A few days ago I gave you some tips on how to survive Disney World (the Magic Kingdom to be specific) with little ones in tow. One tip that I didn’t mention is that a little planning can go a long way.
I talked about planning your meals and making reservations well ahead of time so that your little munchkins are not starving by the time you sit to eat. However, today I want to let you know about some great tools that you can use to plan your trip.
First there are the free DVD planning kits. You can order them online and Disney World is only too happy to send them to you. They certainly do make everything easier. You can also go online and register with their website (a brilliant marketing strategy because once you do that they have your information forever and ever). Once you’re registered you get e-mails with the occasional coupon, information on current happenings and other sundries. It is definitely worth it in my opinion. You can also go through the website, pick out the things you want to do and add them to a favorites list.
These are all great things to do and honestly, the more you plan, the more money you’ll save on your vacation. If you have young children like I do, planning the trip is an absolute must–even if you think you’d like to be more flexible–plans at Disney World never hurt.
However, the niftiest planning tool that I found was customized keepsake maps. Go take a visit at the Disney website and you can click on this link. It will guide you through step by step on how to make a customized map. Basically, you go through and click on the various places you’d like to visit, restaurants where you’d like to eat and just about anything else your heart desires. So say you’re going to Magic Kingdom and you know that your 3 year old would love Toon Town, your 5 year old would love the World of Tomorrow and your tween would love Splash Mountain. You can list all of those on your map. . .the site has very clear directions. (Even my grandma could do it!)
The maps take two weeks to deliver and we didn’t discover this nifty feature until right before our trip. Instead of having the map to guide us, we went to the website and ordered the map customized with the things we did. Either way, it will make a nice souvenir for our kids to remember their trip. The best part? It’s all free!
Check out more ideas on how to save money at Disney World!
Other information about Disney’s theme parks!