Planning Disney Parks Adventures: Timing is Everything!

Welcome to those of you joining me from The Disney FAITHful and those of you just hopping aboard. I am the 2nd stop on our Magical Blogorail! This month we’re discussing ways in which we plan our Disney Parks Adventures.

As the saying goes, timing is everything. This is oh-so-true when it comes to choosing dates for your Walt Disney World vacation! The time of year in which you visit greatly affects your Disney experience. To illustrate, let’s take a look at my family’s Disney vacation history timeline and I’ll discuss the pros and the cons of each trip.

September, 2003

Ah, our first Walt Disney World Vacation! Our children were five and seven then; how easy it was to take them out of school for a week! It was very important to me that we visit during a low crowd season because of issues related to our son’s autism. The other reason we chose early September was because it was easy for me to take the week off – my boss happened to be taking his vacation that same week.

Having light crowds was fantastic but, oh! That Florida HEAT and HUMIDITY just killed me! Fortunately, the kids were still young enough for a mid-afternoon nap each day; otherwise I would have completely melted.

January, 2005

Again, we were able to pull the kids out of school so that we could experience lighter crowds. Let me tell you, Disney was ten times more fun in seventy degree temps than it was at a hundred! (I must have said that at least a hundred times that week.) We were also able to celebrate my husband’s birthday, which was lots of fun. The only downside to January when compared to September was that park hours were noticeably shorter. This made it more difficult to manage the afternoon nap and still have adequate time for the parks in the evening.

December, 2005

By now we had become Disney Vacation Club members. An early December trip was a great value point-wise as well as crowd-wise. (It also allowed me to take advantage of the annual pass I had purchased the previous January!) Walt Disney World during the holiday season was extra magical and we were able to attend our first after-hours event, Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party!  The only downside to the December trip was that it was too cold that week for the kids to swim in the resort pool. Personally, I thought the pros heavily outweighed that one con!

Of course, time marches on and our children were getting too old to be taken out of school for an entire week. We had become spoiled! Our challenge now was to pick a vacation time that would not result in missed school days for the kids.

I know what you’re thinking -- but after the uncomfortable experience I had with heat and humidity on that first trip I couldn’t bear the thought of Disney in the summer! Our solution – Jersey Week!

November, 2006 & 2007

Here in the Garden State teachers have their annual convention in early November, the same week as Election Day and Veterans’ Day, so school is closed most of that week. Well, missing two days of school is better than missing five so that’s the time we chose for our trips in ’06 and ’07. The crowds were a bit heavier, especially over Veterans’ Day Weekend (of course -- because half of New Jersey was there!) but the weather was perfect! And to top that off, we were able to experience Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival! Jersey Week seemed to be the best compromise for us.

April, 2008

This trip was planned a little differently because at the time we were planning an extensive renovation of our home.  For financial reasons we knew we would not be able to take another vacation until the fall of 2009 but by now the thought of two whole years without a Disney trip was, well, unthinkable! Although it had been but five short months since our last visit, I threw together a rather spur-of-the-moment “quickie” five day trip that we took during the week preceding Easter. Our daughter’s school was closed that week but our son’s spring break was scheduled for the week after Easter. Oh well, all I can say is that his teachers were very supportive about the whole situation!

I had been a bit apprehensive about going during “spring break,” but honestly, the crowds seemed no heavier than they had during the two previous Veterans’ Day Weekends. As a bonus we were able to enjoy Epcot’s Flower and Garden Festival! The weather was delightful and the kids made full use of our resort pool.

October/November, 2009

After a year and a half without a trip to Walt Disney World (Gasp!) we spent another Jersey Week at our Happy Place in 2009. What a thrill it was to realize that because of the way the dates fell that year we would actually be able to spend Halloween in Disney! Being able to attend Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party on October 31^st that year was a special, spooky treat!

In 2011 we made our next, and I fear our last, trip to Walt Disney World during Jersey Week. That’s because both my daughter and my husband elected to stay home that week so as not to miss even a single day of school. (My husband is working on a degree.) While it was a lovely mother-son trip, I did miss the other half of our family terribly…

Our next trip, therefore, is planned for February of 2013 – Presidents Week, to be exact – so no one will miss school. Again, I’m apprehensive about doing “something new” when it comes to timing our vacation – mostly because I expect the crowds to be thicker than we’ve ever experienced! I really have to plan that trip carefully. But that’s a post for another day!

Thank you for joining me today. Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail Loop is CapturingMagical Memories.

Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail should you happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to re-board:

1st Stop ~ The DisneyFAITHful

2nd Stop ~ The Many Adventures of a Disney-Lovin’ Spectrum Mom

3rd Stop ~ Capturing Magical Memories

4th Stop ~ Heidi’s Head

Final Stop ~ YourFirstVisit.Net

(Jim Shore images by sweetheartcollectibles.com)