Suggestions on the Disney World Autumn-Winter-Spring Itinerary
By Dave Shute
DISNEY WORLD ITINERARY HELP
I get lots of helpful comments and mail—for example see this.
Rarely, however, does a user of the site submit a detailed critique.
David G recently provided one.
Stuff like what David wrote is incredibly helpful in improving this site, so thanks!
David used the Autumn-Winter-Spring Itinerary.
His thoughts on it are below; my responses are inset in parentheses and italics.
DAVID’S EMAIL ABOUT THE DISNEY WORLD AUTUMN WINTER SPRING ITINERARY
Firstly, thank you for a great website which really helped in making a fantastic holiday.
(You are welcome! And thank you for the detailed comments, which are incredibly helpful in improving the site!!)
The best part of your advice for me was ensuring that we planned and booked well in advance and highlighting what to see/where to eat etc. Disney World is very complicated for the first time visitor and therefore it is very helpful to have someone steer you through it all. We used your itinerary to direct where we went every day but used the Unofficial Guide Touring Plans to work out how we moved around the parks when we got in. The combination of the two worked very well.
(While I’m satisfied with the day by day plans in my itineraries, TouringPlans.com‘s park itineraries are the best in the business. The key difference is that mine are integrated over an entire 8 night trip, whereas theirs mostly relate to single parks.)
A few specific comments I would make are as follows:
The Polynesian is a great hotel to stay in and the location is fantastic. I would recommend you add ‘Ohana as a place to eat one evening. This was probably the best meal we had all week and is good for children with the games they organize
(This focus on games is why I send families to the Whispering Canyon Café at the Wilderness Lodge. ‘Ohana at the Polynesian would be a good alternative to that.)
Your itinerary is very hectic and although we managed to get through it we were very tired every night! The rest day is very important. Trying to get back to your hotel in the afternoon for a rest is also worthwhile but difficult to achieve when you have a lot to see every day
(Yup.
In a perfect world, the Autumn-Winter-Spring Itinerary would be a day longer, providing more time for rest. However, this would spread it beyond the “week off from work” model it currently follows. On my next revision, I’ll take a sharp pencil to it and see what I can do to add rest time.
My first thought is to cut the second Sunday morning Gospel Brunch, and shifting the activities of a prior morning to it, creating more rest time…)
I can’t agree with you enough how important it is to get to the parks early. We were visiting in one of the quieter weeks (w/c 23rd October) but even then you needed to get there when the parks opened if you wanted to go on the best rides without a big queue
(Yup!)
I would suggest that you remove one character meal. Although we enjoyed them all I think four is too many. In our case I would have cut out the Akershus Banquet as we also went to the Cinderella’s Royal Table and there are a number of similarities between the two
(A very interesting thought…cutting Akershus would also reduce costs (shifting another meal from cash to the Dining Plan) and drop by one the number of scheduled events…which can get oppressive…)
I definitely agree with doing Magic Kingdom last as that is the one that everyone looks forward too.
However, everyone’s favorite park on our trip was Epcot. Soarin was a real favorite
(Typically, the kids’ favorite park is the Magic Kingdom, and Epcot the least favorite…but actual kids and families vary quite a bit!
When my test niecelets were little, Epcot was their favorite too, and within it Innoventions their favorite attraction.)
Fantasmic was definitely worth a special trip – we went on the evening of our day off
(Fantasmic pretty much tops my personal list of not to be missed attractions!!!)
The Disney dining plan is good, and would do it again, but would comment that it is difficult to use up all of your snacks. I would also comment that all the best places to have coffees/snacks in the parks (i.e. those that serve good cappuccinos etc) do not accept the dining plan.
(Yup. I’ll post more on this issue with the Dining Plan later.)
It may be worthwhile recommending on your website that prior to finalizing an itinerary and booking restaurants that people cross- check the touring plans website crowd calendar to make sure they are visiting the right parks on the right days. We booked our restaurants before checking this and found we had committed ourselves to visiting some of the parks on certain days when it was not recommended and we had to change some our reservations. Changing reservations can be near impossible in peak periods
(I think the world of TouringPlans.com and link to them all over this site. In January 2011, almost 300 people went there from one of these links.
However, their calendar of which parks which day has been my least favorite of their offerings. Even though they’ve recently made a major improvement to how they make these recommendations (for details, see their blog here), I still don’t think they sufficiently distinguish between the best parks for those staying at a Disney World resort (and thus able to access Extra Magic Hours) and for others, nor for those with park hoppers and for those without, nor those on longer versus shorter stays.
The fact that commendably they update their recommended parks based on changes in their forecasts also messes things up, as the changes may not be sufficiently material to justify the work of changing your dining reservations, or the risk of being shut out of well-loved favorite places to eat.
This site’s recommendations on which park which day aren’t perfect either by any means, but they are based directly on this site’s instructions and integrated into its itineraries. For how they are built, see Which Days at Which Park at Walt Disney World.)
I hope these comments are useful. Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks again for a great website.
Regards
David G
London
(David, this is incredibly helpful. Thank you so much!!)
MORE ON WALT DISNEY WORLD ITINERARIES
- For itinerary design goals and the basic December Itinerary, see this
- For shorter and longer itineraries targeted at the same December week, see this
- For itineraries covering all the other parts of the year, see this
- To design your own itinerary, see this
- For rides that might be skipped, see this
- For a comprehensive guide to rides and attractions, see this
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