- The Easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit by Josh Humphrey and Dave Shute. There are many guide books to Disney World out there. This one is hands down the best. It’s not enormous and hard to lug around like some (The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World has tons of information but sometimes it seems like TOO MUCH INFORMATION, the book is enormous). Josh and Dave’s book covers when to go, how long to stay to get the most value from your trip, which hotel to choose, how to make the most of perks available to you, how to plan out your week and choose your parks for each day, what fast passes are and how to use them efficiently, dining advice and so much more. They have a sense of humor about it all that I appreciate and the book is actually enjoyable to read through. And they continually update the book as Disney changes policies and prices to keep you well informed.
- EasyWDW.com is my favorite blog for reading about Disney World. Here’s the thing. There are a million Disney bloggers out there. A lot of them are wannabes that live in the midwest and simply regurgitate information that they read online. No offense to them, but I want first hand information for my research. And Easy WDW hits the parks regularly (multiple times per week) and updates on everything from a building being painted and a popcorn cart being moved to major construction, changes in traffic patterns, how a new ride is affecting lines, and more. If you want the most accurate information and you want honesty and humor, this is the blog for you. The owner of the blog happens to be one of the authors of the book I just raved about and it’s no coincidence. I’m a little obsessed. He writes “touring plans” regularly and goes into the parks to test them out before sharing them. If you follow his touring plans, you will seriously laugh at all the people who are waiting in lines all day long because you? You know better. I don’t recall ever waiting more than 15 minutes in a line at Disney World in eight years. Why? Because I follow the advice from Easy WDW to the letter. It works. We’ve had some magical experiences as well, like getting to ride Big Thunder Mountain repeatedly without getting off the ride and it was all thanks to his advice.
- TouringPlans.com is my favorite site for organizing my thoughts. Touring Plans is the site run by the people who put out The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World. They have some cool features on their website that allow you to plug in your touring plan for your exact date and it will tell you exactly how long to expect to be in line and even how many minutes it is to walk from one attraction to the next. I like to take the plans from EasyWDW and plug them into the Touring Plans tool and get extremely detailed plans. This tool is great because it lets you know if what you want to do is actually possible. If you want to ride certain rides and see certain characters in three hours and then take a long lunch break, this tool will help you see if it’s probable or if you should cut things out.
- KennyThePirate.com is a good site for crowd calendars and information on character meets. If meeting characters are important to you, you MUST subscribe to his site, he has ALL the information you will need including some secret stuff most people don’t know about. He will tell you which park will be least crowded each day of your trip so that you can try to plan your week around being in the lowest crowd parks. Instead of numbered crowd levels, he color codes them–green for good, yellow for letting you know it will be crowded, and red for avoid at all costs. Please note: some weeks the DATES are all red on the calendar because it’s a busy week but he will still tell you which park is green (the safest bet) each day.
- Countdown to Magic: The Ultimate Guide to Planning your WDW Vacation. This is THE PLANNER you need for your Disney vacation. While the first four items on this list are resources you need for researching your trip, this planner is where you can put all the things you learn into action. You can collect data on predicted crowd levels at different parks so that you can choose the best park for each day of your trip. You can work out how to set a food budget for your trip that is actually realistic. You can sketch out your Fastpass choices so that when it comes time to reserve them, you have all your options in front of you so that you don’t panic and choose the wrong thing. The planner is based on a countdown of all the things to do for 180 days before your trip. Each item on the countdown has a page number listed after it that sends you to the correct pages to workout whatever it is, from budgeting to packing or whatever needs to be done that day. It’s like having a Disney expert hold your hand as you walk through planning your trip. Bonus: It also has journaling pages for recording memories from your trip. Even if you are a Disney pro, this planner gives you a place to record everything and keep track of all parts of your trip.
So those are my top five recommendations for your next Disney trip. What are your favorite resources? Share them in the comments!!!
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