Worst advice you got

[crostorfer]

I'm an obsessive planner when it comes to vacation, (oddly enough the rest of my life is an absolute disorganized mess), so I purchased several guidebooks and joined the Dis, and can't say that I've ever received any bad advice until MM+ rolled out. The worst advice ever uttered, IMO, is "You just need to adjust your expectations". That and, "If you just give FP+ a chance, you'll love it! Our family did!" Quite frankly, I don't give a hoot about your family, or your opinion. Nor do I expect anyone to care about me and mine.

Why? Why should I have to lower my expectations? The cost of my trip has gone up every year, why should I have to lower my expectations to a lesser park experience, when they are charging me more every year? The burden is on the parks to meet my expectations for the increased cost, not on me to adjust my expectations and accept an inferior vacation experience.

 

[Veggie]

We sat on the bus with one other family going back to AoA for an afternoon break. The dad was kind of grumpy and mentioned not doing the dining plan if they return because he was tired of eating at the resort every day.
Apparently their TA told them their free QS dining plan was only good at their resort! We quickly set them straight, but I wish we would have met them earlier. It was day 4 of a 7 day trip.

OUCH! I bet they were glad they ran into you!

 

[nkereina]

I bought into the dollar store poncho advice for our trip last Sept - never again! I bought one for DD5 labeled "Youth Size" but it was just as long as the adult ones! Poor kid had to slosh out of Animal Kingdom in a complete downpour while trying not to trip over her poncho. She was a trooper but I felt bad for her. I won't make that mistake again and am on the hunt for good quality, reusable ponchos for our trip next month.

We tried the dollar store ponchos as well and they were a joke. I found good quality Coleman brand ponchos at Big Lots for $5 a piece. They were the appropriate length with sleeves and an adjustable hood. Also cheap enough that we had no qualms about throwing them out at the end of our trip. However, last trip, we had forgotten them in the room and bought the Disney ponchos in the park when it started raining and they were just as good for maybe only $2-3 more. We've decided to just buy the Disney ponchos when/if we need them on future trips.

My worst advice is to bring a power strip, extension cord, and over the door shoe organizer. Not necessary for us. We're only two adults, so there were more than enough outlets in the room and on both sides of the bed. Never did use the shoe organizer, and on a subsequent trip had bought toiletry bags with hooks that we hang instead that allow us to avoid unpacking that as well. These things might work good for large families or groups holed up in one room, but if you're only 2 or 3, I'd say they're unnecessary.

 

[BuckeyeBama]

You have to watch Captain EO! It is awesome!

I felt like I had been rickrolled.

 

[Bigwands]

Maybe not terrible advice, but things I didn't agree with, necessarily.

Make a special effort to eat at Le Cellier
Do the Fantasmic Dining Package (and we ended up eating a meal we really didn't care about on a night the show was rained out)
Pin trading is great fun

I ate at Le Cellier as a teenager and it is a goal of mine to be able to go back as an adult so I can order what I want and spend what I want because I was in love.

Pin trading though, yawn.

Worst advice: watch Wishes from the other side of the castle by the carousel. This is a specific scenario, but while absolutely stunning, my sister hates fireworks and was genuinely traumatized by how loud it is and we got a few embers in our hair. If you don't have a problem with loud noises though, it's a pretty cool spot.
Also, when we did our Cruise my mom was gungho that we should use the pool as soon as we'd boarded because she'd heard that was when the crowds were thinnest. It was colder than I knew Florida could get and drizzly. Not a fun pool visit.

 

[larryz]

You have to watch Captain EO! It is awesome!

I felt like I had been rickrolled.

Maybe you have.

 

[nat8199]

"Take DME to/from the airport! It's so convenient!" Nope. There is nothing convenient about sitting on a bus for an hour waiting for it to load, not getting your luggage until 7 hours after check-in, or getting picked up 3 hours before your flight home so that you can sit on the bus some more to wait for it to load at various resorts. After renting a car on our last trip and seeing how convenient THAT is, I feel like a fool for buying into the DME myth for so long.

For us the main convenience is not needing to lug 3 car seats with us on the plane. If we stick to the busses, including DME, then we don't need to bring car seats at all, which is awesome and worth a little bit of added time at the airport before our departure flight. (We had no problem leaving almost immediately after getting on our bus at the airport.)

 

[larryz]

For us the main convenience is not needing to lug 3 car seats with us on the plane. If we stick to the busses, including DME, then we don't need to bring car seats at all, which is awesome and worth a little bit of added time at the airport before our departure flight. (We had no problem leaving almost immediately after getting on our bus at the airport.)

When you think about it, though, why is it you MUST have your wee ones in a car seat in a car, but they're "free to move about the cabin" in a bus...? Is the risk of injury that much lower?

 

[nat8199]

When you think about it, though, why is it you MUST have your wee ones in a car seat in a car, but they're "free to move about the cabin" in a bus...? Is the risk of injury that much lower?

It is just like school busses being safer without car seats. Busses are designed to handle the impact of an accident differently than cars. And my kids are not free to move about the cabin in a bus, they must remain seated the whole time.

 

[itchin2go]

I bought into the dollar store poncho advice for our trip last Sept - never again! I bought one for DD5 labeled "Youth Size" but it was just as long as the adult ones! Poor kid had to slosh out of Animal Kingdom in a complete downpour while trying not to trip over her poncho. She was a trooper but I felt bad for her. I won't make that mistake again and am on the hunt for good quality, reusable ponchos for our trip next month.

The other advice you see a lot that I won't follow again is booking a pre-rope drop ADR to get a jump on the crowds. This may be YMMV, but it didn't work for us at CRT last year. Cinderella was late coming out to start the photo ops, so even with an 8:05 ADR we didn't get seated until at least 8:20. We had better luck with Akershus, and are actually repeating it this year, but I won't hinge my morning touring plans on being finished with breakfast before RD.

I did not like the pre-rope drop breakfast either. We did Crystal Palace. It was a madhouse - had to fight for my food, never saw all the characters, and managed to exit after rope drop. No pictures of empty Main Street (if you can even get them anymore) are worth that.

We use the Disney ponchos and find they have worked well. My daughter has a North Face rain jacket that she took to Peru, but the ponchos give more coverage. Let me know if you find anything that works!

 

[BuckeyeBama]

It is just like school busses being safer without car seats. Busses are designed to handle the impact of an accident differently than cars. And my kids are not free to move about the cabin in a bus, they must remain seated the whole time.

Tracy Morgan says that the worst advice that he ever got was that he didn't need to wear a seatbelt while on a bus.

 

[POOHsie]

Back when I was a newbie booking my first WDW trip without a TA, I requested the Military resort discount for active/retired military. I am the spouse. The phone CM told me I couldn't book the room unless the military member would be there, too. I thought she was wrong but couldn't find anything spelling out the discount details. DD and I were Disney addicts. My DH -- not so much. He wouldn't go. So I settled for a AAA 10% room discount instead of a military 35% discount at POR. Later I found out for sure the CM was wrong, and it still burns me how much extra we paid that we didn't have to.

But I learned an important lesson. Never accept one CM's answer as the final one. They are wrong a lot. Call again. Look for info aggresively. Question everybody you can. After that first time, I've had other CMs give me wrong answers to my Disney trip questions. I just call again, sometimes up to 5 times more. I'd eventually get a CM who knows the correct answer and the correct procedure for what I'm requesting.

 

[smiths02]

I bought into the dollar store poncho advice for our trip last Sept - never again! I bought one for DD5 labeled "Youth Size" but it was just as long as the adult ones! Poor kid had to slosh out of Animal Kingdom in a complete downpour while trying not to trip over her poncho. She was a trooper but I felt bad for her. I won't make that mistake again and am on the hunt for good quality, reusable ponchos for our trip next month.

The other advice you see a lot that I won't follow again is booking a pre-rope drop ADR to get a jump on the crowds. This may be YMMV, but it didn't work for us at CRT last year. Cinderella was late coming out to start the photo ops, so even with an 8:05 ADR we didn't get seated until at least 8:20. We had better luck with Akershus, and are actually repeating it this year, but I won't hinge my morning touring plans on being finished with breakfast before RD.

Honestly, the DIS constantly tells people to buy ponchos (whether cheap or Disney ones) and drag them around with you in the park. I drank the Kool Aid on that again this year, only I had 5 freaking ponchos to tote around (luckily, we had a stroller). We used them ONCE on 4 summer trips.
We go in June/July. You know what, I'll just get wet. Putting on a poncho is sooooo hot, so I end up cooking in my own juices...and water still gets in from the rain as well.

 

[itchin2go]

Honestly, the DIS constantly tells people to buy ponchos (whether cheap or Disney ones) and drag them around with you in the park. I drank the Kool Aid on that again this year, only I had 5 freaking ponchos to tote around (luckily, we had a stroller). We used them ONCE on 4 summer trips.
We go in June/July. You know what, I'll just get wet. Putting on a poncho is sooooo hot, so I end up cooking in my own juices...and water still gets in from the rain as well.

I can see that. We've only visited in January, October and November.

That said, the advice needs to be different for an afternoon shower vs. all day thunderstorms.

 

[POOHsie]

Honestly, the DIS constantly tells people to buy ponchos (whether cheap or Disney ones) and drag them around with you in the park. I drank the Kool Aid on that again this year, only I had 5 freaking ponchos to tote around (luckily, we had a stroller). We used them ONCE on 4 summer trips.
We go in June/July. You know what, I'll just get wet. Putting on a poncho is sooooo hot, so I end up cooking in my own juices...and water still gets in from the rain as well.

That's what some ppl say -- they'll just get wet. But what really happens is, plenty of ppl without ponchos dash for the closest store or QS place to hide out from the rain. They block the entrances. They block the aisles. Real shoppers and eaters can hardly maneuver thru the crowds of poncho-less ppl who aren't buying anything and aren't eating anything. Just my experience.

 

[smiths02]

That's what some ppl say -- they'll just get wet. But what really happens is, plenty of ppl without ponchos dash for the closest store or QS place to hide out from the rain. They block the entrances. They block the aisles. Real shoppers and eaters can hardly maneuver thru the crowds of ponch-less ppl who aren't buying anything and aren't eating anything. Just my experience.

We actually did just get wet a few times. Or we went into somewhere like Tiki Room. We also tend to only go to the parks until lunchtime or early afternoon, then back to the resort, and the rain was mostly in the afternoon.

 

[jtowntoflorida]

For us the main convenience is not needing to lug 3 car seats with us on the plane. If we stick to the busses, including DME, then we don't need to bring car seats at all, which is awesome and worth a little bit of added time at the airport before our departure flight. (We had no problem leaving almost immediately after getting on our bus at the airport.)

Luckily, our youngest has graduated to a booster and we bought backpack/booster combo thing that I think may be one of the best inventions ever for our last trip. Even the TSA agent at MCO thought it was pretty nifty. However, even if we had to bring carseats, I still maintain that renting a car would be more convenient. You can check carseats for free and the time saved and stress on both ends would be well worth it to me. We've had 7 trips to Disney, and 5 "bad" DME experiences. After our first trip, I thought DME was great because everything went smoothly. But now with more experience and only having "good" experiences for under 30% of the time, I'm no longer a fan.

 

[TXHauntedMansionFan]

1. Only go to the parks with EMHs - the extra hours aren't crowded..
2. Going in the summer is the same as the spring

 

[JoshuaShaw]

"Save some money and buy your park tickets on eBay"

lol no

 

[Ladyfish77]

have breakfast and dinner back at the condo

My DH thinks this is a good idea on vacation. Me, not so much, because I'm supposed to be having a vacation, not doing the same work I do at home!!!

You can check carseats for free

I always brought car seats on the plane, because if I buckled my kids into their car seat on the plane (once the were too old for lap fare) then they were comfortable staying in their seat like in the car. No car seat and they felt they should be free to get up and move around. Do they not allow this anymore?