The following is a guest post from Tiffany. Tiffany King is a homeschool mom of four kids, ranging in age from 17 years to 6 years old. She’s been married to Jim for twenty one years. On her blog, Eat at Home she shares recipes for everyday food for busy people.
7 Disney Planning Tips for a Large Group
We have been blessed to get to go to Disney three years in a row with my sister’s family and my parents, 13 of us in all. I have been the designated travel planner for all of those trips and I have learned a few things about what works (and what doesn’t) when traveling with a large group.
1. Be Sure You Know What Everyone Wants Out of the Trip – In our case, my parents paid for all the accommodations as a Christmas gift to us. The main focus of the trip is having fun together. Other families may want to spend time in smaller groups, only coming together for meals or certain attractions. In some groups, the vacation is all about the kids and the adults are content to skip attractions that might be less interesting to young children. Understanding this helps you plan a trip that will meet expectations.
2. Sign up for Tour Guide Mike and Create a Plan – This is a fantastic service that will help you develop a plan to see all the best attractions without waiting in lines. Having a plan with a large group of people is essential. Otherwise, you will be standing around debating with 10-20 people what you should do next.
3. Split into Smaller Groups Sometimes – Chances are, your group will have a wide variety of ages and interests. Even though our family goal was togetherness, there were times that we broke into smaller groups. Mostly, this happened for rides. We had the “fun group” and the “thrill group”. For instance, at Animal Kingdom the “fun group” headed to the Safari while the “thrill group” took on Expedition Everest and Dinosaur. There were a few people who floated between the groups, but they all understood the need to choose their group ahead of time.
4. Plan Your Meals – Coming together at meal times is a great way to connect with your group. You might choose to do this at one of the WDW restaurants. If so, make sure everyone has the reservation time and number. I even plan our counter service meals. Knowing where we’re going to eat keeps us from that horrible group debate situation. Last year, my sister came up with a fantastic idea. She visited AllEars.net and checked out the menus for the counter service restaurants we would be eating at. Then she “ordered” food for her family, and wrote it down. When it was time to order the food at the restaurant she pulled out her list and read from it. I took her cue and did the same thing. We saved time, money and brain power.
5. Create Info Books for Each Family – Keeping everyone on the same page can be hard, but I found a way to do it easily. I buy small plastic photo albums (brag books) from the dollar store. Into these I slip pages of info to keep the group informed. These pages include the week’s itinerary, a more detailed itinerary for each day (including ride order, restaurants…), hotel and travel info for each group, restaurant reservation numbers. This is where my sister and I put our counter service order info. It became habit for all of us to review the day’s itinerary on the bus or in the car on the way to the parks each day.
6. Have a Disney Kick Off Party – If you can do it, this is a fun time together before the trip. It’s also a chance for you to glean information on what your group would like to do and to give them information as well. It’s fun to theme this party and get everyone excited for Disney. One year we had a Princess and Pirate theme. We did a scavenger hunt with the kids where they hunted for treasure, which included themed toys from the dollar store.
7. Have a Post Disney Party – Traveling with a group can be a challenge, but it’s also fun and full of memories. Get together and share photos, get the scrap book stuff out and let the kids join in making pages, or write a trip report together.
