Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Ha! Just when I thought I had it all figured out and planned, I did even more research (I never seem to stop these days) and discovered the magic of TOURING PLANS!!! Touring plans are exactly what they sound like, they are plans to tour the park, but they are expertly arranged in the most efficient ways to see as many of the attractions that you want with the least waiting possible. Upon LOTS of research on the matter I gotta tell you- I am a believer. The reviews of people using touring plan and having a great trip are numerous. Now I know that many things can go wrong or come up to throw a kink in the plan, and that's okay, they are a general guide. If I have to skip some things, I can work my way back around. Some may scoff at the idea of having your day so planned out. But the fact is that I have worked for months, pouring countless hours into making this a dream trip for my family. I like the idea of getting in our must-sees with the plan! We aren't going to go  too crazy however, we are simple making a plan of our must-dos to tour through in the early hours of being at the park, and then we intend to do lunch/midday breaks and continue on without a plan in the later parts of the day and savour our surroundings.

So here are the details- we are using a fabulous site, touringplans.com to make our own personalized plans. It is cheap, well worth the money, less than $15 for a year of access! The other amazing thing about this site is the crowd calenders! They have done they're work, and they can predict crowd levels for your trip dates, and from what I have read, they are usually pretty dead-on. So here I am thinking I have each day planned out until I checked the crowd calenders. Well darn, I am scheduled to be in the busiest parks each day! Partly because I chose to go to Extra Magic Hours each day, which come to find out is actually a bad idea for us because 1. We probably wont be able to get up at 6am every single day to make it to the parks by 8am for them and 2. Extra Magic Hours actually attract large crowds from the resorts, thus making the other parks a little less full! Makes sense right? You can read more about this in the Un-Official Guide to Disney World, which is written by the people of touringplans.com!

So now I have to make the decision, do I un-do all my work and re-arrange EVERYTHING!? Yes. Yes I do. I started by making reservations for all the places I picked AGAIN, on the correct days. I did have to move some times around, which was a bummer, but in the end I still got all the reservations I wanted, so phew! Even the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and Pirate League. One I knew the dining was a go, then I canceled all the old reservations. Now I am perfectly in line with going to the predicted least crowded park each day. And I will be armed with my fabulous touring plans to help miss even more waiting! Needless to say it was a lot of work, but I am pretty sure it is going to pay off BIG TIME!

While changing all my reservations around I also decided to eat at one place I wasn't originally planning, the Hoop De Doo Musical Revue. Friends of ours highly recommended it, and after reading countless accounts of good reviews I decided it was a must-do for us. So we went ahead and canceled our Rainforest Cafe and T-Rex Cafe reservations and booked this instead! (It is a 2 hour dinner show and non-stop food so it uses 2 dining plan credits per person. FYI- it also has FREE draft beer, wine, and sangria!)

I guess we will all see if all my planning and changing around pays off! :)