Planning With Friends

While writing this blog I've realized that my information has really only been coming from one source, the Internet.  Any scholar would tell you that sourcing only one source is a bad idea; if that source is the Internet it's an even worse idea.  While there are a few "peer reviewed" historical and technical accounts of Disney World, frankly many of those are a little dry for my liking.  So our only option for a secondary source is to find an expert(s), and talk to them ourselves.

There are a couple of problems when it comes to finding experts.  First of all we're on the other side of the world right now, I could safely say that most of the people around us have never even been to the parks once, let alone have any hands on knowledge.  Secondly, we don't want to find someone at random because they don't know us, and frankly this blog is about our adventures in Disney World.  Then one day, during an improv meet up (I'm full of surprises), we discovered that two of our improv buddies used to live in Florida.  Better still they go back regularly, and they love Disney World.

So a plan was made, brunch with Allison's famous pancakes, and discussions about Disney World.  In this afternoon we went over lots of information.  Allison, who's been making a matrix of our timing in the parks based on reservations and extra magic hours, gave out copies of this matrix to our guests.  They were very impressed.  We went through some of our expectations and ideas for the trip.  For the most part we seem to have a pretty solid plan, however our friends had some tweaks that seem to improve our plans a fair bit.  Here are a few things that they've suggested that we're going to work into our plan:

Allison and I love miniature golf (we hate regular sized golf), and we want to try out the options at Disney World.  We had decided to do the Winter Summer Land course when we visit Blizzard Beach, and that was considered to be a good plan.  We also wanted to try our Fantasia Gardens at some point as well, but for this we were warned to avoid it on hot days, as there's no shade at all.

Throughout this planning, we've been trying to figure out if we wanted to do the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue or the Spirit of Aloha show at the Polynesian.  Our friends suggested that the Hoop-Dee-Doo show is not to be missed.  While they admitted that they haven't been to the Spirit of Aloha show in a while, so they don't really remember if it was good or not.  They were very enthusiastic about the Hoop-Dee-Doo show.

Our plan at this point has us possibly ending up at Disney World during part of the Food and Wine show at Epcot.  I've heard great things about this event, but I've also heard that it can be insanely busy.  We've been wondering whether or not we should avoid Food and Wine, to keep away from the crowds, or indulge in Food and Wine because it's that awesome.  Apparently it's that awesome.

Finally, the one piece of advice that really inspired me was that we shouldn't avoid leaving the Disney bubble.  We were encouraged to explore a few things outside of Disney World while we're in the area.  We're still not sure about that yet, however we'll have a car, so we may just venture out a little.