I agree, it is getting difficult to plan even the basic. You know me I had been known to jump on a plane in under a week and be gone. I miss not having to have a strategy that was more than which days for Uni and which days for WDW.
I birdie told me I'd should focus on room discounts this year over free dining, not only because of the cut backs but because of the $$$ overall value, while we all knew we were 'paying' for free dining it was a nice perk for an upgrade from standard room to minimum garden room plus park passes.
I just didn't really expect the discount (so far as some get better) to make that big of a difference. That goes to your thoughts of newbies understandably don't get it as see 'free' Blahhhh I feel bad for them.
Most of what I know I read here, and used to read on the other site. In the past, DWifey took the reins in most of the planning, with my site- informed input, and in recent years, both DWifey and oldest DD have done so, with my informational input.
Most of y'all here have been way more times than us. Heck, our last week-long family WDW trip was in June of '13, and our last family trip was for the 2016 Princess 5K in February of that year. We only spent 2 days in the Parks on that trip. 1 day in MK the day before the 5K, and the rest of the day in Epcot after the 5K the next morning.
On our trip in '13, we were still able to get paper fastpasses, on our trip for the 5K we were introduced to MBs...and, if y'all remember, we packed every single thing for the trip except our pretty, colorful, pre-ordered MBs, and had to get issued the gray ones at the resort...!!!!!
Bottom line, I rely so much on valuable information from those in the know on here who have much more personal experience than we do.
I just don't understand so many of the decisions the Company is making. Again, it's like they're all falling over each other to come up with the next successful cash-grab to justify their jobs, or something.
And again, I remember that stuff when I was a Disney Store CM. Everything from constant Store policy changes, to the carppy product I've mentioned before, that we had no clue how it ever got past a final "Yea, go with that!" approval from someone supposedly in quality control...just mindboggling so much of the time...
