Going to Disney World? Start Planning. Then Plan Some More. Keep On Planning.

About a year ago, my wife told me some news that I had been dreading for years: “It’s time to take the kids to Disney World.”

Disney and Mickey Mouse have never been my thing. I grew up in the era before cable TV, back in the day when the only kids TV was what was on the three local stations or PBS. And in those days, it was all Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner.  The only time the Mouse showed up on my parent’s 25″ console TV were Sunday evenings for the “Wonderful World of Disney”, which we almost never watched because it came on during Sunday dinner.

Now Disney has their own cable channel and if you have kids, it’s almost impossible to NOT see it. It’s the exact opposite situation now; it’s almost impossible to find a Bugs Bunny cartoon anymore.  So I knew this trip was coming; the only question was when.  We had discussed it briefly a few years back, but my wife figured that the kids needed to be a little older when we did it.  So we waited.

I’m usually the vacation planner, so I dove in head first to see what we needed to do.  The first thing I realized was that a Disney World vacation is unlike just about any other vacation you might try to plan. There are dozens of web sites and books full of advice.  Scratch that: not just advice.  Plans.  Specific plans on how to attack each aspect of the trip, and how you need to make reservations for certain things six months ahead of time, others 60 days, and yet other things seven to eleven months in advance. Even specific itineraries.

And it’s not like Disney World is just an amusement park; it’s actually four parks surrounded by 30,000+ Disney owned hotel rooms in an area that probably couldn’t fit between Westroads and Oak View Mall in Omaha.  So I started reading.  And reading.  And reading.  One web site says this, another says another.