Disney...An Overview of Our Trip

I still haven't looked through all the pictures, but I think I can at least take a few minutes now to sketch out the basic choices we made about our Disney trip.  Not sure if anyone cares...or will find it interesting...but I found the whole planning process to be pretty involved.  Perhaps some of my hindsight would help someone.  Or not.  Maybe you'd rather go watch a rerun of the Andy Griffith show like my kids are doing.  I'm fine with that.

Park Tickets:
We went with the basic 1 park per day tickets.  We found that 1 park was enough for each day, and we didn't miss having the Park Hopper feature.  If we had stayed less than a week, maybe I would feel differently.

Schedule:
We spent 2 full days in the Magic Kingdom, 2 full days in Epcot, 1 day in Hollywood Studios and 1 day in Animal Kingdom.  I thought this was the perfect amount of time per park.  By the end of the week we felt like we had seen everything we wanted to see in every park and we were ready to come home. We did make the mistake of going to the Magic Kingdom on Saturday night after our flight.  It was a Z.O.O., and we were very tired.  I wouldn't do that again.

Accomodations:
We stayed at Pop Century, which is a Value Resort.  Not sure where the Value part came in, but it was cheaper than most of the other Disney resorts.  We had two connecting rooms, which worked pretty well for us. We didn't actually spend much time in our rooms...we pretty much just crashed there every night...so I didn't miss the plush features of the nicer resorts.  But our kids are older and can go all day.  I can see how someone with younger kids might want a little more space, or a washer/dryer in the room.

Food:
We bought the dining plan that allowed 1 Table Service meal, 1 Quick Service meal, and 1 Snack per person per day.  I think it was probably worth it, but I would be more careful next time about where we used our Quick Service credits.  More on that and where we ate in a later post. We had some basic groceries delivered to our room so that we could eat breakfast before we headed out.  This kept us from wasting meal credits at breakfast...plus it saved time.

Miscellaneous:
1. Disney coffee stinks.  It is Nescafe.  It is Disgusting.  Go to AllEars.net to find places at Disney that sell real coffee.
2. Many people find the refillable mugs to be a great deal.  We found them to be a ripoff.  You can only use them in the hotel, we don't like Nescafe, the iced tea was also made from a powdered mix, and we don't drink much pop.  That didn't really leave much to fill our mugs with.  I'm pretty sure we didn't use $32 of teabags during the week.
3. We all (with the exception of J-Man) carried backpacks in the park every day.  I'll share more later about what everyone carried and how it worked out.  I'll say now that the most important item in everyone's bag was bottled water.  I did not once have to listen to anyone complain about thirst.  A minor miracle.