As a surprise for our children, my wife thought it would be a wonderful idea to plan a week-long trip to Disney next year. Hey, count me in. I loved Disney when I went with my family roughly thirty-plus years ago. My parents took us for the day while we were visiting family in Florida. We stayed at a Days Inn and ran around the Magic Kingdom the entire next day. What fond childhood memories!
With the naivety of that kid still painfully evident, I hadn’t taken into account the amount of things that may have changed over the course of those thirty years. I should have realized what was in store when Disney offered a free vacation planning DVD when you visited their website. Free planning DVD? Come on. How hard could this be? After all, wasn’t it Disney that taught us “hakuna matata” meant “no worries”?
After inquiring with some in-the-know friends, visiting a few internet message boards, and delving deeper into the actual website though, we were slapped with the cold reality that successfully navigating a vacation to the “Happiest Place on Earth” these days was the virtual equivalent of deciphering the CIA’s Kryptos sculpture…or ordering a cup of coffee at your local Starbucks. Gone are those days of just popping in for an “amusement park” visit. This kind of planning required serious travel agent business acumen, appointment juggling skills, and extensive up-front prep work. Ironically, the exact characteristics lacking in nonchalant, happy-go-lucky simpletons such as myself. Shocking…I know.
In an effort to avoid rambling and for the sake of pure sanity, I’m going to entirely leave out the seemingly infinite number of actual theme parks and their own related organizational pandemonium. I will concentrate merely on the basic, essential logistics of accommodations and meals.
First, you have to decide on an accommodation plan. This is basically a choice of everything from your standard four-walls-and-a-bed hotel to Buckingham Palace. Once you’ve selected an accommodation plan that is within your budget, it’s time to pick the themes and amenities that you desire in your hotel. Keep peeling back the layers until you finally get to pick that hotel. Did I mention that it helps availability if you burn incense and offer up a ceremonial sacrifice beforehand?
Next come the meal plans. Pick through a list of dining plans based on the number of meals that you will require in a day and that is within your budget. You can customize these as well. Of course, each plan and associated customization thereof comes with about enough “if-then” stipulations to make even a BP liability attorney bow down to the almighty House of Mouse.
Now with your meal plan in place, it’s time to select your dining. There are varying types to choose from. They run the gamut from PB&Js on paper towels to sprawling five-star dining. When you’ve selected your dining types in conjunction with the guidelines surrounding your respective meal plan, it’s finally time to start picking and choosing through the millennia of offered restaurants.
“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”
Now that you’ve finally zeroed in on those restaurants of choice, you must now jockey for reservation days and times at those restaurants with roughly half the world’s population. Revisit the aforementioned availability ritual above.
On a side note, I also coupled this ritual with Iron Butterfly’s "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and a constant flickering of the light switch. In theory, I was shooting for maximum ceremonial effectiveness. The wife didn’t appear as sold on this practice as I was though.
It’s also essential to keep in mind, when making these reservations, that you have a firm plan in place of which parks you are visiting and on what days. I would imagine that being in one park and having your dinner reservations at a restaurant in another is a lot like flying into Orlando with your family and having your luggage land in Calcutta. On second thought, let’s not go there.
In looking at this whole restaurant facet, I have to be honest. The fact that reservations to these establishments open exactly 180 days prior to your visit is still completely unfathomable to me. I can’t tell you what I want to eat an hour from now, let alone in 180 days. Worse yet, my wife found that if you don’t log on and pick those restaurants and reservation times precisely at 6:00:01 am on that 180 day milestone, you’re essentially stuck eating lead paint chips for dinner at 3:00 in the afternoon.
Hats off to my wife though. She pulled it off. She took it upon herself and organized the entire trip. Countless hours, days, and weeks in front of the laptop. Constantly arranging, rearranging, plotting, and scheming. With that amount of preparation now on her resume, I firmly believe that she’s qualified to run an international crime syndicate. In fact, in an effort to punctuate her promotion to Consigliere within the cyber Disney Planning Cartel, I have started referring to her as “Vinny the Mouse”. “Hakuna matata, Don Corleone.”
I, on the other hand, was about as productive as a potted fern. Upon asking for my input, my wife was generally met with “I’ll eat whatever” or “yep, sounds great”. Honestly, if this gig were left up to me, it would have been the Bankruptcy Suites, dollar menu, and Disney service entrance booked roughly two days before leaving.
Now our kids have a wonderful surprise week with Mickey and friends next year, thanks entirely to my wife. Their experiences will last a lifetime. I’m hopeful that my wife’s newfound insistence on having to plan everything 180 days in advance will not.
Walt Disney himself was once quoted as saying, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible”. I’m not sure how many would vouch for that “fun” part, but it’s respectfully noted by my better half. To Walt’s point though, I think that we merely have to keep in mind the hidden meaning within the hardships of actually planning and executing this trip. “It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business.”
