Preparing for Disney 2010

Preparation for Disney began sometime last summer when I read someone else’s blog post about their trip.    They talked about going to a character breakfast and the characters from Little Einsteins were there.  That little spark was all it took for my to start imagining Sam meeting his girl June! 

There are so many resources out there to help you plan your own trip.  Before I start sharing our adventure, I thought I’d let you know what my very favorite sources were.  At the end of all my Disney posts, I’ll also share a few things we learned throughout this whole, wonderful experience.

Without further ado, my recommendations for great information:

(Titles are clickable!)

1.  We actually carried The Unofficial Guide to WDW with Kids 2010 into the parks with us…it is THAT good.  The ride recommendations and descriptions were spot on (just ask Scott about “Dinosaur.”) and helped us decide what our priorities were for each day in each park.

2.  If you buy the Unofficial Guide, you get free membership to an incredibly helpful website by the authors of the book, TouringPlans.com.  You can find information about wait times, crowd sizes and soooo much more!  Even if you don’t buy the book, it’s worth the paid subscription!

3.  My goal was to save as much money as I could to cover expenses and the cost of the trip.  For that goal, I turned to extreme couponing ala Jenny from Southern Savers and Kristin from Couponing to Disney.  There were several other blogs that I was following, but it was too overwhelming.  I paired my list down to just these two because they were really the most helpful.

4.    Click here to check out Kristin’s “Training for Disney” posts.  Her great advice helped us make some decisions while planning our trip. 

5.  For the best deals on tickets and accommodations head over to these two great sites:  MouseSavers.com and UndercoverTourist.com. 

There are TONS of resources out there to help you plan.  For what it’s worth, these are the ones I used, LOVED, and recommend.

If you have favorite sites, please share.  I’m already scheming and thinking about next time!

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Oh, and just to get things started, I’ll tell you about day 1 of our trip.  We actually drove to my college roommate’s house to spend our first night.  She lives about an hour from WDW so it was a great opportunity to spend time with her awesomely cool family!  While we enjoyed a fabulous dinner, Sam played hard with Jackson and Zach. I don’t think he even knew we were there…until bedtime that is!  Sam just adored playing with the boys!  We can’t to see them again!  Here are a few shots of Sam playing with the boys.  By the time I got the camera out Sunday morning, the boys were heading out to play football, so most of the pictures are of Sam. Imagine that.

 

The next morning, we headed to Orlando to begin our Disney adventures at Epcot.  But I’ll save that for the next post!