Reply to Orlando with almost 3 yr old

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[quote=Anonymous]Our twins were 4 months shy of 3 years when we took them to Disney this year Mother's Day.  At that point, about the only thing that they had been exposed to were 2-3 Winnie the Pooh books, Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals and Tigger stuffed animals (presents from an old college friend).  So they were pretty much Disney virgins.

But, here's the thing.  Whether your child knows the characters or not, the Magic Kingdom is designed for children and rather magical for them.  Without knowing who the characters were ahead of time, our children LOVED the experience.  Since we are also still slaves to the nap, we opted to stay in the Contemporary Hotel on-site.  It was a good choice.  We were able to leave the Magic Kingdom, get back to the Contemporary Hotel, get the kids to take a 2 hour nap, hit the cafeteria in the hotel for a snack and get back to the park.  Time from leaving the gate to walking back in to the gate was about 4 hours.  So, we could leave the park around 1:00pm and get back to the park around 5:00pm, do one or two things, then get dinner and still do a few more things.  Note that we went at a low-peak, not completely off-peak (scale of 1-10, it was 4-5 for congestion).  We hit the parks at 9:00am, stayed until 1:00pm, and did the parks from 5:00-9:00 PM so we got about 8 hours of park time per day.  No way we could have had that staying anywhere else.  Even if we had stayed in a Disney property not on the monorail, it would have been 5+ hours to get back to the hotel, nap, snack and get back to the park.   We would have had about 6-7 hours per day in the park.  Additionally, my kids are into vehicles of all kinds (trains, boats, planes, trucks, etc) so the monorail itself was a fun experience for them and we got to ride it 4 times per day!  If you include those, they got over 8.5 hours of Disney fun per day.  We were visiting my parents who live in Orlando and had planned to take 3 days mid-week (we spent both weekends with Grandma and Grandpa) and do one day Disney, one day off and then a second day at Disney.  The kids loved it so much that they begged to go back on day 2 and we ended up doing 3 straight days.  We did Magic Kingdom on the first day, Hollywood studios for 5 hours on the second day (late nap and went back to Magic Kingdom for dinner plus a couple of rides on the second day and got to see the fireworks) and then Magic Kingdom again on the 3rd day and they still wanted to stay and see more.  Additionally, staying on property comes with free parking so that makes the price differential for the hotel a little less.  Even if you stay off-site, parking is per day, so if you pay for parking in the morning, leave and come back, you don't have to pay for parking again.  Without knowing the Disney characters, my kids loved riding with me in the Tomorrowland speedway, riding train that goes around the park, riding the carousel, the Winnie the Pooh ride, It's a Small World, the Country Bear Jamboree, climbing the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, taking their picture with characters, exploring Tom Sawyer's island, Tiki Room, People Mover and other random things we encountered (like the small play area under the train station).  The loved to stop and watch the logs coming down in Splash Mountain and the one time we accidentally came across an afternoon parade as we crossed the park.  There's so much to experience and enjoy without knowing the Disney characters and at that age, it's all pretty magical and entrancing.

They're 3 now and it's been over 6 months and they still talk about wanting to go back to "Mickey's House" to play.  They remember quite a lot of it and talk about it and keep asking when we'll be going back.

A few tips:  even though our twins had been out of the stroller for most of a year, we still rented a double stroller and it was worth it.  Do not rent a stroller from the parks because you have to return that before you leave the gate.  Then you are carrying your tired child to the monorail, waiting in line (end of the day, the wait can be 30-40 minutes and we were low-peak) and then to the hotel.  We rented from Kingdom Strollers and they delivered the stroller to the hotel, we had it from door to door and then the day we left we returned it to the bell captain's station in the hotel, right next to where you check out.  Little things that I liked about Kingdom Strollers was that all stroller rentals came with a rain cover for the stroller.  Since there are daily afternoon showers, this was useful.  The day we went to Hollywood Studios it *POURED* right at lunchtime and between ponchos for Mom & Dad and the rain cover, we all stayed about as dry as we could on the run to lunch and later the run out to the car.  We used the rain cover all 3 days.  The strollers also came with a small mini-cooler that was useful for packing bottled water, fruit and snacks for the parks, so that the food wasn't all toasty hot when it came time to snack.

Bring snacks.  When we went for lunch, we went to the fast food places, found a table and my wife sat down and fed them the snacks while I went and bought lunch.  So the kids had some fruit and small amounts of crackers or nutrigrain bars or something while I got lunch.  This kept them moderately tame while I waited in the lines for fast food.  The first night we arrived (the night before day one), after we put the kids to bed, I went out to the 24-hour Walmart (about 10 minutes drive away) and shopped.  I got breakfast foods for us so that we could save time in the morning eating in the room before going to the park (the kids are up by 7am anyways and it only took 20-25 minutes to get to the park, so feeding them while getting us all ready saved time).  I also got us snack foods and a case of bottled water, which saved us about $20 if we had to buy the water in the parks.  If your child wants Disney memorabilia, then buy it at the Walmart and you'll probably save between 20-30% off the price of Disney junk.  The only thing we ended up buying in the parks, were tee-shirts because they had better designs in the gift shops.

If you stay on-site, you also get access to My Disney Experience which allows you to prebook your fast passes, add more fastpasses once you use your allotment of 3 per day and also makes paying for meals, etc easier by just scanning your wristband.  With the ease of identity and credit theft at Disney, I loved that I didn't ever have to pull a credit card out .

If you have a Smart phone, download the Disney Experience mobile app (even if you aren't staying on site).  The app for showing wait times on rides was quite good and allowed us to plan our visit on the fly pretty good so that we could save time by seeing what around us had the shortest wait times.

You can't see everything, even in 3 days.  So don't try.  But make sure to leave some time every day for unplanned activities.  The day we went to Hollywood Studios, we booked 3 shows.  After 2 shows, one of my twins was done, but the other one wanted to see the 3rd show.  So Mom took one kid to the 3rd show and Dad took the other kid for a walk through the park.  My son absolutely loved having 45 minutes where he was the guide for a rambling walk through the park. We stopped so that he could watch the ducks in the lagoon, got to find a fountain with moving figures that completely captivated him for a while and found the photo op for Lightning McQueen and Mater (he hadn't seen the movie, but he had been given a toy Lightning McQueen and loved getting his photo taken with Lightning).  So the unscripted 45 minutes was some of his favorite time.[/quote]

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