Thursday's Tip

It's our first official week of summer vacation, so I'm going to keep my post brief and fun. Here's a great tip this Thursday: when staying at Walt Disney World property, be sure to carve out some time to visit your resort's fabulous pool(s)! Disney has some of the most fun, unique "watering holes" in the country, and you'll want to take advantage of them, providing the weather cooperates. Here are a few of our favorites:

the "dragon" pool at Port Orleans French Quarter

 

Yacht & Beach Club

 

Ariel at the Piano Pool (All-Star Music)

 

The Big Blue Pool (Art of Animation)

 

Grand Floridian

Avoiding the Crowds During Disney's Unofficial Gay Days

If you're a family who has unknowingly scheduled your Walt Disney World vacation during the unofficial Gay Days (May 30 through June 2), the following information will help you avoid the crowds and perhaps a conversation that you're not ready to have with your little one. Gay Days at Disney often provide displays that can cause even the most liberal and open among us to blush--regardless of whether they are perpetrated by hetero- or homosexual couples. And while Disney does not officially sponsor this event, they do not discourage it and they even provide event-themed merchandise. If you find my advice to avoid the event to be homophobic, perhaps you'll accept the same advice in this post, coming from a gay man who lives in Orlando. I have no political, moral, or religious agenda in this post (although I certainly have one, and I'd be happy to share it with you!); I simply provide the information below as a service to my readers. Here are the Parks and dates hosting Gay Days events:

May 30—Animal Kingdom
May 31—Disney's Hollywood Studios
June 1—Magic Kingdom
June 2—Epcot

 

Friday Photo

End-of-school-year nostalgia. My big girl is now in the 5th grade!

 

Summer Refurbishments

There have been several recent changes to the Walt Disney World refurbishment schedule. Here's what's coming up for summer:

• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad will be closed June 22 and 23.


• Pirates of the Caribbean will be closed July 27-30.


• The Prince Charming Regal Carousel refurbishment that was previously scheduled for June has been moved out to August 1-21.


• The Liberty Square Riverboat will close August 5-9.


• MuppetVision 3D will be closed August 6 through September 2.


• The Jungle Cruise will be closed August 19 through September 30.


• Remaining closed until August 1 is Fountain View Ice Cream. It will reopen as a Starbucks location.


• Also getting the Starbucks treatment is the Main Street Bakery. It will reopen June 18.


• The California Grill will reopen after its lengthy refurbishment on August 31.

Also closing briefly May 30-June 1 is the Grand Floridian's Beach Pool. The slide will be closed beginning May 27. That about covers it!

 

Thursday's Tip

Today's tip is rather vague...but I will illustrate it with a real-life example (thus making it worthy of a blog post). Here it is: Plan your trip in as much detail as you can tolerate. OK, I'm not suggesting that you create a spreadsheet with a to-the-minute schedule (although, I was almost that meticulous on our first few trips as a family...I'm better now). But it is a good idea to have a plan, a framework. Know which Park you'll visit on which day, have an idea of what restaurant you'll eat at for at least one meal (if it's table service, you'll need to book ADRs anyhow), and know your top three or four attractions that you don't want to miss so that you can give them priority. Without a plan, you'll be spending too much time hemming and hawing about what to do next.

And, really, isn't this the way it is with any undertaking? Case in point: As a homeschool family, I find that we accomplish so much more when we have a plan in place. I am a big fan of The Well-Planned Day homeschool planner. In my first year of homeschooling, I wrote extensive and very detailed lesson plans for each subject in this handy book. I probably went overboard. By my second year, my approach was less stringent as I merely wrote the framework for what I wanted to accomplish within the week. This worked well--it gave me goals to strive for but didn't make me feel trapped into a set schedule. This year we moved to a new home in the middle of the school year. It was a "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" kind of year. I barely kept track of how many hours we were in school, and I certainly didn't have a daily plan for each subject. Yes, we covered math, language arts, science, and social studies, but there were definitely some gaps in our learning this year. And while I'm still confident that my children are getting a quality education and that we covered the core concepts for each of their grade levels, I feel less certain that they excelled. In fact, this is the first year EVER that we've come to the end of our 180-day school year and I still have pages left to cover in some of our textbooks. Usually, we've completed all curriculum well before our 180 days are completed. (FYI, the 180-day school year is a state mandate for homeschoolers in Tennessee. While we have at least 180 official days of school, we try to foster an atmosphere of learning all year long. We focus primarily on academic subjects during those 180 days and use our summers to fill in gaps with enrichment activities such as drama, piano, and foreign language.)

Back to the planning. If I had properly used my very efficient The Well-Planned Day planner this year, I would likely feel better about how we're finishing the school year. Not having a clear plan has caused me to suffer self-doubt and will likely cause us all to play catch-up this summer. A few extra minutes of planning each week would have saved us all some trouble. Lesson learned.

I could easily spend many hours (and often do) planning a Walt Disney World vacation. But even a few minutes of researching Park hours, attractions lists, refurbishment schedules, restaurant menus, and crowd calendars online before you go can save you HOURS in the Parks. You really can't over-plan a Disney vacation. Good planning is really what allows for spontaneity.

By the way, you can click below to purchase The Well-Planned Day. It really is a great tool.

Disney Is Everywhere!

The Cabletv.com blog sent me this cool graphic a couple of weeks ago...yes, I'm still getting around to unpacking my email in-box. I thought it was a creative way to demonstrate the reach of the Disney holdings. What I like about this is that it isn't an attack on Disney for what some would see as wide-spread greed; nor is it singing the praises of Disney for being all things to all people. It is simply an un-biased look at how Disney is marketing to different generations. And it's a pretty cool visual too, isn't it?



 

Hidden Mickey Monday

OK, so this isn't exactly a hidden Mickey...because it was right out in the open. And, it's not exactly a Disney-licensed version of the Mouse. But we saw several of these Mickey ride-ons in Chinatown.