Okay, you didn't ask for them & you probably didn't even want them BUT I'm going to share them anyway
Here are my biggest tips & takeaways from our trip.
To recap, here are our particular details/dynamics:
- The WHO: 30 year old wife (me), 40 year old husband, 2 year old son, 3.5 year old daughter. 82 year old grandpa (my father in law), 74 year old grandma (my mother in law).
- The WHEN: September 7th-14th, 2022 (arrived 2 days after Labor Day)
- The WHERE: stayed offsite at Wyndham Bonnet Creek. 10-15 minute drive to each park.
- The WHAT: regular, non park hopper tickets, Genie+ purchased (we bought in advance for our whole trip before the rule change occurred) for all 5 park days, Memory Maker purchased in advance as well.
- The BUDGET: $4k for our family of 4 (which is pretty much spot on with what we ended up spending on everything- hotel, airfare from MN, park tickets, rentals, parking, groceries for the hotel as well as food/drinks in the parks)
My opinions on….
*AGES OF TRAVELERS: I feel like this was the perfect age for our kids. The excitement, the wonder, the magic- it was all there! There were so many times I found myself teary-eyed, just feeling so unbelievably lucky to witness the magic through their eyes. Was it tough with two toddlers? Sure. But sometimes we have just as tough of a time walking through Target or even sitting in our own living room.. So why not take those challenges on the road & create lifetime memories? If not for the kids (I know the naysayers will argue “they won’t even remember it!”), then definitely for me. I know without a doubt that I will never forget this trip. So in my opinion, the ages of 2 & 3 were perfect. Now my in-laws… that is a different story. They struggled. We rented an ECV for my FIL and that had its own list of challenges (increased time for him to find parking, him navigating the crowds & people who stop right in front of him, his own occasionally-scary driving, worrying about him flying down the 6” gap between the monorail & the station, etc.) and advantages (having an entire monorail car to ourselves, front row seating for shows, handicapped parking at the parks, etc.) but even with the
scooter this trip took a huge toll on both of them. The heat was intense, it was a LOT of walking, and even the crowds (which were low) were overwhelming for them. Everyone’s mobility and stamina are obviously different, but just sharing our experience for you to keep in mind when traveling with elderly grandparents.
*THE RESORT (Wyndham Bonnet Creek): we rented via VRBO, and holy moly was this place absolute perfection. There is no way I’ll stay elsewhere (unless of course I win the lottery
) for future trips. If you are on a budget and can’t afford to stay onsite (or just don’t want to! Rooms & living space aplenty, amenities galore… this place way outranked the AoA family suites), THIS PLACE IS FOR YOU. It had everything- and I mean everything. A full kitchen (stocked with everything you need! Pots, pans, blender, coffee maker (& filters), dishwasher, soap, wash cloths, sponges, paper towel), in-unit laundry (soooooooo nice! I was able to bring half the amount of clothes since I knew I could wash our sweaty clothes & re-wear them in subsequent days!), 5 pools, a lazy river, a playground, crafts and activities/shows, an ice cream shop & countless bars/restaurants, the staff were SO above and beyond helpful (helping us unload our groceries stands out in my mind, as well as the mishap with our stroller/ECV/rain cover being misplaced- bell services did not stop until the missing items were found). Bottom line: this place is the shizz. We will 100% for sure be back.
*STROLLER SET UP: The double stroller we rented came with: a drink holder/parent console (holds 3 beverages), child snack trays, stroller bag hook, cooler bag, & a rain cover. I bought a cheap cloth "over the door shoe organizer" on
Amazon & cut it in half, sewed the two halves together and zip tied them to the stroller handle. The goal here was to have the most frequently accessed items in our stroller basket/park bag more easily accessible. We kept it empty until inside park for easier stroller collapsing/assembly as well as for security/bag checks. Once inside, we used it to hold: sunscreen (avoiding direct sunlight obviously), napkins & wipes, non-melting snacks, my kids hats, sunglasses, and Mickey ears as they would take them off throughout the day, etc. It was nice to not have to dig through a backpack every time we needed wipes (often) but I understand this could have made for easy pickings for WDW thieves. Use your own discretion- we never had anything taken, but also didn’t bring anything of value
& also didn’t visit Disney Springs this trip, which seems to be a hotter spot for thieves than the parks themselves. Also on the topic of “stroller set up”, I brought a ton of sippy cup leashes/straps- we used them for attaching things to the stroller we didn’t want the kids to accidentally drop. Their water bottles, pouches filled with pre-portioned bags of goldfish/pretzels/carrots etc., fans, that sort of thing. You could also use a pacifier clip too- anything to avoid your kid dropping their water bottle 500x a day, amiright?!
*OUR PARK STRATEGY: we flew in on a Wednesday and knew we wanted to avoid the parks on the weekends if possible. Not sure if there’s much rhyme or reason to that nowadays, but it made sense to us and to an extent, it worked. We initially had planned:
- Thursday MK
- Friday AK (this was a MNSSHP day so we anticipated higher crowds at AK)
- Saturday Epcot (mom & dad only, no kids
)
- Sunday Rest Day
- Monday DHS
- Tuesday MK (MNSSHP day so we anticipated lower crowds at MK this day)
((As you may recall that's not how it ended up working out, since that storm on Day 1 caused us to shift our plans to visiting MK again on Friday and skipping AK this trip.
))
Our kids wake up early (6:30am most days) & go to bed early (7:30pm) so we knew (offsite) rope dropping made sense to us. We also knew we wouldn’t make it to fireworks, but that’s okay. This won’t be our only trip, so we were okay with avoiding the shoulder to shoulder anxiety inducing crowds during fireworks and being in bed at that time instead. Whatever works for your family!
*GENIE+ STRATEGY: We had Genie+, but hardly needed it due to crowd levels. But in the afternoons & at the busier parks (HS & Epcot) the times we did need it… yes I’d say it was worth it. Using it is pretty intuitive once you’re in the parks, but I still recommend studying ahead of time. Watch YouTube videos, join the Facebook groups, watch the trends in the weeks before you go. Learn which rides sell out and when, and watch the wait times so you don’t “waste” a LL when the ride has a 5min standby. The first half of our first day we wasted tons of LL since they were all walk-ons. My kids wanted to go back on rides later in the day and we couldn’t since by then they had a longer wait time & we had already used a LL. Because of the ages of our kids, our Genie+ strategy was the old FP “tap & grab” method to avoid as much waiting in lines as possible. Doing this, we didn’t go for “big hitter” rides, and focused instead on little rides, which had the most LL availability… but also in turn often had the shortest wait times. So it was kind of a flop because of the time of year we traveled (especially with 2 of our MK days being MNSSHP days which also resulted in lower crowds & wait times) but if it were busier I would 100% recommend. I guess overall, my biggest Genie+ tip would be to not use a LL if a ride has a <15 min standby wait time. Save the LL for the afternoon (assuming it’s available) when the wait times are longer.
MY RANDOM TIPS/TRICKS:
- Bring one good quality pair of tennis shoes (my recommendation is listed later), and one good pair of sandals. Keep a plastic bag with the sandals, your ponchos, your stroller’s rain cover (if applicable) in the bottom of the stroller or in your park bag. Call this “the rain bag”. As soon as the skies start looking like it might rain, bring out that rain bag & switch out your footwear, put on the poncho & put the rain cover on the stroller. Do not wait for it to start raining- be ready ahead of time so you’re not scrambling when the skies open up. On our Epcot day we weren’t prepared and it took our tennis shoes a FULL DAY to dry out. Definitely skip the headache and bring sandals to switch into for when the rain inevitably comes. PLUS- it felt sooooo nice to switch our shoes for a few hours.
- If you don’t want to take a midday hotel rest (I highly recommend for all parks except for MK), book an ADR during the hottest part of the day (we made ours for 1:30pm) for a sit down restaurant to force yourselves to rest & get out of the heat. If TS meals aren’t in your budget, make a Mobile Order for a QS ahead of time- again forcing you to sit down and rest while the sun is beating down.
- Harmony Barber Shop: 1) DO IT. The staff were so sweet and patient, you can tell they really love their job!! 2) Pick the 12:20 time slot! My kids got the best seat in the house for the parade while they got their haircuts, and— see previous bullet point — AIR CONDITIONING! They got to watch the parade from the soft cushy barbershop chair, in the AC, and when they were done with their haircuts they got to run outside and see all the characters from super close up! No scouting out a spot, no waiting in the brutal sun, it was just perfect. Well worth the $20! **note: bring cash!! Stylists cannot accept gratuity unless it is in cash**
- Bring your own hand sanitizer. I saw maybe 1 or 2 stations throughout the parks and half the time they didn’t work. Now, that being said….. We sanitized before & after each ride, washed our hands at least every 2 hours, avoided buses, had Genie+ so avoided long queues as much as possible… and still came home with the ‘vid. Sigh.
- Bring an empty *SEALABLE* coffee mug from home if you’re a coffee drinker. Firstly, it’s hot out. Iced coffee does not stay “iced” for very long. Secondly, it would have been nice to pour our coffee in there, shut the lid & hop on a ride.
"MUST HAVE” ITEMS I use quotation marks because I bought/packed a few “must have” items that other people swore we would need and they went untouched. This is obviously very subjective, and frankly you won’t know til you’re there. So take it with a grain of salt.. but here are mine:
- Footware: our Brooks Ghost 14 (womens) & Brooks Levitate 5 (mens) were amazing. We had zero blisters, experienced zero foot pain, had zero problems. The amount of posts I saw both on the DIS & in the large Facebook groups regarding footwear had me convinced I’d have bloody stumps for feet by the end of my first day. I brought tons of moleskin (+ scissors), Body Glide, blister bandaids, baby powder, spray on deodorant, allllll the feet “hacks” and honestly did not touch any of them because our shoes + good, padded compression socks did all the work for us. We also tried to walk 2-4 miles a day for 6+ months leading up to the trip. It’s not much, but I do feel like it helped prepare our feet (& break in our shoes!) somewhat.
- Backpacks: we brought one large backpack for our “just in case” items we didn’t need to access often (first aid items, spare outfits in case of spills, etc.) and we hung this on the back of the ECV or on the double stroller via a stroller hook, and then also brought a small backpack that I wore at all times. It was the perfect size, and held a small fan, a couple granola bars/applesauce pouches, some dum-dum suckers as an absolute emergency (which we did need to break out once when Winnie the Pooh broke down!), a couple individual Wet Ones wipes, a small pack of Kleenex, some hand sanitizer, and a bag of small fidget toys that the kids had never seen before.
- Portable charger: I only used it once, and that’s only because I found out that my Apple Watch charger was unplugged the night before and so my watch hadn’t charged. So not a “must have” in my experience (and we did have Genie+ so were on our iPhone 13s a fair amount), but I still think it’s worth taking up the minimal luggage space as a “just in case”. I can’t imagine my phone dying and not being able to take pictures or videos of my kids!
- At least 1 large (32oz) insulated water bottle, and 1 small (14oz) insulated water bottle, + carabiners to hang them. We filled ours up with ice, then topped off with water at the start of our park days. Then, throughout the day, either used the stations or asked for free ice water at the QS restaurants to refill. The ice lasted us throughout the day, and we never were without water. We also froze 2 plastic water bottles (dumping a little out first, obviously) and used those as ice packs in our lunchbox we brought with snacks for the kids. We didn’t find ourselves drinking that frozen-then-thawed water, because again we didn’t need it, but it was nice to use to pour on our cooling towels, or straight up on our heads/bodies in the blazing sun! I referenced the smaller water bottle because on our Epcot day, we want sans kids.. and obviously sans stroller! That was a challenge- going from being able to bring buttloads of stuff since we could haul it all in the stroller, to only a teeny backpack and that’s it. I used the carabiner to hook the small water bottle to my back pack, and it worked great. It obviously required more frequent filling up, but since it was Epcot… well we stopped at QS places more often anyway
so we just made it a habit of every time we bought an adult beverage asking for a couple waters too. We never got hammered and never felt dehydrated either. Win win!
- Magnets: not a “must have”, but a “nice to have”.. I bought (and then forgot to bring!) magnets to affix to our celebration pins. I spent gobs of money on all of our cute outfits, and the last thing I wanted to do was put holes in them.. so the magnets would have been nice! Again, not a “must have” but if you’re like me and don’t want to ruin your daughters expensive Taylor Joelle dresses by putting holes in them… consider bringing a magnet or two!
- Clip in/barrette style ears instead of traditional headband style ears. These were so much more convenient! Zero headaches, and I could wear them on all rides (Guardian of the Galaxy included) without needing to take them off. Perfect! I got some more expensive ones on Etsy as well as some cheapies on Amazon and honestly didn’t notice a huge difference between the two.
- Misting/stroller/neck fans: we brought sooooo many fans (seriously, 6) that we ended up leaving more than half at the resort after the first park day. Here’s my two cents (again, take it as you will): bring one clip on fan per kid for while in the stroller, and one tiny one that fits in your fanny pack or small backpack. Same with the cooling towels. We had 4, and never used more than 2. BUT I’d still bring them - Even if they don’t stay *amazingly* cold for very long, they’re still refreshing.. and even when they’re not being used as actual cooling towels and are more so lukewarm washcloths, we used them to cover exposed legs when a kid fell asleep in the stroller or if our necks were exposed during a parade, etc. Did we look ridiculous? Sure. Did we care? Nope. We also never burned, so take that, sun!
- Ponchos: do not bring the cheap Dollar Store ponchos! Spend the extra $$ and invest in the ones that look more like disposable rain jackets. We stayed perfectly dry!
- Small washcloth/hand towel from the hotel. Keep this stashed somewhere and use it to wipe benches down in the early AM or after a rain shower. I can’t tell you how many times we used this!
- Stroller hooks: I don’t care if the rental company offers one, bring more. If I could have had 15 stroller hooks and not worry about the stroller tipping over, I would have. Stroller hooks & carabiners FTW!!
Sorry for the long winded post, but I learned a lot from other travelers with kids similar age to mine & if this helps one parent feel more prepared, then it will be worth the thumb arthritis I now have
any questions, I’d be happy to answer!!
) and was totaled. Thankfully they can afford to replace it before they receive their $ from insurance so it's not a huge inconvenience for them.
.
Waaah! Poor DD3 would not get one "final" ride after all. We headed instead toward Splash. Just as we were entering the queue, Matt called with an absolutely SCREAMING DS2 in the background, saying DS2 had been bitten or stung by something while in line for Carpets. Matt got a little huffy with me (I think wanting me to exit the queue and join them) but I instructed him to head to the First Aid station by Casey's. We were racing through the LL queue to get to the boat so shortly after we hung up DD3 and I were already on our boat. He called me at some point before the big drop (I answered via my watch which I feel a little bad about, thinking it rude to answer a phone call in the middle of a ride in front of other guests but I wanted to answer quick to make sure everything was OK) and told me that the First Aid team applied Benzocaine on the sting/bite and made him a nice little ice pack and sent them on their way. We still don't know what exactly happened, a hornet/wasp stung him? It was right in his armpit so an odd location for a bug to be (plus they were in the brief queue for Magic Carpets when it happened, so not exactly near vegetation) but who knows. All I know is it was red, inflamed, and just plain angry looking. Poor kid! As for DD3 and I, we enjoyed our last ride of the trip - Splash Mountain. 
