They've Got an App for That

One of the blessings of the Internet Age (and if you're reading this blog, I assume you're a participant) is the opportunity to use these technological advancements to aid in planning your trip, in enhancing your enjoyment of the parks, and giving you a little added taste of the Disney magic when you have to go back home. In this part of the blog, we hope to give you a little taste of some of the many apps that are out there!

To kick this series off, I feel like I should start with my personal favorite app for trip planning: Lines. One of the questions that I often hear from folks who are planning a trip to Walt Disney World is, "when is the best time to go?" Obviously, this is a terribly complicated question and will depend on one's weather preferences, favorite seasons, and vacation schedule. Usually when someone asks this question, what they really mean is, "when is the best time to go where I will be able to enjoy my vacation and not be trampled underfoot by a mob of stroller-wielding men in Mickey Ears bedazzled with pin-trading lanyards blowing in the breeze." That's a great question, and one that many of us would love the answer to.

Thankfully, the good folks at Touring Plans have very nearly perfected the art of crowd level predictions. Using a wealth of data, they maintain a crowd calendar which grades each day on a scale of 1-10. A 1 would be one of the slowest days of the year, while a 10 would be one of the busiest. The calendar makes predictions up to a year in advance of your dates, so you have a good idea of how to plan for your trip.

But wait, there's more! Not only does the Crowd Calendar provide you with information regarding the best park for each day of your trip. Should I go to Magic Kingdom on Tuesday? What about Epcot on Thursday? The Crowd Calendar will give you a best and worst park for each day of your trip. Having this information in hand will make it a bit easier as you prepare to make ADR's (a topic for another day), set touring plans, and set up other experiences inside and outside of the parks. Touring Plans offers much more than a Crowd Calendar, but that's all we have time to explore in today's post.

Access to the full Crowd Calendar at Touring Plans is only available to members. The cost for a one-year membership is only $10.95. A discount is available to you if you own a current edition of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, as they sponsor the Touring Plans website. With this membership, you will have full access to all of the Walt Disney World information on their site. For a few dollars more, you can add Disneyland as well. Once you have the membership, you can navigate to the site on your mobile phone at m.touringplans.com or smart phone users can download the free (for subscribers)mobile app Lines and access the Crowd Calendar and much more information from your mobile device.

On a scale of 1-10, I would personally give the Lines app a big 10. I've used the information from the Crowd Calendar and the best days in each park to plan many of my trips over the past several years and have found it incredibly useful and accurate. While $10.95 may seem like it's a bit much, you'll find that it's worth every penny. The Crowd Calendar is just the tip of the iceberg for Touring Plans, and in the days ahead, I hope to provide you with more information on how I've used this valuable tool to enjoy my trips!

This is Not for the Cool

It's not easy being a fan of the Muppets...

Admit it. You like the Muppets. So do I. Whether in the greatly missed Muppet Show or one of their many movies (with the Muppet Movie being my personal favorite) the Muppets were once an American institution. Unfortunately, they have been largely forgotten in recent years. Many of us believe that we are too jaded, cool, or ironic for the particular kind of slapstick the Muppets provide. For the rest of us who still love the Muppets, one of the great things about going to Walt Disney World is the opportunity to see Muppet Vision 3-D at Disney's Hollywood Studios. If you're not familiar with the attraction, it offers a fun-filled frolic into the world of the Muppets, including all of the gags, mania, and one-liners that make Muppet humor so great. The Muppets became a part of the then MGM-Studios early on, and there were plans for them to have a larger role than they currently hold. Alas, for what might have been. While Muppet Vision 3-D is a great attraction, I have long felt that the Muppets provided Disney with an under-utilized property.

As such, it was with no small delight that I viewed this new movie trailer yesterday:



What do you think? I'm interested to see how Amy Adams and Jason Segel fit in with the rest of the gang? Will they attempt to take center stage or will they let Kermit, Fozzie, Miss Piggy, and Gonzo do their thing? Could this be the reboot that the Muppets need? Also, if this is a hit, can we look forward to some more love for the Muppets at the Studios? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!

While We're Making Introductions...

Greetings,

Thanks for coming by and checking out the page. I'm Clint. Don't worry, I'm also new here. When I saw that my friend Thad had started a Disney blog, I begged to get on board and he (reluctantly I think) said yes. I've done a little blogging along the way, and I'm excited to contribute to a blog dedicated to a subject that's brought me so much happiness over the past (nearly) 30 years. My Disney story begins in 1984. As a wee lad of 3, my parents decided it was time to take me to the "Place Where Dreams Come True". We loaded up in the Cutlass and headed south for my first ever trip and after my first day, I knew it was love. Subsequent trips would follow. Many subsequent trips would follow. We were that family. Every year, around vacation time, Mom would ask my sister and I where we wanted to go and we only had one destination in mind, Walt Disney World.

Over the next 15 or so years, I spent hours of my youth exploring EPCOT Center (yes, it will always be EPCOT Center to me), the Magic Kingdom, and the MGM-Studios. My natural nerdiness was provided with a sufficient outlet as I thrilled across space, sea, and desert on Horizons, watched the future of agriculture on Listen to the Land, and I ventured into troll-infested waters on the Maelstrom. As the years went by, I grew up. The opportunities for travel decreased and, before long, I was an adult. I went several years without going to the parks and my Disney life had become an afterthought. My fandom was something that probably shouldn't be expressed in polite conversation, because I didn't want to be labeled as one of "those Disney people". All that changed in 2004. On December 18th, I married my beautiful wife Suzanne and we set out on our first trip together. Not knowing where to go on our honeymoon, I tossed out a few ideas. She didn't ski. I don't care that much for the beach. Where would we go? How about Disney World? OK, sounds good to me.

Little did we know that that trip would be the start of a whole new level of fandom. Over the next seven years, we've been able to make a good number of trips down. In the course of preparation for those trips, I was introduced to the fan community on the internet. It was then that I realized, there are a lot of people out there with the same interest (obsession) as me! Through blogs, message boards, and podcasts, I discovered that the world is full of Disney people. Maybe you're one of us. Maybe you're not, yet. Thanks for taking the time to listen as we share insights, hints, and memories from a place that we love so much. I've got more to write (I hope) and look forward to seeing what the future holds for The Happiest Blog on Earth.

For the Love of Disney :-)

OMG, I am so excited that Thad has started this new blog about all things Disney! And even more excited that he has asked/allowed me to be a part of this new blog :-)

My name is Tiffany Singleton and I live here in Wetumpka with my husband, Gary, and four kids, Savannah 14, Andrew 11, Ellen Anne 10 and Grayson 9. I have had a life long love for all things Disney and even had a minor family connection to Walt Disney World. When WDW was built in the late 60's and early 70's, my great uncle's engineering firm/company created and provided some of the hydraulics for some of the early Magic Kingdom rides and also had a maintenace contract with them for most of the 1970's. According to my mother, my first trip to WDW was in the late fall of 1971, not long after WDW opened - I was only a couple of months old, so unfortunately, I can't give you my actual first impression of Disney :-) My uncle was able to get free and/or greatly discounted tickets to WDW, so we visited a few times in the 1970's.

One of the main reasons I have such a nostalgic love for Disney is that as a kid, WDW was my last family vacation with my Dad. We went in 1984 and he passed away in 1987 and we were going to go back the summer that he died. He loved Disney too and I always think about him when I now go with my husband and kids. I went a couple of times as a teenager, but as Thad, I seemed to take an unexplainable break from Disney for a time - even though it was always on my mind :-) I tried to talk my husband into going to WDW for our honeymoon, but he wasn't a bonified "Disney Nut" yet so it was a no-go. Then we started a family and it never seemed like a good time to go, until one day I saw an add on t.v. for a Disney Kid's Stay and Play Free Promo. I insited that we couldn't pass up the deal and we booked our first family trip in 2004 and needless to say, we were hooked! We only stayed 4 days in the parks and we knew that wasn't enough and we knew we wanted to come back soon and we've been back every year since. I truly find Disney to be a "magical" vacation. That moment when we walk up Main Street U.S.A. and spot Cinerella's Castle - aw, it just never gets old. And it's not just Magic Kingdom, I truly enjoy all of the parks. I love the nostalga, I love the theming, I love the characters, I love the restaurants and the character meals. My husband loves all those things, but even more so, he loves the practical things like the incredible customer service, the cleanliness of the parks and the overall inclusive feel of a Disney vacation.

In 2006, my husband had to attend a Tire Dealers Conference in Huntington Beach, California and much to my delight, I learned that Anaheim, home of Disneyland, was only a few miles away. We were able to tack on a couple of extra days to our trip and visited Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure - with no kids! It was such an incredible trip and was like being on our honeymoon. In March of 2010 we attended another Tire Dealers Conference in Palm Springs, California and, once again, did another side trip to Disneyland. We loved it so much, we knew we had to share it with our kids and in September we took them back for a long weekend. If you are ever in California, and ever get the chance, I highly recommend the Disneyland and Disney California Adventure experience. It's amazing how WDW and Disneyland can be so similar and yet so different. I hope to write a blog entry in the near future about touring Disneyland vs. Disney World.

I created a Facebook page last year, Dis-Girl, because I love planning Disney trips for our family and helping other families plan their trips too. With a large family and liking to go yearly, I'm always on the lookout for the best deals and most economical way to get there and hope to be able to share that with everyone who follows this blog!

Not Another Boring Blog

The lack of a smile on my face in the picture at the top of this page belies what I was feeling at the time. How can I be sure what I was feeling at the time? Well, I was at Disney World in Orlando so there is no doubt that I was happy. I remember the first time I went to the beach and saw the ocean. It was the summer following my 6th grade year. I grew up a PK (preacher's kid) and we didn't travel much for various reasons. I vividly remember reminding myself where we were several times a day by saying aloud, "I'm in Florida!" I couldn't believe it. I could've just sat there and looked at all that water the whole trip and been happy. As I got older, we went to the beach a little more frequently and some of that childlike excitement wore off. There was nothing quite like that first time.

I went to Disney World for the first time in the summer of 1984. My sister took me with her family. I had a great time but I was a teenager and there weren't many things that impressed me much at that time. I went again in 1987 with my class on our senior trip. We only had one day at the park and all of it was spent in the Magic Kingdom. Still a teenager, I was more interested in my social life than theme parks. Gigi and I went in 2000. Now thirty-one years old, I was able to enjoy the atmosphere of the parks more. My son was born in April of 2001 and Disney World and I drifted apart. We became distant and didn't communicate much anymore. As 2006 was coming to a close, that was about to change. Mightily.

My mother-in-law gave us all a trip to Disney World as a Christmas present that year. I was excited. I was a father now. In fact, March of 2006 had seen my wife give birth to a beautiful baby girl. Christmas found me the father of a five year old son and a nine month old daughter. Doing things with your children that you did before you were a parent gives those things new meaning. Trust me on that if you aren't a parent. In March of 2007, my family, the families of my wife's two brothers, my mother-in-law, and a family friend, Tori, spent a week at Disney World. It was incredible. I was smitten.

To see my kids, especially my son, awestruck by the sights and sounds and tastes of  this happy place only added to the fun. It was truly magical to me. My daughter celebrated her 1st birthday in the Magic Kingdom. She got a button to let everyone know it was her birthday. I celebrated my 38th birthday there that week. I also got a button and had a bird poop on my Barry Krauss/Jay Barker autographed baseball cap as I stood waiting for food at the Lunching Pad in Tomorrowland. On my birthday. It didn't matter. Okay, it mattered a little but I got over it quickly. How unhappy can you be in the happiest place on earth? Even with a bird poop stain on your favorite hat. I would submit to you that you can't be too unhappy at all.

This particular trip was my 4th to Disney World with number five coming just eight months later. My son and daughter will be making their 5th trip to WDW this November. If you haven't been to WDW during the Christmas season then you've yet to fully experience WDW. Disney does everything all the way and the holidays just makes the magic that much more magical.

I said all that to say this: I started this blog to share my love of all things Disney with you. You may not want to hear about but I sure do want to write about it. I like to think that over the last few years we've become pretty adept at planning trips to WDW as well as making the absolute most of our time there. My wife and I have helped lots of people plan their own WDW trips and doing so, at least to us, is the next best thing to being there. I'd love to use this forum as an opportunity to offer insights, tips, and things that we've learned on how to best navigate the various parks and attractions. Going in without a plan can make things difficult to say the least. Walt Disney World is a sprawling complex that requires forethought and planning ahead.

I also want to hear about your experiences regarding the various Disney parks. In fact, share your stories, pictures, tips, ideas, favorite places to eat, and everything else you care to. I love it all! When I retire, if I ever get to, I'm moving to central Florida and getting a job doing something, anything, at Disney World. Heck, I might do it a lot sooner than that!

Finally, I've also enlisted the help of a bona fide Disney expert in Tiffany Singleton. Tiffany lives here in Wetumpka and you can be sure that when we talk, Disney will be a part of that conversation. I'll let her tell you more about herself and how she became a so-called Disney nut like me. She has a Facebook page called Dis-Girl on which she dispenses all sorts of news, information, and advice about Disney World. I put a link to it near the top of this page. Check it out.

Anyway, hope you have fun with this page.