Making a List of Things to Plan for WDW

With our family's next trip to Disney World scheduled for next summer, I am now in planning mode, and here is my list of things to do for planning and preparation purposes.

1. Decide on the exact dates for the trip, and book either a Disney Resort or other independent onsite hotel (such as the Holiday Inn where we have stayed previously).  I am currently leaning towards a Disney Moderate Resort for a number of reasons, which I will detail in a future blog post.                                                                          
2. Book our flights,  as we have decided to fly rather than drive from our location near Toronto, Canada.   We have saved credit card points for some of the plane tickets, and we will probably also fly out of nearby Buffalo to save even more money.                    
3. Purchase one or two new WDW guidebooks to help with planning.   I am leaning towards The Unofficial Guide to WDW with Kids, and / or Birnbaum's.                                   
4. Decide which parks we will go to and on which days.  I use a couple of crowd calendars to help me.  The big debate this year will be whether to go to Animal Kingdom rather than either a second day at Epcot or a third at Magic Kingdom.                   
5. Buy my park tickets (unless I reserved them in a package),  in order to take advantage of the 25 percent discount being offered to Canadians for four or more days.                     
6. Reserve our dining reservations 180 days ahead to be sure that we get the ones we want.  My wife and I have experienced the California Grill ourselves in the past, but this year we would like to take the kids with us.  There are plenty of other dining experiences that we would like to try.             
7. If need be,  reserve a hotel near the airport to stay over the night before and keep our car for the duration of our vacation.                 
8. Select our Fastpasses 60 days in advance (hopefully) as this is a big reason for wanting to stay this time in a Disney Resort.  Last time there were rides such ad Soarin and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train,  that we couldn't get only 30 days ahead.                         
9. Be sure we have adequate travel insurance. It is better to be safe than sorry.  Also, reserve transportation from Orlando International Airport, or plan for using the Disney Magical Express shuttle, if we stay in a Disney Resort.   Another nice perk.                
10. Buy anything needed for the trip, including autograph books for our kids.

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