Tips and Tricks on Thursday-planning your day

If you go to Disney World and just walk into any park without a plan, you are in for a frustrating day.  You don't have to plan every minute, but having a general plan will save you much aggravation so today's tip and trick is to plan your day.

Planning your day means many things. 

1.  Know what time the parks open.  Disney posts the park hours several months in advance making it super easy to plan what day you want to be at a park. 

2.  Extra Magic Hours--do you want to do them or not?  Extra Magic Hours (EMH) are extra park hours that are available to Disney World resort guests.  Disney sets the hours for a different park eich day and they can be either morning(usually 1 hour) or evening hours(usually 3 hours).  Many people love EMH and many people avoid the parks that are having EMH that day.  To me, any extra hours in the park are great hours!  I do EMH every chance I get, especially the evening hours.

3.  Know what's important.  There are many attractions that we all love and we have those "must-see" lists.  We also have those attractions that are just ok and some that we don't really care to see this trip.  If we know what attractions are important then we can make sure we hit those at the right times.

4.  Know what are the times to be at certain attractions.  This could be anything from seeing Toy Story Mania first thing in the morning to making sure you are lined up an hour early to get a seat for Fantasmic!  A major one is if you want do Dumbo, do it first.  It gets super hot during the middle of the day and it will be packed after about 10 am.

5.  Don't wait in line longer than 20 minutes.  If there is a fast pass available, get one of those or come back later.  Time is an important commodity at Disney World so don't waste it in line.

By using these five tips, you can plan your days at Disney World without having to pay to get an estimated number of how busy the parks can be.  I've been at all times of the year, including holidays and spring break and this has always worked for me.

Have fun planning!!