Cut to the chase?  Go to TouringPlans.com and read then join!  Honestly, it was the only trip planning site we needed.

Back in Febuary of 2008 my family took on the exciting yet daunting task of planning a trip to Walt Disney World.   We knew if we wanted to maximize our trip and have a lot of fun (with relatively few frustrations) we needed to get our ducks in a row.

That trip was quite a while ago and I’m finally going to share some of the ideas and resources we used when planning our trip to DisneyWorld.

Hitting Up Friends:

I knew a friend who recently had taken his family to DisneyWorld and wanted to get his feedback.  I wanted to pull from his experience and asked his thoughts on his trip.  He sent me some absolutely wonderful advice and I felt selfish that I was the only one benefiting, so I thought I’d share his great comments and suggestions:

“Before you go to Disney, prepare properly.  It takes several visits just to learn what’s there, and it’s easy to miss some great attractions.  It’s also important to budget your time properly, especially with a small child.  There is a great temptation to “go, go, go”, when you need to build in some rest time and not over-do it.  If you had unlimited energy, there is enough to do to keep going all day and night for a week, but that would be a BIG mistake.  There’s nothing like watching the excitement in your child’s eyes as they experience the Magic Kingdom and its characters.  If they get over-tired, it’s no longer fun for them (and therefore for you).  If your parents are up to walking 5 miles/day, take them along – they’ll make great baby sitters.

Here is a great book on Disney World (http://www.amazon.com/Birnbaums-Walt-Disney-World-2008/dp/1423103920/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202902822&sr=8-2 ).  Even though most people think of Disney as just 4 theme parks, it is FAR more than that.  Disney World should be looked at as a “full service resort” that can pick you up and drop you off at the airport (for free – http://www.mousesavers.com/magicalexpress.html ) and never expose you to the outside world.  Here are two websites that have a lot of information:

http://www.mousesavers.com/

http://allears.net/

During school breaks, they get very crowded, and your memories will be mainly of long lines.  From their ticket pricing structure (http://www.mousesavers.com/wdwticketprices.html#myw), you can see that most people who go for multiple days will go to at least one of the parks every day of their stay.  It is also obvious that Disney wants to get people to stay longer and spend all of their lodging and food dollars at Disney.

If you are just looking to go to the Magic Kingdom for 1 day, I would just go to Disneyland instead.”

A vacation at Disney World requires a lot of planning to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives (and there are lots of both).”

And in another email:

“Per this link (http://www.mousesavers.com/moderateresorts2008.html ), your dates are at the end of the “peak season” (winter & Easter break for many eastern schools).  I think that you can guess what that means in terms of crowds and lines.  The room rates tell you that the only busier time is during Christmas (where they often have to close the gates early because they hit their capacity limit).  From personal experience, we once went during the school break period – we will NEVER do that again.  Not only are the crowds excessive during this time, they don’t have enough help to properly man the parks.  During the summer, they have lots of high school/college students, so keeping the park open for extended hours isn’t such a problem.  During the other 9 months, they rely on lots of retired people who work part time.  This works OK during the “not-so-busy” periods when the park closes early, but look at the hours during the week of Feb 17th.  During these times, the retirees are FORCED to work extended hours, and some workers get tired and cranky (school break was the ONLY time that I have seen Disney “Cast Members” get cranky).  It’s not just the hours; some rides have “double lines” where twice as many people can be accommodated during busy times – more workers are therefore required for each hour that the park is open.  Staffing is often well below optimal during these times, and things just don’t run as smoothly as they do when things are properly staffed (including restaurants).

Next, we find that it is easy to try to do too much, get tired and have a bad experience.  We always get to the park when it first opens – the first 2 hours are “golden hours” when the crowds are down and you can actually get on the best attractions.  After 11:00 the lines are longer, and after 1:00 (when many people continue to pour into the park), the lines can grow to 2 hours on popular attractions during busy periods.  “Fast pass” sounds good, but some rides have a 5 hour wait to use a fast pass in the afternoon/evening on a busy day (so they can be effectively worthless).

How’s that for a “negative”?  Disney World can be a GREAT place to visit if you know when to go and how to get around.  It can also be a living hell if you go at the wrong time and with unrealistic expectations.  Under no circumstances would I recommend a 1 day visit during the time period that you mentioned.  Look at this link (http://www.mousesavers.com/disneyresorts.html#datestoavoid ).

If you really want to go and show your family a great time, go for a week in the middle of one of the “value seasons”.  Stay in one of their resorts (we like the “Moderates” as a good mix of cost/ambience) – discounts are available through AAA.  They also have “value resorts”  that cost less, but don’t have the ambience of a resort and are packed with small kids.  Go to the park each day when it opens, stay for 3-4 hours, go back to your resort for a swim/nap, then go back in the evening for a few hours.  DON’T overdo it – getting tired is a killer, especially when you have a small child or a cranky grandparent in tow.

If you only have one day during this time period, I would pick a park that won’t be packed.  Surely there are a number of choices closer to home.

I’m sure that you will agree that:
1.    One day isn’t nearly enough time.
2.    Going without reading up ahead of time and having a plan would greatly detract from your experience.
3.    Having realistic expectations is a key to enjoying yourselves.
4.    Knowing how to “work the system” is a big help.“

I was so thankful for this wonderful information.   I was even more determined to make this trip a success and not end up like a dear in the headlights when we arrived.

TouringPlans.com – Best $8.95 I spent during the whole trip!
I can’t recall how I stumbled upon this gem.  Maybe it was from my friend above or a few web searches, but this tool made the whole trip infinitely better than it would have been without.

Lots of great information on the site (including best days to go), but what really made the tool invaluable to us was the actual Touring Plans.  Basically you can tell it which park you are going to, how many days you’ll be there,  the ages of the people in your family, and it will create a custom plan with a map that shows where to go and when.    The best part:  It leverages the FASTPASS system so you don’t spend 1/2 your trip in lines.

To see sample touring plans, click here

I was worried that too much optimization would ruin the trip and/or that our girls wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pace, but things couldn’t have been more perfect.   In fact, using the guide we had either my wife or I run to get the FASTPASS for all of us while we got in line for something that didn’t support FASTPASS.

At the end of each day and by the end of the trip we were exhausted, but had no regrets about what we had done or hadn’t seen.

Examples of before and after a great fun-filled day at DisneyWorld

Have you been to Disney World or DisneyLand?  Have some good suggestions or ideas?  Leave a comment so others can gain from your experience!

Many of you know that I became the owner of www.backyardchickens.com about a year and a half ago.  Since that time the new BYC Chicken Forum has grown like crazy.   It has been a lot of fun taking what I learned from my very first forum (the one tied to this domain, the Nifty-Stuff Printer Forum) and using that information (along with the help of 13,000 great members and some excellent moderators) to really build up a great community.

Over the past 19 months there have been a lot of requests for different topics to be added to the BYC Forum.  Subjects like gardening, sufficient living, etc.  Unfortunately these topics are just too grand to be limited to only a few sections on a chicken site (no offense to BYC).   For this reason I embarked on creating some new forums that would allow the community to explore these topics in greater detail.  Hence the birth of:

http://www.theeasygarden.com/ - The first “sister site” to BYC.  Already with almost 1,000 members discussing one of my favorite topics:  Gardening!

http://www.backyardcows.com/ - What started out as an April Fool’s joke in 2007 turned out to be something the community was interested in developing.   And people thought BackYardChickens was unique! 

http://www.sufficientself.com/ - Here is another topic that came up very frequently on BYC and also involves a lot of topics to which I am very interested in discussing:  Sufficient Living!   Everything from renewable energy and frugal living to financial aptitude and homeschooling.

The audiences of these 4 forums (the three above and http://www.backyardchickens.com/) overlap quite a bit.  Many of the same members like to visit all of the forums to learn and share.   Interestingly enough, these visitors are very uniquely different from the Nifty-Stuff Printer Forum.  Who knows, maybe with time some of the techies in the printer forum will see the light of backyardchickens and at the same time, some of the sufficient living minded people will learn the beauty and joy of refilling printer cartridges! 

kitsune

Merry Christmas

Well it’s Christmas day and what better time to start this webpage. The picture above is my beautiful siberian husky, Shadow enjoying the first real snow we have had for about 3 years. Shadow was a rescue dog, no doubt I’ll go into the full story of how she ended up with us at some point.

Along with Shadow we have a number of other animals around the place. 5 snakes, a lizard, 2 rats, a cat, a frog and of course, the chickens!

As for me, well I’m 24 and currently living in Stoke-on-Trent in England, I’m half way through an animal management course which I have defered for a year so currently I’m not really doing much. I live with my partner who reluctantly accepts my gradually increasing animal collection.

At the moment pretty much every place in the house has at least one animal, only the kitchen and bathroom have been spared (so far) we have chickens in the garden, garage and front room. The ones in the garden are very healthy, those I have raised from eggs (after the third attempt, though one is a suvivor of the first hatch) the one in the front room - Hawk the infamous rescue malay who is at present perched on the back of the sofa chewing at her diaper – has sinusitis as well as having no feathers on her belly as they were so caked with mite eggs we had to cut them all off! The two in the garage were bought for me by my mum, one is on antibiotics for fungal and bacterial infection in her trachea. They both have vitamin A deficiency too.

Hopefully by spring we will be able to integrate all the chickens together and build a proper run for them in the garden.

Some Great Sites To Visit

• BackyardChickens.com – This is our sister site.  BYC is the best place to find everything you need to begin raising a backyard flock.  Come join our chicken forum!
• waynesthisandthat.com – Wayne’s got a TON of great stuff that’s nifty on his site! 175 pages, 700 images and 600,000 words covering 68 subjects! 

This Page Submitted By My Friend Kitsune

26th December

Well I decided to start a journal on here, it will be mainly animal related (there is always something going on with these critters) though I will probably include some personal stuff too. Today I noticed as I was giving the little banty in the garage it’s antibiotics that the dosage was twice a day… I hadn’t been listening (obviously) when the vet explained and as the antibiotics for Hawk are once a day I ASSumed, so I have just had to phone the emergency vet and ask what I should do, he advised to start giving them twice a day then get into the surgery on the day they open (Wed 29th) and get some more tablets so it can have a full course. I feel so stupid right now!

27-28th December

It is now just gone 6am on the 28th, I have been up all night watcing pictures on the news about the earthquake/tsunami in Asia, I am just … I can’t think of the word, amazed isn’t right.. awed at the power and destruction of nature. All that keeps going through my head is what about all the animals? What will happen to the ecosystem in these areas. There will be epedemics of illness soon, there just isn’t the aid available in the world to deal with something of this size and without any warning.  It truly is humbling.

30th December

Well I’m now 2 roosters down, only one left and he isn’t crowing yet, kinda hoping he never does start to crow because it’s hard getting rid of all these pets. One of the roosters was sick anyway so we figured it was probably for the best in the end.  I think Hawk is geting ready to lay an egg, she was trying to find a dark spot today so I hung towels over part of her cage and put her in without a nappy on.  She’s scratching around and clucking quietly so I think we might have our first egg off her by the end of the day.  Hopefully anyway!

1st Jan 2005

Happy New Year!  Unfortunately Snowball the rooster decided that today would be the day he begins to crow.  Snowball is my favorite rooster, the only one left and I’m hoping we can sort something out with the neighbours so he can stay.  We have had 2 eggs so far off Hawk, one had an eg membrane rolled up inside the egg!  And as though all my animals are impatient for the spring I think the lizard, Caimen might be getting ready to lay some eggs soon too.  She’s VERY active!

6th Jan

Well I’m still not sure about Caimen but she seems to have settled down, Hawk has been going outside for a little bit every day, she is getting on ok with my little flock though she is a bit of a bully!  Snowball hasn’t crowed since that first day so I’m hoping *fingers crossed* that he is going to be a quiet roo.  I’m getting concerned about a bengal cat that has been prowling round the garden…  The chickens are very wary of it and there is nowhere it can spring out at them so I’m hoping everything will be fine.  I’m going to have to fence a run in for them soon.

7th Jan

Well we have got a surprise addition to the family today, an Alaskan Husky, Roscoe.  He’s HUGE!  I was really hoping things would work out with him but the longer he stays here the less likely it seems to me.  There are so many problems, not least of which is the fact that we didn’t introduce them properly and now shadow is frightened of him and he just wants to play with her… so I’m thinking maybe he will not be staying with us.  His owners asked that if there was any problems they wanted him back, I think that may be what happens..

Cats and Dogs

If you have any questions you want me to answer just send me an E-Mail to kitsune.foxspirit@gmail.com and I’ll post the question and answer here. If I don’t know and cannot find the answer i’ll post the unanswered question and anyone with an answer can E-Mail me at the above address. Thankyou.

Reptiles

If anyone has any reptile questions then E-Mail me at kitsune.foxspirit@gmail.com and I will endeavour to answer as fully as possible. In the unlikely event that I do not know and cannot find an answer to your question I’ll post the unanswered question at the bottom of the page and anyone with a suitable answer can E-Mail me at the above adress. Thankyou.

Cute Pictures

Ok, these pictures speak for themselves therefore I won’t be putting captions. Get ready for lota of ‘awwww’ and snuggly warm feelings as you peruse these cute, cuddly and lovable pictures. I’ll keep them smaller than the rest of the pictures so it won’t take as long to load.

 

  

  

 

Lion Fight

These pictures were taken at Knowsley Safari Park, I took them from the frint seat of a very small car (believe me, it seemed a lot smaller with this going on about 6 feet -sometimes less- away) I was truly amazed at the quality of the pictures that came out, at the time I had no idea what, if anything I was managing to capture on film. Hearing a lion roar from a few feet away, even through the glass of a car window is something you have to experience to understand!

How it all began, as you can see the lioness was none too pleased to see the lion.

But he kept coming… she kept warning. You can see how close we were to them at this point, that’s the wing mirror of the car!

Unfortunately the wing mirror kinda got in the way of this one, but as you can see she wasn’t happy that the lion didn’t heed the warning!

I love this picture, I think it’s the best of the set. This was literally RIGHT outside the door of the car!

I’m surprised that I wasn’t shaking too much for this picture to come out! Their combined roar could be felt more than heard, an amazing experience.

This is the last picture, I had an edited version of this as my desktop image for over a year after taking the picture, I cropped the male out of the picture and just had the female up, it is a fantastic picture.

• Accept that you’re not perfect.  Your mom wasn’t.  Though you’ll most likely be a better mother than she was in many ways, you won’t be perfect either.  The most important thing is that you love your child as much as you possibly can and make it impossible for anyone to ever question that love.

• Get together with other moms or just get “out” and go shopping, to the park, on a walk, or to visit family.  If you’re not at home, it’s true you’re not cleaning, but at least you’re not adding to the mess!  (:                                       Some tips for stressless baby outings

• Journal.  For yourself and baby.  Rather than stressing about getting each thing written perfectly in baby books/scrapbooks, keep a running log in your computer where you can just quickly jot down new/funny things your baby does.  You can always transfer the information later or elaborate if you have more time.  I also found it helpful to do some writing of my own when I found myself getting really stressed or irritated about something in my life.

• Join a Mother’s Club/online support group – www.mom4mom.org & “club_chat” Yahoo! Group have been great!

• Do what you feel in your heart is best.  It’s good to consult with other mothers and books, but once you’ve decided on what you feel is best for you and your child, own your decision and be comfortable with your knowledge that you are doing what you feel is best for you even if it may be different than what looks like the majority of other parents.

Favorite Books

The Baby Book by Dr. William Sears
The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding by La Leche League International

Favorite Websites

www.babycenter.com (GREAT weekly pregnancy/baby newsletters)
www.babymarketplace.com (good info on cloth diapers)