A Planners Nightmare

[soniam]

I'm a planner too. I had already booked ADRs and FP for July and ADRs for November. I also use Touring Plans, in addition to a rudimentary spreadsheet in google docs for very basic stuff, ie dining, park, FP. Touring Plans really excels wtihout FP. I still got to do my planning, and I will get to do it again. It's actually not as bad as it seems. Just think of it as a test of your planning and organizing skills. I am also looking forward to having some restrictions that require me to think outside of the box and to change stuff up. This is sort of a planners dream really.

 

[mrsap]

I'm a planner too. I had already booked ADRs and FP for July and ADRs for November. I also use Touring Plans, in addition to a rudimentary spreadsheet in google docs for very basic stuff, ie dining, park, FP. Touring Plans really excels wtihout FP. I still got to do my planning, and I will get to do it again. It's actually not as bad as it seems. Just think of it as a test of your planning and organizing skills. I am also looking forward to having some restrictions that require me to think outside of the box and to change stuff up. This is sort of a planners dream really.

I feel the exact opposite! It’s more like a nightmare! All my hard work - booking resort 11 months out, planning park days, ADR days, 15 days of FP’s, all down the toilet. Just so sad all that time wasted for nothing. I don’t want restrictions, I just want Disney back to normal.

 

[soniam]

I feel the exact opposite! It’s more like a nightmare! All my hard work - booking resort 11 months out, planning park days, ADR days, 15 days of FP’s, all down the toilet. Just so sad all that time wasted for nothing. I don’t want restrictions, I just want Disney back to normal.

We often have projects that get canceled at work. People get really upset sometimes. I try to remind them that we always learn new things on every project, which help us at work and in our careers. Hopefully, there was something new that you learned when doing this planning, other than redoing planning bites

 

[piccolopat]

I guess I'm a little of both. I do fully plan our trips well in advance - ADRs, FP+, even a rough idea of navigating the chosen park(s) for the day so I can plan on other rides and any QS we opt to do. I chart this all in Excel and have an index card made out for each day to make it easier to reference. That said, once we are actually in the park, I use the app and frequently change the times for ADRs and FP+ to take advantage of last minute availability and then add more FP+ as the day goes by. My overall goal is to hit everything we want to do while minimizing the amount of back and forth across a park. It helps that we don't normally take time out for parades, don't do meet and greets and actually like watching the fireworks away from the crowds such as behind the castle in MK.

 

[bffer]

I love the planning. My husband thinks I am crazy, but I love all the planning for any kind of vacation. I love the research. I love my spreadsheets. I love budgeting it all out.

I had all my dining reservations on the spreadsheet for our September Disney vacation, and I had jotted down which FPs I was going to try to get. Then everything got flushed away. It was very sad to see each ADR disappear from MDE. I can't wait to see what happens next. Maybe I can update my spreadsheets soon.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Reviving this thread because I know you are my peeps and you would understand and I'm looking fro some planning advice. Family of 5, 2 HS teens and a 7 yo. We got back recently from our "Welcome Home:" first ever DVC stay and had a blast. I immediately went into "lessons learned/mistakes made" mode and had some thoughts. Some background relative to the OP - we were going to stay just Sunday through Thursday, leaving as late as we could Friday, staying in a 1BR Standard View BLT room. Well, flights changed, so we came in late on Saturday and left early the next Saturday. We wanted to save some money and conserve DVC points, so we had booked a night both ends in Orlando. With COVID spiking when we were there, we decided it would be safer to "stay in the bubble" and book those nights in DVC too, fairly last minute. There was availability so we just jumped on the DVC site and borrowed points from 2021, ending up in a 1 br standard view BLT room, Sat-Fri.

OK, Monday morning QB'ing here. That was kindof a mistake. With all the distressed points floating around right now, we really should have jumped on a rental site and rented points for those additional nights and saved ours for 2021. Lesson learned? Who has done that before? Now we are actually one point shy of being able to book the Sun-Thurs stay, assuming the 50% borrow restrictions remain (no reason why they wouldn't). Looking for advice now; should we buy a one-time-use point from Disney to complete this, or look to renting points for part of the stay? Adding to the complexity; we may not do Disney in 2021, so I don't really want to tie ourselves financially - yet. Could be we'll book Sun-Wed or something like that, then hope the additional day is still available later. Thoughts on this? Same 1BR Standard View BLT would be our preference when considering availability.

Moving on;
The original plan was to do 4 days in the parks and a day in a water park. That would have been PERFECT! We bought tickets to do just that doing the 1-park-a-day deal. Well, COVID happened, no waterparks, so we went to Guest Services and did a second day (a Friday) in MK. Not really part of the issue, but that was spendy, as we lost our great 1-park-a-day deal and had to buy a 5-day ticket. It ended up being about $60 a person more (x5). Experience-wise that was a bit too much to be honest, and that second MK day, with slightly larger crowds, was a little bit of a forced march, especially for my 6 yo.

Back to MMQB mode;
The plan for 2021 - same as it was before COVID - 2 park days, an "off" waterpark day, 2 more park days. I am strongly considering a split-stay, Sun-Tues in Boardwalk 1br, W-Th in BLT. That puts us on buses just for Animal Kingdom and the waterpark day. Would this work? I understand we'd have to figure out the sleeping arrangements for the 5th person at Boardwalk (but it is allowed), right? Would Disney move our stuff for us while we were at the waterpark?

OK closet planners - what have you got?