First Disney Trip? Plan? What Plan?

I finally convinced a friend of mine that he needed to take his family to Disney World. Granted he's going down for conference anyway and he is grudgingly admitting that his youngest son would enjoy it. I'm more excited than he is. He's not a first timer. Far from it. He used to work at Disney World back when the only park was the Magic Kingdom. I think it kind of soured him on the place.

"So," I said to him, "I've got good touring book you can borrow and several web sites I can recommend that will help you figure out which parks to visit on which days! Let me know which characters your son likes and I can help you find some character meals and figure out which restaurants you might like to go to. You know you'll need to start thinking about that now don't you?" "Whoa! This sounds way too complicated." he said.

The fact of the matter is part of the enjoyment of the trip for me is the planning of the trip. The vast majority of visitors to Disney go without planning things out and they enjoy themselves, too. I believe that planning can provide opportunity for additional enjoyment because it can reduce stress in the parks by avoiding the worst crowds, minimizing wait times, making sure you have reservations for the restaurants you really want, having the knowledge about less known attractions and things to look for, etc. Not to mention the fact that you can sometimes save money by knowing all your options.

So if you are planner where should you start? You can get a wealth of information from the Internet in scattered form, but your best bet is to get a tour book. There are several very good books. Go to a book store and look through them to see which one you like best. My favorite is Disney World with Kids by Kim Wright Wiley. It's geared toward going with kids, obviously, but is quite useful for general information. The other book that I would highly recommend is The Unofficial Guide. With the purchase of the book, you get access to their web site which has a wealth of planning information such as their crowd calendar which predicts how crowded each park will be on a given day.