Tips and Suggestions for Disney

I have several friends who will be traveling with their children to Disney World in the next few month, and several have asked for tips for travel to the HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!

If you're going with young girls, I highly recommend Breakfast/Lunch with the Princesses at the Royal Table in Cinderella's Castle. Emily brought her Cinderella dress with her and wore it to breakfast. When you enter the castle, you are escorted in line to pose for pictures w Cinderella herself. You're then led upstairs and seated and your table and treated like royalty for your entire stay. All of the princesses (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Belle and Jasmine) each come to your table, talk w your children and pose for pictures. ** If you plan on doing this, make sure you call for reservations early. This is one of the most popular events for dining -- we got our reservations about 4 months in advance.

We didn't do this, but I regret it and if we go back in the next couple of years, I'll definitely do it -- go to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique to have your daughter's hair/make-up done. They do an absolutely tremendous job making your little girl a princess. I wish I would have done this prior to our breakfast w the princesses.

If it's your child's birthday (or the birthday falls sometime around your visit), ask for a birthday button at any of the kiosks or main entrances. When your child is wearing the button, he/she will be greeted continuosly with a "Happy Birthday, name". From personal experience, the characters go out of their way to please the birthday boy/girl and we were given free desserts (mini bday cakes w a candle) at three different restaurants (without even asking).

Attend as many of the parades and stage performances as possible. The performance at Cinderella's Castle is wonderful and the parades are just phenomenal. Our favorite parade, by far, was the "Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it" parade. This is one of Disney's newest parades and it's a huge hit. The parade comes down Main Street and then travels around the circle drive in front of the castle. It then winds around the circle drive and stops. The characters and performers then sing and dance and then invite the crowd into the streets to sing and dance with them. The music is very catchy -- I'm still humming it. Emily had an incredible time dancing w Goofy and just goinig crazy. We found that the best location is right outside the castle as that is were the Mickey/Minnie float will stop.

Attend the fireworks at Magic Kingdom -- I believe they are held every nite. Phenomenal!

Attend the SpectroMagic parade at the Magic Kingdom -- it's a parade held in the evening and all of the floats are lit up with millions of lights. I believe this parade is held twice a week.

You can pick up schedules at your resorts of the parades/fireworks that are occuring each week and the times.

As much as you want to take full advantage of your time in the parks, if you're traveling w little ones, make time for naps or just vegging out. It will make your time in the parks more enjoyable!

We attended another character dining at the Crystal Palace. Their are other character dining at other restaurants in each of the parks. Highly recommended.

If you plan to go back to Disney World, a cute little hobby to start in collecting Disney pins. You buy a neck strap and just pin ithe pins on the strap as you collect them. You can purchase the pins anywhere throughout Disney and then you can also trade pins with workers throughout the parks. We just purchased one pin, Sleeping Beauty, for Emily and plan to add to our collection each time we go back.

Utlilize the fast passes!!!! Only specific rides use the fast pass. Rather than wait in a line for an hour or so, get a fast pass which will tell you what time to come back. In the meantime, you can go on other rides, grab something to eat, shop. And when you come back, you get in the fast pass line and basically walk to the front of the line. The newest attraction is Toy Store Mania at Hollywood Studios. We got to the park at 8:30. They let us in at 9:00 and then one of us literally ran to the Toy Store Mania attraction for fast passes. By 10:00 in the morning, all of the fast passes for that day were gone. So if you want to go on that ride, go EARLY!!!

Get a photo pass. There are photographers throughout the park and will take your pictures at your request. They will give you a card which your photos get loaded onto, so everytime you go up to a photographer, you had him your card. At the end of your trip, you can either view the photos at one of their photo locations near park entrances or you just bring the card home with you and you can look at the pics online. Altho I found that many of the photographs were just as good, if not better, than theirs, there were a few shots that I was unable to get that they did.

OK, I'll stop rambling, but there's just so much to do at Disney!!! If you have specific questions, check out DisneyWorldMoms.com. This is a panel of 16 moms who are "experts" on Disney. You can ask them anything and they will respond quickly. (A friend of mine, Margaret, is one of the 16 selected out of 30,000 applicants.)

Have so much fun!!!!!!