Let's BLOG How NOT to Plan Disney

You got one shot.  One ticket to Disney for seven.  Five nights. Six days.  Non-stop Mickey and Minnie magic making all your dreams come true and emptying your wallet as fast as you can say Jiminy Cricket!

I'm no worldly traveler.  And I'm no frequent flyer either.  My feet are best planted on this New Hampshire dirt walking through the woods on a snowy evening. 

So rather than advise you HOW to plan and give you all these fabulous tips worthy of Pintrest's Pinner of the Year award, I'll just tell you how NOT to plan Disney.  And leave it at that.

 1. Don't plan the Disney trip for the end of flipping June.  Unless you feel like frying sunny side-up with a side of  SWEAT from your EYEBALL go anytime, any season BUT June. I literally steamrolled myself  with sunblock thinking that hot Floridian sun had no chance of getting in without a passport, and I was still fifty shades of lobster. It was somewhere between Fantasyland and the Little Mermaid ride that children started swooning me asking for my autograph. Something about a guy named Sebastian?  Not my fault.  I sweat that SPF 2025 off just standing in Security Check.  Ironically, you could roast a small cornish hen for four while waiting in the seventeen hour lines.

  

2. Don't overestimate your poor meal planning expertise either.  Because it'll be the first day in Florida.  En route to Sea World.  You woke up early and made a whole backpack of sandwiches, fruit, and drinks.  It'll be RIGHT after you purchase your tickets, and RIGHT before the Shamu show when the Official Seaworld Backpack Inspector will empty that backpack right into the garbage can.  No worry, though.  Bring along the auntie, the same one that tore up the basketball court like a one woman torpedo, and she will go Shaq all over that can to salvage  a few peanut butters and jellies for her family.

3.  Forget about the little outfits.  You know, the new clothes, a few tops, your kids' matching sundresses.  You just want comfort.  At one point you will be swimming in three kinds of something: Shamu spit,  sweat, and torrential rain debris.  Anyone visiting Disney should just be naked in a poncho.

 4. You can fill that backpack, purse, or stroller with a Polar Spring factory of water, but when it's 112 degrees outside and you're sweating your ass off, it doesn't matter what frozen ass treat they have in those carts, you're buying.  It could be a frozen radish on a stick.  You're buying.  A slushie can of albacore tuna, you're buying.  If that cart has something with shaved, slushed, or frozen ANYTHING in it, even if it's 2.3 ounces, even if the Cart Boy says, "that'll be $27.50 each," when you're as hot as hell, you'll say, "I'll take FOUR!"

5.  Transportation.  Have it.  Plan it.  BE it.  We planned on having FREE transportation.  A shuttle service we saw in our resort brochure stated "PAID SHUTTLE SERVICE."  We assumed that meant FREE and ended up stranded come first day of Disney.  After a 'slight' altercation with a front desk concierge that fancied talking in circles at 110 miles per hour, we committed to a taxi service.  It was more like hooking up with a burnt out valet hippie from Hawaii 5-0.  He was the best money for your buck really.  At least that's what the local resort prostitutes said.

6. Autographs.  You'll buy the book.  At the Disney Store of course.  It'll be like 25, 30 pages or so, a page for each character at Disney.  Suddenly, it's Day Four of your trip, that book will be blank, and you're so desperate you'd take anybody's autograph.  Even one of Ariel's twelve sisters, you know, with the knee-length hair and absurdly huge cleavage that no one seems to say anything about, or the guy with knickers on the roof with Mary Poppins.  If you don't feel like waiting an hour and a half for a Disney character autograph, that book is going home with nothing but a signature from a trolley attendant wearing Mickey ears. 

7. Erase the idea that you are going to make some second honeymoon out of this Disney trip. Especially if you bring two kids, two nieces, and an auntie with you. It won't matter if you are on vacation.  Or that there is a four person hot tub with bubbly jets right there in your master bedroom. There will be NO action in Disney.  Except for when you try the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon.  That ten foot wave will make a Pinocchio out of any man when you come barreling toward him, arms thrashing, legs straddling, coming up for air.  Strangely as I was leaving, I was asked many times where I was from.  Those tourists are very friendly.

8. Shoes.  For Pluto's sake, WEAR FLIP FLOPS.  Sure.  You got forty seven miles to walk in five days and normally sneakers would be the sensible choice.  But unless you want blisters or your feet to ACTUALLY smoke at the heel, wear flip flops. Let those feet breathe.  Just be sure to fumigate them in boiled lye once you return home.

9. The rollercoasters. EVERYBODY but your mother will tell you "you have to ride the rollercoasters!"  You got the Kraken, the Mantra, the Hulk, Space Mountain, The Mummy, rollercoasters that will actually state "rides at turbulent speed" "strobe lighting" and "sudden drops and turns in the dark."  They might as well say "YOU ARE IN IMMINENT DANGER OF DEATH." Once you've sat in that line for 75 minutes, sweating and listening to your kids fight about the last purple skittle in your backpack, you're IN.  Your seatbelt is ON and you are going for a ride to the depths of HELL and back again and the only thing that's keeping your skull on your spine is a four inch wide velcro strap.  Refrain from eating any substance that requires swallowing before a ride on a Disney rollercoaster.  Unless you don't mind smelling of yesterday's chicken fajita with a side of chili.

and 10. NEVER be late for a plane.  Even if your valet hippie has you an hour and a half late. Or there's an accident on the freeway.  Or you just DIED on a Disney rollercoaster.  Be on TIME for the plane and sit your dead ass carcass down with your kids before take-off.  Enough said.  And have a magical time in Disney!