Walt Disney World is not for the faint of heart or stomach

My husband and I just returned from our annual vacation. Our previous trips that we have taken were to Italy, where we got engaged, and to Hawaii where we went on our Honeymoon.

This year's trip was to celebrate our one year anniversary. We decided that because my husband is working on his Master's Degree, it would be best if we weren't gone for too long, or too far away from internet access. So Europe was out of the question since finding internet there is difficult and expensive and usually only found in seedy "internet cafes". So we decided it would be really fun to go to Orlando and visit Universal Studios and Walt Disney World. 

I love anything and everything to do with theme parks and Disney, and I'm obsessed with Harry Potter, so it seemed like a great trip in the making. As we started our research about the trip we were quickly overwhelmed with all of the options available for our trip. This is where the title of my blog post comes into play. Planning a trip to Orlando, or Walt Disney World alone, is not for the feint of heart. It takes a lot of work to plan a trip to the World. Lots of work to save up money. Tons of research. Lots of reservations. Rechecking reservations to see if prices change. I learned so much from our trip about vacation planning in general. I will never look at a trip the same way again. Especially a trip somewhere easy, like Italy. That's right... I now think planning a trip to Italy is a walk in the park. 

So what exactly makes a trip to Walt Disney World and Orlando so complicated? Here are just a few things: 

Too much to see (There are 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, a shopping area, golf courses, Cirque du Soleil, and more at Walt Disney World alone) 

Vast size of the parks (Plan on an average of 10 miles of walking each day) 

Cost

Transportation options (To rent, or not to rent? That is the question.)

ADRs (Advanced Dining Reservations)

Meal Plans (Are they worth it?)

Crowds (What time of year is the best time to visit?) 

Hotel options (Should you stay on Disney property?) 

and so much more... 

Having worked at Walt Disney World as a College Program student in 2005, I thought I knew what we were getting ourselves in to with this trip, but I didn't realize just how complicated things can be from the guest side of the counter. If I can recommend one thing to anyone planning a trip to a Disney park, please do as much research as possible. It will save your vacation. 

Now that we are back, I know that all the research that I did before our trip (around 2-3 hours a day for 2 months) really paid off in the end. I think the best part of our trip was our Deluxe Dining Plan. I think it was absolutely worth it because of my love of good food. Without the dining plan we wouldn't have let ourselves eat at the high end restaurants that our dining plan made possible for us to eat at. We ate at 4 restaurants that we wouldn't have eaten at because they would have been out of our price range of what we could afford. The meals at those 4 restaurants alone paid for our dining plan. The blogs posts that will follow this post will contain posts all about the restaurants that we ate at on our trip and my honest review of their value on the dining plan or out of pocket, and everything we were able to try. 

Before I get too far into everything, I must give credit to the three resources that helped me the most with planning our trip. The first is touringplans.com. This website provides amazing information through decades of research on the crowd patterns in the parks, the best order to visit attractions in a park. Attached to this website is the second thing I couldn't have planned without: Lines mobile app. This application provides access to the touring plans, current wait times for rides in all four parks, and the "Lines Chat", where you can compare notes with other travelers and self-proclaimed experts. They provided amazing advice and opinions that helped me to make decisions and valuable information about details that a new "World" traveler would be lost without. While both of these require a subscription the touringplans.com website, they were definitely worth it. And those who own a copy of one of the Unofficial Guides to Walt Disney World (the publisher of the site is also the author of these books) gets a discount off the fee. The third thing that I couldn't live without is disneyfoodblog.com. This had indispensable information about the different restaurants around the "World" and their menus. 

I hope that after you read my full reviews on each park and many of the restaurants that we were able to eat at, you will be inspired to attempt a trip to Orlando, and I also hope that you find at least some helpful advice in what is posted here.