Trip Planning is Stressful... but don't PANIC!

So my sister has recently purchased her own Annual Pass and we have been planning several of her trips to Orlando from Texas for the coming months. This has been fairly simple and stress free. However, our mom dropped a bombshell on me this morning. She wants a family Disney trip, including my parents, sister, brother, sister-in-law & my almost-3-year-old niece... wait for it... for JULY! Ah! Very little planning time here.

This is quite a turn around from planning my sister's trips. My sister, Lisa, and I have done Disney so many times together that we know that we are the perfect Disney buddies. The remainder of the family makes it a bit harder; everyone has their own desires and speeds of doing Disney and attractions that they want to see. When you're not talking to everyone together it makes it a bit hard to figure out what everyone wants. Make sure that you have some idea of what everyone wants out of their trip. Ask questions!! I cannot stress this enough. I have recently taken several friends and family through the parks and have had a lot of people asking for advice on how to "do" the parks. When taking them through the park I always ask what they are interested in: do they want to go on the thrill rides? the nostalgic rides from their youth? have you decided which park(s) you want to go to?

In the early days of Lisa and I planning our trips we would actually make lists of which rides we "must ride", others that we merely "wanted" to ride & rides that we "didn't need" to ride. This really helped us in the early years until we really became much for aware of what we wanted out of our trips. Now we are quite lucky that we pretty much always want the same thing but you may not have the same luck. Another piece of advice... compromise. If you have 2 days and each of you wants to go to a different park, then spend a day at each. It doesn't seem like much but you'd be surprised how often this can come up. Hence communication being so important. Decisions need to be made... and soon so hopefully we'll get some feedback from the rest of the fam soon! (Fingers crossed!)

-Lara

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