We often mention our first trip to Walt Disney World on our blog, twitter and Instagram but we never actually shared our experience or even better shared some things that might help you out during your trip to Walt Disney World.
We were already pretty familiar with Disneyland Paris before we went on our Honeymoon to Florida back in 2018, but that was the only Disney park we had been to so far and let us tell you, they aren’t the same park at all! There are so many differences between those parks like, the culture, Magicbands, Dining plans and that’s only the beginning. So we had to learn those differences on the hard way.
So in this blogpost we are going to share a couple of mistakes we made during our first trip, so that you don’t have to make them. Let’s get started.
Fastpasses
If you stay in a Walt Disney World Resort you’ll get early access to Fastpasses. We were familiar with the Fastpass system in Paris, but those systems are two completely different things. We wrote a whole blogpost dedicated to Fastpasses at Disneyland Paris, click here to read that. At Walt Disney World you’ll get to pick your Fastpasses 60 days a head of your trip, so that means you have to plan out your entire vacation a head.
We had no idea what to expect so we didn’t really fit a lot of research to find tips, which is the first mistake we made.
The second mistake we made, was to plan most of our Fastpasses later during the day. You will get 3 fast passes per day and you can choose where and when to use them, once you used a Fastpass you’ll get a new one in return.
Our Fastpass tips:
- Do lots of research and make sure you know exactly which rides or shows you want to use your Fastpasses on.
- Plan at least two Fastpasses a bit earlier each day so you can get new Fastpassen throughout your park day.
Dining
We made A LOT of mistakes when it come to dining during our first trip. We booked a all inclusive trip on property and we also get to choose a Dining plan, which will include all of your dining during your stay. There are three types of Diningplans you can choose from:
- A Quick-Service Dining Plan
- 2 self-service meals
- 1 non-alcoholic/alcoholic drink per meal
- 2 selected snacks
- Refillable mug, to use at all of the Resorts.
- A Disney Dining Plan
- 1 waiter service meal
- 1 self-service meal
- 1 non-alcoholic/alcoholic drink per meal
- 2 selected snacks
- Refillable mug, to use at all of the Resorts.
- A Deluxe Dining Plan
- 3 waiter or self-service meals
- 1 non-alcoholic/alcoholic drink per meal
- 2 selected snacks
- Refillable mug, to use at all of the Resorts.
We choose the Quick-Service Dining Plan, which wasn’t a mistake at all and we would definitely choose this plan during our next trip. But what are the things we did wrong?
Every single morning we had breakfast at our resort, Coronado Springs and both used one of our Quick Service meals, which where big portions and most of the time we couldn’t finish our breakfast. Then for lunch after a morning of walking a lot and being in the Floridian heat we needed a good meal, but we used our snack credits to get something small for lunch and for dinner we would use our second quick service meal. But the servings of those meals are so big, that we didn’t used up or second snack credit of the day and at the end of our trip we saved so many snack credits that we had no idea what to do with them. On our last day we decided to get a lot of mickey shaped cookies and bottles of water, a classic mistake for beginners.
Our Dining Plan tips:
- We would defeintly pick the same dining plan, because it kept us full during the day and we didn’t waist a lot of time at sit down restaurants.
- We would start our day by sharing a quick service meal and many use of or two snack credits to fill us up.
- It would depend on the activities and our hunger that day but do the same thing as at breakfast with sharing for lunch or both use our quick service credit for lunch if we would be very hungry.
- Then for dinner we would share a quick service meal again and use up the rest of our snack credits.
- Since we had a quick service ding plan, we didn’t really get to experience a sit down restaurant during our trip. That’s definitely something we would do differently the next time.
- If we still saved some snack credits at the end we would get some more exciting stuff than bottles of water.
Rope dropping
If you don’t know what rope dropping is, it’s basically being at the park when it opens. So being there at the start of a park day. Rope dropping is a great way to do some busy rides first thing in the morning when it isn’t that busy and you still have a change to get stand in shorter lines.
We decided during the planning of our trip to get fast passes later during the day so could sleep in during our vacation and relax a little bit during the morning instead of rushing a losing sleep. But at the end it was a really bad idea. It’s better to rope drop and use your fast passes earlier in the morning and many take a nap or just relax during the most hottest hours of the day and go back in the evenings and use new fast passes.
Our tips for rope dropping:
- Just do it! 😉
These are just a couple of beginner mistakes we made during our first trip we could probably add way more mistakes and tips. Please leave a messages down below in case you are interested in more beginner mistakes and tips.
Have Magical Day!