His first and only trip was at 9 months old. I highly recommend it!
9 month olds are so much easier than toddlers. They don't talk back yet and they aren't mobile!
We ARE doing the dining plan, and Mom has me included in the room the whole trip, as opposed to splitting the trip into two, linked reservations (we’ve done this before)… which just means we are going to bank up some extra meals and those suckers are going to do a 2-meal credit while i’m not there!
Hey, if you're freeloading, they get to use your credits, right?
First of all I want to say that we were (from left to right) Moana, Sorcerer Mickey, and Belle! Are we THAT BAD at Disneybounding?
I actually got 2 out of the 3 without cheating! I couldn't quite get Moana though.
WE DID IT, YALL! We booked our dining reservations. And then went right back and did lots of modifying already
Because that's what you do! Actually, ADR's seem to be fairly easy to make changes... I mean I had to change some to add people on the day we left on our trip and was able to find availability that I needed. Now Fp's on the other hand... make sure you have a multi-pronged plan of attack in place that morning.
I’m not above packing his
Amazon Tablet and letting him watch Bubble Guppies.
We had Coco playing on a phone on the table for the last half of several meals. You do what you gotta do.
Plus, I do LOVEEEE AK’s CS options. Mom said they’re doing to be moving to a reservation style thing for some of the options at dinner?
AK has some awesome CS! And I came across this reservation system at one of the less awesome ones, Pizzafari. It really doesn't impact much. Maybe decreases capacity since they use part of the restaurant for this ADR Family Style meal, but we did mobile order, walked in and grabbed food like normal and had no problem finding a place to sit, so the impact on the CS side of the restaurant was minimal.
Mobile ordering was great last trip. I'm looking forward to using it again.
Disney has frustrated me with some of the changes they've made recently, but this one was a home run.
As we get closer to going and I start putting together my daily schedule( I do not plan for every minute)
You can't. Well, you could, but you might as well hand the paper to JP and let him shred it.
We spent about an hour in the closet with a 2 year old. But we survived. It touched down about a mile away. Don’t know how much damage yet. Lots more rain today.
Yikes! Too close for comfort. I'm glad you were all safe.
WHO KNOWS HOW TO BABY SWAP?! I still don’t quite understand the logistics.
I'm really worried about using rider switch since I've never done it and I know it has changed recently. Any pointers especially if we're using a FPs?
Ok, here's my experience as of last week...
Rider Swap is simple to use, in principle. There are CM's at the entrance of every attraction holding a device to scan MagicBands. At some attractions you have to approach a CM at the entrance and ask because they might not be easy to spot (For example, BTMRR and Splash), at others, there's a sign separate from the entrance and they are located there (Slinky Dog - on the ramp as you approach the entrance of the coaster, Everest - actually across the walkway from the entrance). Basically, you're looking for the Disability Access Service sign or CM. They do the Rider Swap as well.
When riding Standby, they will scan the band of the adult waiting with the child, giving them RS which is simply FP access to ride at a time relative to when the rest of the group should make it through the line and get back out. They will also scan up to 2 other bands and those 2 can ride a second time when the Rider Swap is used by the person who waited. While we were there, the RS was showing up on MDE as a FP with a start time, but could be used any time between the start time and when the park closed that night. This FP did not count against your total, so you could use your first 3, have a still to be used RS that you want to hold until later in the day, and still be able to make a 4th FP.
When you have FP and want to get RS, it can get a little sticky... you *MIGHT* be able to play the system and use a mix of FP and RS to essentially get some extra rides. For our trip, my parents decided to join us, literally last second. Our little guy is 3 so had a ticket and therefore FP. When we booked FP, we just booked him for the ones that DW and I and the older kids were going on, even though he is only 35" just to keep it simple. This ended up working well, because Mom and Dad couldn't get FPs for many of the rides so we could give his band to Mom or Dad and get RS for the other one and then our older kids could ride twice and we actually had no problems doing this for the rides we attempted it on. I know it worked on Slinky Dog and I was worried it wouldn't... we didn't try it on 7DMT or FOP.
I know some people plan to split their FPs and use RS as bonus FPs for their group. I was afraid to try that, for a multitude of reasons, but it actually would have worked for us on every ride, except for BTMRR. It comes down to the CM that scans the band and issues the RS pass. We had one CM that would only give RS access to our older kids to ride twice, but would not give me RS to wait while they rode. They were riding FP and he basically told me that since they were going FP, I'd have to use FP to ride, but the kids could get RS to ride twice. Thankfully we were there early in our FP hour so I had plenty of time and it worked, but I was a little irritated he wouldn't give me RS to give us a bigger window to work with. 100% comes down to the CM who holds the scanner, so just be ready.
One other tip, pay close attention if you are riding with the first group using FP and get scanned to ride again with RS. If it should take 15 minutes to get through FP and get back in line, the RS pass should be issued for 15 minutes from now. We had a couple of times where the CM issued the RS for basically immediate use. When this happened, the kids scanned their band to enter the FP line and it took the RS pass instead of the FP. Because we caught this and still had time within the window, they were still able to ride twice, but it seems that if there's a FP and RS that are both available for use, it will use the RS first so pay close attention to the App and keep refreshing as your group gets and uses RS to make sure you know what you have.
I apologize for the run on sentences and I've probably confused you even more than you already were, but this was our experience and if you have any questions I'd be happy to try to clear some of it up. It really isn't a hard system to use, but it can be time consuming and if you have to ride back to back, you could be looking at potentially over an hour in some cases of keeping JP entertained. I noticed FP lines, in general, being much longer than in the past, so we even skipped using RS a few times if one of the adults didn't want to ride something just to save some time.
We got the Quick service for free and paid the difference for regular dining. I know a lot of people don't like the dining plan but it works for us. We're basically paying $22 a day per person to eat. Not as good as totally free but not bad too. I did play with other bookings through the day but I think this works best for us.
We obviously didn't get in on this round of discounts, but this is pretty much the same scenario that we got our discount under. We didn't park hop as much as we typically plan to and DW and I were talking about it being a waste of money. Until I remembered that we had to get park hoppers anyway for the free dining and we came out money ahead, so...
So this morning I wasn't as hyped up to check. I didn't get up until 5:30 and didn't check until about 5:50. FREE DINING! I was on the phone right at 6 am but the hold time was going to be 2 hours. While I waited I did something I've never done, I modified my trip and guess what we qualified for the discount. I had to upgrade to the Preferred room and hopping but it was still going to save us more than $600. I called poor Michelle and woke her up to make sure I was making the right choice. I proceeded through to check out and I got an error message!
And then when I went back in the modify button was gone! 
I logged back out and tried to book from scratch just to make sure it was still available, and it was. I logged back in and tried to modify, but it was still gone. I still had the window open for booking from scratch and used the chat. The CM suggested trying again and maybe clearing my cookies. I logged out and logged in again and finally was able to change my reservation and complete the sale!!!!
. It's been a rough summer with moving our eldest to North Carolina last week 
and our middle son starting college next month. I need something fun to plan.
