get a fourth one. Tim scheduled our fastpasses throughout the day and well into the evening, so there was really no way for us to take advantage of a fourth or fifth fastpass. A better strategy would have been, for example, to pre-book an 11 am, 12pm, and 1pm fast pass so that we could be eligible for any remaining fastpasses later in the afternoon and potentially see/do more. Again, it all worked out ok for us, but if it had been more crowded, our mistake would have meant lots more waiting in line.

3. The Quick Service Dining Plan: Meh. We also took advantage of a free dining offer promotion that Disney was offering, so in that sense, I totally don’t regret having the quick service dining plan because for us, it was free! But let me tell you, if I had paid for it, I would have been disappointed, and there are two main reasons why. First, it is WAY too much food. Quick service meals come with an entree, a beverage and a dessert. The portions are overly generous, typically, so it’s more than one person can eat. If you bought dining plans for everyone you will be wasting a lot of food, and that also means wasting a lot of money.

The second reason I wasn’t overly impressed with the dining plan is because I actually thought the kid meal options were quite limited. Most establishments offer the same 3 options for kids, and when you have a picky eater like I do, that means that she is eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at every single meal. She was totally bored with that by the second day and I ended up packing extra food for her, even though she had dining credits. When you have a child with you, you are required to use the children’s dining plan for them. Otherwise, I would have gotten her something else for the sake of variety.

Ok, so now let’s dig into the minutiae a bit, and talk about things to pack.

What I’m Glad I Brought

There are two things that I’m really glad I brought that might not necessarily be on your packing list. The first is one of those over-the-door shoe organizers. I read this on someone else’s blog and at first didn’t think I would bring ours, but then I had a change of heart, and I’m so glad I did. We used this in our hotel room simply to hold all sorts of toiletries and accessories. It kept our bathroom counters from getting junked up, and since it had clear plastic holders, it made finding things we needed quick and easy. We didn’t hang up many of our clothes, so we just kept it on the coat rack. I will be using this trick the next time my family stays in a hotel for more than a night!

The second thing I’m really glad I brought was a linen freshener. You might think of it as Febreeze, though I use a different brand. Even though it wasn’t too hot while we were there, you still might find that at the end of the day you smell less-than-spectacular…especially your shoes, which will be doing some seriously hard work every single day for you.

What I Wish I Had Brought

We stayed in a family suite for most of the trip (switching to traditional rooms for the last third of it, simply due to booking issues). In a family suite you are actually provided with plates, cups, bowls, forks and knives. For some bizarre reason, you are NOT provided with spoons. I brought one of those plastic cutlery sets that has everything in it, but if I had to do it again, I’d just buy one with spooons, as we ran out of spoons rather quickly. When eating breakfast in your room, as we were doing, not having spoons kind of stinks. Alternatively, we also would have been ok if we had just brought some dish soap and a sponge.

I also wish I had brought extra zip-loc bags. It would have made dividing snacks for the park days easier to do. Just wasn’t something I thought of beforehand!

I would also bring at least one plastic bag for wet clothes that you might accrue toward the end of your trip, such as if you decide to swim in the hotel pool the night before you leave.

On a related note, I think it is a good idea to bring a change of pants, if nothing else, for your younger kids when going to the parks. Both of our girls at various points got dirty (spilled milk) clothes at the parks and we didn’t have new pants for them. Darah actually had on a new dress at one point, and we realized after we got to the park that the straps were too low. We had to buy her a new ($30) t-shirt on the spot. This could have been avoided if we had brought a change of clothes with us.

Notes about Hotel Location

When staying on property, you might want to do your best to see if you can stay in a room that is reasonably close to your hotel’s food court (side note: we LOVED Art of Animation, and we thought their food court had some of the best food we had during our entire stay). You may find, as we did, that your room is quite a hike from the food court. This won’t seem like a big deal at all until you start touring the parks, and then you will be reluctant to walk any more than is absolutely necessary, I promise! Furthermore, at least for our hotel, the food court is also really close to where you wait for the bus to go to the parks, which is yet another reason to stay as close to it as possible.