Being Spontaneous at Disney World
There’s a lot of pressure to plan for Walt Disney World down to the smallest detail. Advance Dining Reservations, dessert parties, dining packages, and other upcharge offerings–plus fear of missing out all makes it seem necessary to meticulous planning. This can create stress and sky-high expectations, and we want to underscore that months of planning are not essential to have a fun Walt Disney World vacation. (Updated November 15, 2022.)
While we stress the importance of slowing down and having balance on Walt Disney World vacations, the sheer volume of the planning resources on this blog and sites like it no doubt compounds the stress people have when it comes to trip planning. I sense that there’s a feeling that if you don’t spend 100+ hours planning, getting all of the “best” ADRs, having detailed itineraries every single day and a sound strategy for scoring the top Genie+ Lightning Lane reservations, the trip is a categorical failure.
This simply is not true, and we’ll cover why in this post. I was going to title this Tips for Being Spontaneous at Walt Disney World, but direct strategy for spontaneity sort of misses the point. Instead, this is more generalized; think of it as reassurance that you can have a great trip even without planning every minute detail months in advance.
I’ve discussed this before, but usually we don’t follow our own advice when it comes to Walt Disney World planning. There have been entire trips where we’ve only made one or two Advance Dining Reservations. What we do beyond that is often impulsive, determined the day-of.
Walt Disney World planning obsessives will probably consider this heresy, but I hate spreadsheets. From my perspective, spreadsheets are antithetical to the core concept of vacationing. I understand others vehemently disagree, so to each their own. If you enjoy making spreadsheets, feel free to go nuts at it.
We have done other trips that have involved more planning. Particularly when we take family or go with friends for whom it’s a less frequent experience, we do a solid amount of planning. (We also do a lot of “practice days” that are highly choreographed, but are really for research and not for personal enjoyment.)
In other situations, our visits are more impulsive, booked only a few weeks in advance. For us, spontaneity isn’t just nice from a relaxation perspective, it’s also helpful for learning and improving our planning resources. We make mistakes, stumble upon surprises, and report back with our findings.
For most readers, impulsive trips and doing things for the sake of research are not the norm. You’re usually starting to think about vacation a year in advance, booking hotels and airfare around that time, making other reservations a few months in advance, and doing the more granular itinerary-building inside of a few weeks.
That’s where blogs like this one and social media come into play. While you’re planning your ADRs, Genie+ priorities, or daily plans, you might do some research, and encounter a barrage of advice consisting of various must-dos, step-by-step strategy, and lists of mistakes and pitfalls Walt Disney World guests make. This blog is certainly guilty of some of those things.
With that in mind, I want to reiterate that the tips on this blog are just that–suggestions. Nothing here is an imperative. Instead, think of this in a holistic sense: you read from our knowledge base, incorporating the helpful tips into your own plans.
You should disregard whatever does not appeal to you, is not pertinent, or just seems like crumby advice. If you utilize even 10% of the tips on this blog, you’re way more prepared than the average guest, who still thinks “the Harry Potter park” is at Walt Disneyland Florida.
I don’t believe that are any specific things you absolutely must do or avoid in order to have the perfect Walt Disney World trip. To the contrary, there is no such thing as a “perfect” trip, and trying to chase that illusion is a fool’s errand.
In an abstract sense, I think there is danger in extensive planning: the expectations and stress it creates. If you have a binder filled with daily printouts of customized, step-by-step itineraries, you have no doubt spent dozens (if not hundreds) of hours planning for the trip, and intend for things to go a certain way.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, it can create unrealistic expectations. If you work really hard to get a Be Our Guest Restaurant ADR, and find yourself building up the hype months in advance, there’s a reasonable probability you will be disappointed.
Personally, I think this is one of the big reason so many new things at Walt Disney World have drawn polarized responses. The build-up and anticipation for some of these experiences are just crazy. This often leads to two polarized results: disappointment because the experience was not as good as expected, or heaping of praise due to a desire to confirm one’s preconceptions. (And so the cycle continues.)
You know the adage, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry’? Well, the Walt Disney World counterpart to that should be that ‘the best planned itineraries of mice and tourists always go awry.’ Walt Disney World runs like a well-oiled machine most of the time, but there are simply too many moving parts for plans to go perfectly.
The good news is that the online knowledge base for Walt Disney World you reviewed extensively while planning taught you how to approach Walt Disney World. You learned how to approach the park, resorts, restaurants, etc., and that can be applied dynamically to myriad hiccups and snafus as they arise. As with all things in life, knowledge is power.
Usually there is one planner in the family/party and everyone else is going along for the ride. The issue here is that, even though the people going along for the ride offered no input during the planning stages, they will have input upon arrival. This can cause bitterness in the person who spent so much time planning, who now feels that their effort is unappreciated or is going ignored. It also can cause frustration in those along for the ride, who are told the plans are already set, and it’s too late for the input.
Neither perspective here is invalid, depending upon the approach both sides take. On the one hand, advance planning for Walt Disney World is important and your (I’m assuming the “planner” is reading this post, since it’s a planning blog) time and effort to plan should be appreciated.
Conversely, the word “vacation” has a certain connotation, and a trip to Walt Disney World flies in the face of the conventional understanding of that meaning. Many first-timers simply do not know what they are getting themselves into when it comes to WDW. They are not totally to blame by underestimating its complexity; nowhere we’ve visited in the world is as complicated of a destination as Walt Disney World.
Sometimes this dichotomy works out perfectly. Those along for the ride go with the flow, and end up viewing the planner as some sort of freakishly omniscient Walt Disney World tour guide, elevating them to ‘Vacation Hero’ status as they weave past the crowds and lines, and have an amazing trip.
Just as often, it leads to meltdown. Meltdown of a parent who put so much effort into planning the perfect trip, and has found their plans derailed or their efforts under-appreciated. Meltdown of a child who cannot do what they want, or has been forced to tour at a whirlwind pace, when really, they’d be perfectly happy to just play in a splash pad for an hour.
This is something to consider before even starting to plan a trip, and is a good conversation to have before throwing away dozens upon dozens of hours doing potentially-unnecessary planning. This is also why we recommend a balanced approach as the ideal, with pre-planning as well as room to wander and do things on a whim. (Or “planned spontaneity” as we call it.)
In all situations, it’s still important to remember that hyper-planning is not a strict necessity. One of the things we’ve been stressing lately is that it’s often easier to book Advance Dining Reservations last-minute rather than 60+ days in advance. (See our recent Top 10 Tips for Difficult ADRs at Walt Disney World.)
Obviously, this is a YMMV situation as you won’t always have your ‘must-eat’ restaurants available for last-minute bookings, but you very well might. Since we take more last minute trips, one of our top strategies is regular refreshing of the MDX app for last-minute cancellations or ADR drops, and this strategy has proven quite successful for us.
Rather than offering comprehensive strategy for being spontaneous at Walt Disney World (since that’s a contradiction-in-terms), the salient point we hope you take away from this post is that you can be spontaneous at Walt Disney World. Planning is great. We recommend it. But your entire trip does not need to be planned down to the minute.
Moreover, you should not buy into planning recommendations (or hype) that has a dire sense of urgency to it. When it comes to trip planning and social media, there’s a pervasive sense of FOMO that drives many people to spend on unnecessary experiences at Walt Disney World. Consider it a form of keeping up with the online Joneses (or Kardashians, these days). This is exacerbated by certain popular experiences booking up quickly, but that’s less a reflection of quality and demand than it is limited supply and the FOMO machine.
In short, Walt Disney World is a big place with a ton to offer. Even on a “highly successful” trip, you’re barely scratching the surface of the great things to do. Absolutely no single thing at WDW is make or break in the grand scheme of a trip. The pressure to plan a perfect trip is optional, because there’s no such thing (and paradoxically, every imperfect trip can be perfect in its own way if you let it).
You can have an incredible trip dining booking all of your ADRs same-day and eating exclusively at hidden gem restaurants. You can do attractions on a whim without spreadsheets or even our semi-structured itineraries. You don’t need to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance or Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind to have a memorable trip. This is important to remember, and we hope this post has helped you take a step back and potentially re-evaluate the way you think about a Walt Disney World vacation.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
Do you agree or disagree with our advice about being spontaneous at Walt Disney World? Do you have any hacks for making last minute trips go better? Any tips of your own about balancing pre-planning with spontaneity? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Fantastic advice. I was recently helping a friend preparing for her family’s first-time trip during Thanksgiving week (yikes). My heart sank when she ended our planning discussion with a schedule for touring that she planned to “follow exactly.”
It is hard to put myself in the shoes of someone traveling to Disney for a one-and-done or rare trip. So I try to compare visiting Magic Kingdom to visiting Paris or Venice: you have a couple of “must-do’s” and pre-trip knowledge of a healthy list of incredible experiences/sites, but no strict schedule to follow. You know you won’t get to it all. But… it’s all good, it’s all a privilege and there is nothing that can ruin the trip through omission.
I plan our family’s trips and love doing it, whether it’s a weekend in a city, or a road trip that will take longer. But I found myself stressing about Disney for a couple reasons. For one, Disney is EXPENSIVE – crazy expensive. So there’s that pressure to have everything be magical and memorable or feeling like I wasted thousands of dollars. We do not go to Disney every year – I’d love to, but this was my 11 y/o daughter’s first trip and the last time I went was 15 years ago with my older daughter. There again, trying to capture everything in one trip. The other thing that I was stressing about, is just all the complications leading up to it – planning ADRs, Genie +, strategies, etc. – it was a little intimidating. Reading blogs and tips and everything was helpful, but ultimately, just going and experiencing it was understanding it first hand. Things weren’t as difficult as I thought they might be.
I was glad I read everything I could though, to help me decide what to do, experience, and where to eat. But I didn’t overplan – I just went in with basic knowledge of the rides & restaurants, which helped me prioritize using genie +, and had a list in mind each day of what I wanted to accomplish. That was usually a couple rides and meeting characters, and everything after that was icing on the cake.
Our favorite trip besides our first one was 2021 — no ADR, no FP (except Rise), and low crowds. It was wonderful.
Recommend more research (“planning”) and building options, flexibility and trade-offs into your goals, rather than a single immutable list (“plan”). It may not be that spontaneous in and of itself, but it allows for spontaneity to occur. Sure, I make detailed plans, but depending on your point-of-view I either have innumerable plans (“In plan S, we bounce to go chill on the Skyliner when crowds get too big”) or a single plan with 27 options (“If you want to sleep in, then we should go to The Fountain diner for lunch before we hit the parks”).
Most people should only be using spreadsheets to calculate things like costs. If you want to go crazy, you should be creating a flowchart if you’re having difficulty thinking through all the combinations and permutations that you could easily change if someone wanted to do something else. (Not really, but it doesn’t hurt as a thought exercise to develop your flexibility to adopt spontaneity.) Also, like Tom said there’s some specific research tips you can use to fake spontaneity through flexible planning, and scheduling free time to do things that don’t require pre-planning.
Or maybe you’re lucky, and have learned how to make personal schedules without falling in love with them. Last time MMRR was too long even at half the posted time for our tastes, so we just didn’t do it.
Absolutely to all of this.
Hopefully most planning posts on the site accomplish this to varying degrees. “Teach a man to fish…” and all that.
I totally agree with preparing contingency plans. For us that makes the spreadsheet even more necessary. It’s a loose look at fitting Tetris blocks in place.
What try to make a workable plan to hit our priorities plus wiggle room for when spit happens. That means putting night shows at the trip’s front leaving flexibility to try again if one gets rained out or something else goes awry. Same with must-do hard rides, like I’ll put an EP day early so we have more time to adjust if GotG didn’t happen as planned. If I wanted to hit deluxe EEH yet the best way for us to do RotR is ropedrop the next morning, I want to see before arrival. If we’re planning an early midday break at AK or HS, is there high risk missing out on Indy and FotLK? Then contingency plan is needed. I find it much less stressful to prepare pre-trip than adjusting on the fly when I’m fried out from having fun, lol. Often too late to juggle at that point anyway.
Amen! As a young adult, I loved the planning. It was half the fun for me! While I still enjoy reading blogs like this and making the plans and imagining how the trip MIGHT go, I also love taking my toddler and seeing it through her eyes reminds me of the joy I had in the small unplannable moments as a child. We lived only a few hours away and would hop in the car and go for a Saturday. No planning, all what we wanted to do when we felt like doing it. Now living ten hours away it’s not possible to be quite that spontaneous but we still try to only plan a few ADRs, our park passes, and what our first Genie+ will be. For me, the ability to be more spontaneous is something I really LOVE about the change from Fastpass+ to Genie+. Every trip is a great trip, if you’re willing to look for the good and find the joy.
The charm of a Disney park isn’t in getting on the “best” rides, but the care and attention to detail put into every corner, every street performer, every show.
I just got back from Orlando last weekend, and was surprised at how well the Genie+ helped with spontaneity. Even with a big 10-person group we were able to get my 80YO mother on all of the rides she wanted with minimal waiting (6 in all), and so felt free to spend the rest of the time enjoying wandering around enjoying the road less traveled. I don’t think we spent more than 15m waiting in line all day despite heavier than average crowds.
What Genie+ did is remove the stress of worrying about my elderly mother having to wait in long lines and getting tired, so we could spend the rest of the time enjoying all of the details that set Disney apart.
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Our first family trip to WDW with a 4 and 2 year old and inlaws was “spontaneous “ . I honestly had no idea that you would need reservations for dining etc. Mind you this wasn’t a horrible trip- but we vowed never to be unprepared again lol. Since then we have become over planners if anything. We definitely thrive in planning- it is a much better experience for us – obviously this is unique to each family. My boys hit the age of not needing a stroller- at least for my oldest but Disney is a lot of walking so we were hesitant- ultimately we decided to not get a stroller but we did advanced lunch reservations- this was the sweetest spot- being able to sit down and recharge at mid day was what the boys needed. So basically everyday we do a lunch and dinner and that keeps them happy. I do see a future trip however where we could go fully spontaneously- assuming it is a dead time of year…. It is officially on the bucket list.
Oh- one last note. The hardest part of planning in our experience has been getting dining reservations 2 months prior- only for genieplus to randomly give exactly same time for whatever ride… ugh- so frustrating. They should really let you pick at least a time bracket
This is so true! My family is very big into the heavily-planned side of things for our Disney trips, which works great for us. However, some of our favorite memories we look back on the most fondly and still talk about years later are the hidden gems in the parks that we almost feel like we discovered ourselves, like tasting the Cokes and sodas from around the world at Epcot–little things we would’ve zipped past if we were too devoted to our micromanaged schedule.
i am the planner in our family. most of the time, i do enjoy it, as i’m the type of person who finds joy in lists (and crossing things off of said-lists), organizing, spreadsheets, etc. so i planned our september 2019 trip for months and we ran into all kinds of roadblocks. first, making our ADRS and 2 days later they announce the pushed up opening of SWGE, which caused me to rethink everything. then, hurricane dorian, which caused us to change everything and push everything back by a week on thursday evening when we were supposed to leave that saturday morning. miraculously i was able to get back nearly everything, with help of bonus fps for SDD, FoP, and 7Dmt from disney for the inconvenience.
so, i guess my point is that i spent months planning just to have to redo everything in a week’s time. so, some spontaneity for last minute trip planners was still there, i guess? having said all this now, the whole boarding group thing for RotR gives me anxiety just thinking about it, and with the luck i often tend to have, my phone or the app would crash at 0 hour and i’d be left high and dry.
Excellent post. We just returned from a trip that I over planned (per usual). We were celebrating several huge milestones, so I wanted this trip to be extra special. On a previous trip we had a fantastic dining experience at Cinderella’s royal table. At 180 days out at 7am, I secured dining reservations at Cinderella’s royal table at the perfect time to enjoy the fireworks from inside the restaurant. I added everything we were celebrating to the dining reservations notes. I checked in early and reiterated our celebrations and requested a window seat. Without going into the details, we ended up having a terrible experience. Part of this was due to my unrealistic expectations. I realized we had a great time the previous time because we didn’t have any expectations and just spontaneously enjoyed the atmosphere and experience.
Tom,
Thank you so much for this much needed post on spontaneous disney trips. I would like to ask if you could explain (in a post or otherwise) how to “expertly” use the Walt Disney World Experience app. I haven’t used my app since fall of 2018. Do I need to delete and reinstall it to update it? also, how is the app refreshed?
we went last Christmas/New Year where I had had to plan the trip much more than at other times of the year. We were able to get fast passes for every ride we wanted 60 days out and had some dining reservations but on other days even at the busiest time of the year when the My Disney Experience said that restaurant bookings weren’t available we walked right in to Coral Reef restaurant at 12.30 with no waiting and had an amazing meal. It is always worth asking rather than just relying on the My Disney Experience app. We were able to get a fourth fast pass each day once we had used our three pre-booked ones even for some of the longest wait rides. we didn’t wait for any ride in our whole trip.
We had a lovely hour or so lazing on a couch at Nomad Lounge in Animal Kingdom having hot chocolate and coffee and delicious snacks while it was raining heavily. We had front row views for the Magic Kingdom Christmas parade just by walking out of a shop on Main Street just as the parade was starting to go past. We arrived 10 mins before the fireworks and had a prime viewing spot right in front of the castle without any waiting around. If we could do this at the busiest time of the year it will be even easier to do things on the spur at the moment at other times. I actually expected it to be busier than it was.
This is making me feel so good! We’ve gone in mid January 2 years in a row and it’s been fantastic (cold, both years we managed to hit the coldest week of the year) but so manageable. We are approaching the point where missing school is going to get harder so we’re planning the week after Christmas trip and I know it will be MUCH busier but I’m hoping we can just roll with it, accept we won’t get everything we want but enjoy what we can hit upon
We are coming to WDW from Australia in September this year for our first Disney experience. I am our designated planner and have followed along reading your blog and a few others for the last 18months, following some advice from a friend who had been to WDW and gave me the heads up that a vacation required some planning at WDW.
I looked at all these itineraries and plans and decided to watch ride throughs of the attractions on YouTube with my boys so they could see the rides and which ones they thought were appealing. We had a discussion as a family and listed 2 must see things in each park for all four family members and 2 other things we would like to see. So my plans are now being built around these things, I know we won’t see everything but if the kids have seen the things they want then they will be happy, I will try to fp the headliners they want to ride, some of the rides they want to see don’t appear to require fp so we will lineup for them, follow your strategy for ror as one child is desperate to ride this. I know the rough park layouts in my head so I’m sure we can explore and find things that the kids spontaneously decide is fun. Throw in a couple ADRs as the kids definitely want to meet the fab 5 so two birds one stone and we should be right.
Best part before we fly back to Australia we stopping at Disneyland for 3 days midweek so we can catch some of the double ups there again and try ror again if we miss it at wdw and Disneyland seems a little more relaxed on planning!
Thanks Tom and Sarah for your blog it’s helped me, but I know the smiles and time I spend with my family will be perfect no matter how much I plan!
I’m planning to visit for two weeks next year, in the run-up to the 50th anniversary, and it’s going to be a planned/spontaneous hybrid: I‘m only going to only plan every other day, leaving the rest free. I’ll get the ADRs and Fastpasses of my usual must-do list, but also days where I can say “My feet feel sore, I’ll just lounge by the pool today” or “Huh, I never noticed that thing before, I’ll just try it out.”
Yes, that means I’ll be planning exactly when to be spontaneous… but what’s life without an oxymoron or two?
Another thank you, we’re leaving in a few weeks and I’ve been really stressed. If I could add this advice: Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. My kids want to go to Blizzard beach and skip ROR. My first reaction was WHAT? that’s crazy. But then I realized instead of getting up at dawn and fighting the crowds I will be playing with my kids, followed by sitting on a lounge chair. Maybe we’ll catch ROR next time.
Excellent mentality, and one that more Walt Disney World guests should have.
I’ll leave my two cents. We’ve gone to DW 5-6 times the last 20 years. First couple were planned pretty well and from what I don’t remember(?), the app wasn’t around or a big thing and maybe not even fastpass through the website. Anyhow, the visits we have gone since then we’ve just planned the few major rides with fastpass and made sure we were there on time for them. Other than that, we winged it. After all, you actually want to ride some rides at Disney, right? We also had full free DD early on and though the meals were nice, the food offered at the quick service areas are pretty decent, too. Not having to plan out those meals is a big stress saver. Going to one park to get a FP ride in then needing to time yourself to get through Disney transportation to another park for a meal can be a big PITA. Would I deny a free full DD plan, no, but I wouldn’t worry what restaurant to eat in as much as I did before. Flexibility is a key factor. Don’t stress over the little stuff.
Good post. We have done so many last-minute trips and know all about day before ADRs and refresh method but its rare to see a planning blog talk about that. I do think it is worth compiling a list of the stuff that is hard to get last minute, since it is still the case that when we check in for Cinderella’s Royal Table, there is always one person in line without a reservation arguing with the staff about why they are not able to just wait for a table to open up.
I agree. A list might be helpful. Perhaps it’s been done before here but as a Florida resident I’d love to see a detailed visit that was TRULY spontaneous – what worked and what didn’t. Like 1 week ahead of time.
At the risk of offending some, I find it kind of amusing that people sit up waiting until 12:01am to book all of their FP’s and make dining reservations (nothing wrong with that at all, I would too) BUT then sit back with a sigh of relief and claim they’re free spirited and spontaneous because they don’t have an itinerary for the 60 minutes between lunch and the next FP.