Hellobee Boards

My family and I just got back from a Disney trip and we were complete newbies beforehand too. And all the planning threads super stressed me out that I’d end up having a failure of a trip, but we had a great time. You get 3 fast passes in advance that you can book and it’s basically a special slot for going in a shorter line. Once you use all 3 you can book 1 more at a time. So it’s beneficial to book slots earlier in the day. We did 5 days and stayed at an Airbnb which worked well for us. We packed our lunches and did breakfast and dinner at home. Our kids (4 and 20 months) were too young to care about special dining with characters or anything so I think that made planning easier. We did all the parks and Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom were our favorites by far. MK had more variety to us while AK had a lot of shows. It was a fantastic trip in the end even though we planned almost nothing in advance so don’t stress too much

ETA: oh, and get the app. It’s how you book fast passes and it will tell you how long wait times are at different rides so you can decide what you want to do.

ETA again: If you choose MK the actual park is a bit away from the entrance and you have to take a boat or monorail, so add in some extra time for that in the morning. Especially if you also have to pick up tickets. You can actually do that the day before which would save time.

I think as long as your expectations are low, you'll have a blast! With the ages of your kids you're not going to want to go on the really big rides anyway (Space Mountain, etc) so that will help - I get the sense that the littler kid rides are not as insanely popular. Check out the website Touring Plans for some tips on structuring your day - where to go when, etc. At this point you might have a hard time getting a fast pass for, like, Peter Pan, but you could definitely still get them for some rides your kids will love, or some character meetings. Have fun!

Do you know which day you want to go? I was checking crowd calendars for your dates - the Saturday is the busiest. It looks like the Sunday is going to be pretty quiet - Super Bowl Sunday is probably going to be pretty quiet so that might be a good day to pick if you're not football fans.

@justjules: You automatically get them - they don't cost anything. Same for the ones you get after you use up the first 3.

Between the two parks - my kids loved AK because my 1 yr old is obsessed with lions so the safari ride was super cool for him. The Lion King show was incredible as well. I really don't remember there being many rides there that were appropriate for our kids. MK just had a lot more different things. There my kids liked the simple rides like Aladdins Carpets, Flying Dumbos, Carousel, Mad Hatter Tea Party, and there was a Toy Story ride with blasters. The nice thing about a lot of those is the line times were super short so we could do some of them a few times in a row with minimal waiting - and there's no height requirements. And there were some good shows there - like the grown ups all loved the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor.

@justjules: My kids are also teeny, but there are so many rides that have no height requirements. I think your best bet is MK - for your reference, here's my plan for our first day: https://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=3410409 That's entirely in Fantasyland, and only two of those rides have height requirements. MK also has, as far as I can tell, the most characters to meet.

@justjules: You could do Chef Mickey's - I think they have breakfast or lunch. Or there's the Crystal Palace, which has the Winnie the Pooh characters. You might have a hard time getting a reservation at this point but Touring Plans has a reservation finder - you put in what restaurant you want and what time and it sends you a message if something becomes available.

Off the top of my head, rides with no height requirement at MK that my kids loved:

-Carosuel
-It's a Small World
-Peter Pan's flight
-Belle's House
-Ariel's ride
-Dumbo
-There's a play structure thing inside the dumbo ride that my kids would have stayed in for 2 hours if I let them (good for rainy times)
-Buzz lightyear ride
-Peoplemover (my kids super loved this one for some reason)
-the Carousel of Progress (totally different from prince CHarming's carousel, listed above)
-Pirates of the Carribean
-Haunted House
-Jungle Cruise
-Tikki Room
-Aladdin's carpets
-Swiss family robinson tree house

There are just SO MANY things to do with young kiddos.

And you don't need reservations at all for all of the Quick Service dining options--on the app, you can even order in advance and just do counter pickup to save time--which is clutch when traveling with small hungry children. No ordering lines, no wait for food.

With only 1 park day, I would not plan any dining or anything outside of the park. Personally, I probably wouldn't do any "table service" stuff at all, just because it takes a long time and there's so much else to do. You are constantly resting your legs in shows and on rides, so that wasn't really an issue for me, and I wanted to go, go go when we were there (our kids were newly 2 and 4 when we went).

And there are "baby care" stations around the park with changing tables, rocking chairs, if you need that. You can also rent a double stroller that lays down (like a britax double) if you want--so your kiddos can sleep on the go. Or you could babywear. Some rides even allow you to babywear on the ride itself (on the front of you only), so if you younger one is napping, you don't have to take them off.

But you could also just do some shows during nap time, too.

@Anagram: Yes, we did the Cinderella breakfast to get in early and it was wonderful. We also did the early Be Our Guest breakfast another year for early admission. You can order your meal ahead. The turnstile line is all the way to the left. Reservations are hard to come by but you may get lucky. That is the best way to beat the crowds with little ones!