Planner or Winger?

[erikwatts]

a little of both actually. Plan the big things, wing the rest. It's kind of fun not being a slave to a schedule.

 

[NewMan]

I am a big time planner....I even download menus for my family to review....and boy do I plan ahead.....our next trip to WDW will be in 2017..it will be our grandsons 1st trip. I started planning as soon as he was born!

 

[Foolish Mortal]

The only thing I plan are adr's. Militant, commando, we must do such and such at a certain time just doesn't sound enjoyable to me. Every trip without fail I always see some poor kid having his/her arm being torn out the socket by parents having a breakdown because they're "not on schedule".

 

[pinkrose]

I'm a bit of both. I plan our ADR's and any other things that need to be booked in advance (tours, ect). When it comes to the parks, I plan which on we'll go to on which day. We've been so many times though, that once there, we usually end up changing thing up a bit.

 

[Teachr4Disney]

I voted "planner" and I do have it planned before we go but once we get there we're flexible too. Plans can change and I don't get all bent out of shape if we have to change something that I had planned.

It's too much fun to plan, to not to!

 

[lilclerk]

I picked "winger" but I guess it really depends on if I'm on the dining plan or not. With the dining plan, I'll structure out the trip with which restaurant/park to go to every day.
If I'm not on the plan, I don't tend to make a lot of dining reservations and I'll just figure out where to go on the day. Especially with the luxury of the Lines app now.

 

[BuzzGoofy]

My DD usually plans thr meals and what park for the day. Once we get to the park we tend to wing it. We do have a must see/do list, but it dosen't ruin our vacation if we don't see/do everything, it leaves some stuff to see next time.

 

[Dragonrider1227]

We don't plan every minute, but we do plan. Last time we planned which parks to go to on which day based on when Fantasmic and the Halloween party were on.

 

[Rob562]

I definitely fall into the "both" category. I'll do a bit of planning before the trip so that I know when EMH's are, reservations for any Table Service restaurants, *maybe* a rough plan for the first few days of the trip on what park on what day, etc

But once I get to the parks I wing it on what I do and where I go. I almost never get to the parks at park-opening. (Couldn't even begin to tell you the last time I saw an opening ceremony.) I have enough visits under my belt that I can read the crowds and wait-times well enough to know where I want to go once I get to the park.

And once I've been to each park once on the trip, the second half of the trip becomes more of a "where do you want to go today?" each morning.

-Rob

 

[stefan74]

I am definitely a planner. I have my itinerary all done, dining reservations made, touring plans printed, menus for restaurants printed, crowd calendar index printed (which I update once a month), and airline reservations booked.

Everyone thinks I am crazy but all of this planning makes it easy for me while on vacation, especially the touring plans. I never have to wonder where I am going or what I will be doing since it is all planned out. However, this vacation, March 3-11, 2011, will be a little more relaxed. Yes, the itinerary is all done as stated above but I plan to spend two days each in Magic Kingdom and Epcot. I ran my 60-something year old mother as well as my 40-something year old sister and teenage nephew ragged two years ago and I decided to take it easy on this trip since it will be just mom and I. She is so looking forward to the trip because she will not have to make any decisions and she knows she won't miss a thing due to the planning I do.

 

[fireworkz]

Mostly a winger... the only things I usually plan is what day were going to Chef Mickey's and the "tradition" of going to MK on the first and final days of the trip. Other than that, we usually pick which park to go to the night before, or the morning of, decide which ride to go to first and go from there.

Enough of my life is planned out at home! Any vacation I go on has to be "go with the flow" and not have the stress of following a schedule or achieving set goals for the day.

 

[tiaragirl]

Broad planner.. I like to plan which day for where, but once we get there, we wing it. Unless we've got ADRs, then it's slightly more structured.

 

[Lisalyn]

Definitely plan! I do base tickets and since we are in parks 7 days...I plan what park to do on what day, EMH's for each day for each park, fireworks or parades times, ADR's for each day per park which of course involves the planning of the time slots (lol) and what character or special meals to do, and a touring plan of what order to hit rides or shows...but I don't plan that part of our trip to the minute...when it comes to getting into whatever park I have planned for a particular day...I use touring plans as a guideline of where to go first but it's not minute by minute.

 

[copcarguyp71]

I'm definitely a planner; HOWEVER, the planning is more preparation vs. attack. While I certainly want to minimize wait times, there's something to be said for not running every minute of your vacation like boot camp. Having young children with us also forces some extra flexibility.

X2.

I have had to let go of being the scheduling maniac and let things take us where we will. We plan some things loosely but with DD you have to learn to go with the flow a bit. Also this trip will be interesting as we had booked the counter service meal plan but when our docs showed up it turned out that we got the standard snack/counter/sit down so other than our one ressie at crystal palace we are going to be flying by the seat of our pants for the sit downs. Actually I am looking forward to freestyling for a change. I am sure there will be one or two points of frustration but I have to remember...this is vacation and not a meeting or presentation so how bad could it really be?

 

[luvlifeinfl]

I am a planner to the detail of what parks, what days and where we need to be for ADR's, shows, parades, but then once we get in the parks we just go for it what ever we can to 1st and then work with that.

 

[tonganprince]

I plan, but the wife always figures out a way to destroy said plans.

 

[Mouse Man]

We are a little bit of both. We plan a lot of things for the most part and love to just get down to WDW and wing the rest.

 

[PryncessLace]

I am a planner and a my family is a bunch of wingers. It causes me frustration every trip. They only allowed me to plan 3 meals and thats it as far as planning this coming up trip. It's driving me crazy!

 

[MSU Jafar]

I have to admit my DW and I are more of planners. We have taken numerous Disney vacations and one vacation we only made ADR's and left everything up in the air. It was the worst feeling not knowing what we were going to do and when. I thought I would feel freer, but to us the opposite was true. We felt that we wasted a lot of time trying to make decisions that we normally would make long before we left. Unfortunately because of our jobs we have to take our vacations during very busy times and without a good plan we just lose way too much time. So for us, planning is the best way!!

 

[mickey2008.1]

We do both. We paln our dining and our park, then we just do whatever we feel like doing depending on wait times and the crowds. We also like to park hop around if its too busy.