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Show Summary
Ever find yourself meticulously scheduling every minute of your Disneyland trip, only to end up more stressed than enchanted? Nathan and Alicea from Mouse Gepads and I share the secret sauce for that perfect balance between a carefully-crafted itinerary and the sweet serendipity that makes Disneyland so joyful. . We dive into how over-planning can actually derail the joy of your visit, swapping out those potentially stress-inducing timetables for a sprinkle of spontaneity.
Chapters and Time Stamps
0:00 Intro
16:06 Robyn's Must Do Method
18:58 Rides to Prioritize
22:50 Planning with Genie Plus
31:13 Outro
Show Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the ParkMagic podcast, your place for insider tips for your next Disneyland Adventure. Whether you're a first-timer or a first-time-in-a-while visitor, we're here to unwrap the secrets to creating and simplifying your dream Disneyland vacation.
Robyn:
Intro to Alicea and and Nathan
Today, I'm going to be talking about one of the most important things about planning your vacation. And this is especially to all of you A Type personalities. I say that as any Type personality. But this is the biggest mistake where you see kids crying, being dragged basically on the floor across Disneyland, people who are like, ‘I will never, ever do Disneyland ever again.’ A lot of it comes from this one mistake that people make when planning. And I have some of the coolest people. I got to know them when I was on their podcast, ‘Man Escapades,’ and they are so much fun and wonderful. And I wish I could go on, like, seven cruises with them. So, Nathan, Alicea, can you guys share a little bit about you and your experience with Disney?
Alicea:
So we started, I guess we started Disney, probably in around 2009 with our daughter who was, I think, four or five at the time, and did a cruise and a couple of days in the parks and just totally fell in love with it. And we've tried to do Disney, something or another every year after that, or every other year. We've gone on many, many cruises with Disney. We've been to Disneyland, we've been to Disney World. I've been to Aulani in Hawaii. My daughter and I went to Disneyland Paris for her graduation trip this past summer. And we just honestly go as often as we can.
Nathan:
Yeah, it started out being a once-a-year thing or maybe every other year, I think now it's probably three or four or more times a year. We have three Disney cruises on the books; we just got off one a few weeks ago. We are often in the parks, which is ironic because we live in the Seattle area. So we're familiar with getting on a plane to either go down to California or across to Florida. It's just been worth it. It's a little cliché, but it is, it's our happy place. It's where we just love relaxing and doing whatever and letting the magic that is the Disney experience and the Disney cast members. Just letting that magic happen.
Alicea:
Is our happy place.
Robyn:
Relaxing on Your Disneyland Vacation
And you know, I think that you said something that would throw a lot of people who go to Disneyland once or once in a lifetime for a loop is you relax at the parks. It's so stressful when I go or I went, and it wasn't relaxing. And I think that the experience, and that's kind of the reason we started this podcast, is to help people who love the parks help other people experience the parks the same way that we do. And I think that there's a lot of things out there like you have to do some planning, and a little planning does go a long way. Like knowing what rides you want, you know, knowing, ‘Hey, you know, we love Cars, and what rides do they have in Cars Land?’ Some planning goes a long way.
Why You Can't Be Completely Spontaneous at Disneyland
But you know, you and the three of us have talked about how the biggest mistake people make is really over-planning. Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on that?
Alicea:
Definitely, definitely. Well, with Disney nowadays, you really can't do spontaneity anymore. You do have to have some amount of planning involved. But also with that is, you can't over plan because Disney just doesn't kind of allow that to work anymore.
Nathan:
Avoiding Over planning- Why Detailed Schedules Don't Work
Yeah, you're in a park with 40,000 other people. You're relying on a mechanical set of operations for various rides to never have a problem. You're assuming that those 40,000 people are going to be doing things that you don't want to do. Let's just face it. Having the fully detailed down to the minute plan is kind of setting yourself up for non-success, for failure. Like you're not going to be able to stick to that plan. And I think when people have an idea of minute by minute, here's the blowdown of how we're exactly going to go through our Park Day. When something happens that means they have to deviate from that plan, they're setting themselves into failure. And now all of a sudden you have this negative thing and like well, I wanted to do this but I have to go do this other thing versus if you just change your perspective and just go like hey, now I get to go do this other thing. I don't know what it was gonna do, but do I feel like a churro now or do I feel like going on Haunted Mansion or are we gonna go check out Autopia or I don't know, whatever we're gonna do, you just kind of go do it.
Robyn:
You know, when my son was five, like it was when Cars Land first opened, and we were obsessed with cars. We did the whole trip because I wanted to do that Radiator Springs Racers car. Now, to give you an idea of my son, if you can imagine C-3PO as a four-year-old, that would be my son. And so, you know, we went to Cars Land. I was so excited for him. We went on it, and he hated it. You know, he's like, ‘Mommy, I thought my head was gonna pop right off.’ You know, so I think that sometimes the things that we are really excited about, something for kids, we don't want them to miss out on this one thing. Kids haven't watched all the TikTok’s. They don't know, you know, they might know one or two things. And kind of like with what you said, you know, when you build that minute-by-minute itinerary, you're probably going to be off schedule the moment you start because even if you get everybody out of the hotel at the right time, even if you don't have to go back to the hotel because somebody left a sweater, or a shoe, or a backpack or a phone then when you get, people try to rope drop Rise, and then Rise doesn't open on time, which, you know.
Expect Things to Not Go As Planned
I've never been to Disneyland where all of the rides open exactly when they're supposed to. And there are some rides that it is expected that they go down, like it would be a miracle if Indiana and Rise didn't go down one day, or Racers didn't go down one day. And it doesn't mean the rides are broken, Space Mountain goes down for like 20 minutes because, you know, if grandma took too long getting out of the car, they have to recycle those things. So if somebody paid me a million dollars that I could have lifetime passes, I don't think I could craft a minute-by-minute plan for Disney even having gone hundreds of times.
Alicea:
It's not only just the rides that have unpredictability, it's people too. It's everybody. In your own party, sometimes, you know, somebody will trip and skin a knee or somebody will get hungry unexpectedly or if there's an emergency bathroom break that has to happen. And these little things can throw a wrench into your plans and just make you deviate from what you want to do. For us, the important thing is everything's going to change or something's going to change. And you just have to go with the flow. We are very much go with the flow people. Oh, this unexpected thing happens, well, let's change and do something else.
Nathan:
And that's, frankly, where I think we've had some of our best Disney experiences are from some of those unexpected thing that just happened to happen. And you know, we were gonna go to this ride, but we just weren't feeling it or the line was too long, or whatever it was. And then we stumble into some random rare character that you hardly ever see in the parks. And it was the most magical, almost like one-on-one kind of experience. And when you have that detailed plan, you almost are taking the magic out of the hands of the cast members in the Disney experience by trying to over plan. You know, just let Disneyland happen.
Robyn:
You know, that same trip, my son was at Toontown, and they spent like three hours in Toontown's playground. And when Toontown reopened, he's 16. Now he's like, ‘Did they reopen that piano part?’ You know, like, that was a core memory for him. Not all of the other things, not the let me rush over to Disney Jr. Like it was those little moments in which you, like, there's so much magic that people kind of dismisses Dapper Dans, ‘I don't need to hear some people sing in front of a fire station, that's dumb.’ And then you're like, ‘Oh, they're singing the song, and I'm with my kids. And I'm making this core memory, and you miss that magic.’ And I see so many, especially on the playgrounds, I'm sure you've seen this too, where parents are like, ‘We did not pay $1,000 for you to play on a playground.’ And I totally get that you paid a lot of money they can play on a playground anywhere else. But you might be surprised that that might be the thing that they really remember. And for me Disneyland, somebody who loves Disneyland needs a lot of sensory input. So, you know, I find that, you know, my kids having a little wiggle time or even going to Pirate's Lair to even just walk around giving a couple sensory breaks. And you plan it to the minute, it's just not really possible to anticipate who's going to need that five minutes or how tired your feet are gonna be.
Nathan:
Yeah, we walked into Disneyland a few months ago when we were there. And it was in the evening; we had just flown down from Seattle. And we wanted to go do the Mickey Minnie's Runaway Railway. We've done it a bunch in Florida. We haven't done it since it's open in California yet. And we really wanted to see that queue because it just looks amazing. And Roger Rabbit had just gone down, and so everybody had kind of shifted over to the railway. And the line was like an hour, an hour and a half long. And we were just, we weren't gonna wait that long. And we spent 20 minutes playing around with, you know, lifting the cartoon weights and breaking ourselves out of jail and lifting all of the crates up that say, you know, "Don't touch this" or, you know, full of some, you know, sound effects or whatever and just having all that interaction. Like that's probably the biggest thing that sticks in my memory from that night was just playing around for 20 minutes in Cartoon Land.
Robyn:
And then the other thing I've done at Disneyland but I also took my family to Costa Rica and 100% recommended the float down the jungle reminded me so much of the Jungle Cruise, pretty sure supposed to go the other way around. But it was great.
Cost of Packing Too Much in One Day
But there was one day where I had, you know, so many things on our itinerary. And, you know, after we had done a hike through the jungle, looking for the rare quetzal bird or whatever, and then we had done a trip looking for sauce. And then I had another thing afterward, and my family was like, ‘Look, I'm tired.’ And I was like, ‘No, we planned this, we're doing this.’ And nobody had a good time; it was the biggest waste of money because everybody was tired. And I've done that at Disneyland too where you're like, ‘No, I have it on my list that we're gonna do these three things.’ And everybody's tired. Everybody's grumpy. And then by the end of it, you're just snapping at each other.
Nathan:
Yeah, we actually, we were in the parks for three days over that long weekend, and we never made it on Runaway Railway. Just, it just didn't happen.
Robyn:
Building A Flexible Plan for Your Day at Disneyland
So we've talked about some of the negatives, but I kind of feel like all passholders have some variation of the same strategy. Why don't you tell me what your strategy is? And I'll tell you how different if it's the same or if it's different from our strategy.
Alicea:
So, usually, we try to do when we visit one or two things that we want to do for that day. It'll be different if we have Genie plus or anything like that because you're kind of on the whim of Genie plus if you're going to use that. It's whatever times you happen to get whenever you get them. So if I say if we're doing Genie plus, it's kind of up to the program. We have rides that we want to do, but it's really up to Genie plus what we get to do and what we don't get to do. Other than that, it's really, let's pick, let's pick two rides that we want to do, maybe a show, and everything else that day is a bonus. We want to make sure we have some breathing room throughout the day as well; we don't want to be go-go-go. I especially need a little bit of rest times during the day because I fhave a bad knee. And Nathan sometimes needs rest time for his knee as well. So, you know, we do like to do sit-down restaurants when we can. I know not everybody can do that. There's a lot of folks that this is their one time there that tried to do as much as they can. But I really recommend giving yourself some breathing room, only doing one or two things a day if you can, big thing.
Robyn:
The Power of the Disney Nap!
I'm a big believer in the nap.
Nathan:
Ah, yes. I was just gonna say that, like, especially in California, all of the, not all but many of the hotels, and especially the stuff on property is so close, it's really easy to take off for, you know, a few hours in the afternoon and then come back in the evening. It's just so convenient. It's not as convenient in Florida; you've got to deal with the transportation headaches and all the rest of that. But in California, I mean, it's a no-brainer to take a few hours off from your long day. And, you know, take some pool time, grab a nap, whatever you want to do. And it's easy to just hop back into the park later in the day.
Robyn:
And somebody saying that's easy for you to say as a Passholder because you're there all the time. But let me tell you, for a while, we didn't have passes, none of us did for a while. But even when I only have a single-day ticket, I will still take a nap.
Reverse Drop or Closing the Park for Shorter Lines
And the reason for that is I don't usually rope drop at times. But if I was to even get there like nine or 10, I will stay till one or two, go take a nap. Now that time that I'm taking a nap, that's when the lines are the longest. That's when the park is the most congested. It's the least fun to be with. It's usually the hottest in the summer, I go home, I take a nap. And then I'm able to be there at Disneyland from 10 to midnight when the park is empty, you can walk on rides, you know, it's so much more enjoyable.
Rope drop has gotten so intense that it no longer really is but it used to be a lot of fun. Now I feel like it's like Black Friday. So I like to get there a little bit after that happens. But by giving yourself a nap, you actually get more time in the parks, not less from what I find.
Nathan:
I would say that we often have a game plan going into a trip of, 'Hey, there's this day that we want to try to rope drop.' And I'd say we have a probably 90% miss rate on actually making it to rope drop. But to your point, we would love staying late at night. And we will always try to optimize for being there when, you know, the park closes, like make that Savvy's reservation or Oga's Cantina or another reservation for really late at night in the parks. And then it becomes this really magical experience. We haven't been passholders; we literally just bought our annual passes, excuse me, the magic keys for Disneyland just this week when they went on sale. We were able to snag one before they almost immediately sold out. And so, to your point of, like, it's easy for a passholder to say go take a nap. We've never been passholders at Disneyland, and yeah, we go take a nap. It's just, it's worth it because when you get too tired, you know you run up, you know, 25,000 steps a day, and you've been on your feet since, you know, 7 a.m and it's come, you know, 10 or 11 at night, and you're still trying to do this because you have stuff left on your list. That sounds like a job. That doesn't sound like a vacation.
Disney is there so much for the vibes, at least for us that, you know like Alicea was saying, we do a couple of things that we want, like, we'll try to go hit Haunted Mansion, or we'll go ahead Rise, or the Incredicoaster or Radiator Springs Racers, you know.
Using Individual Lightning Lanes if it Works with Your Budget
We're not afraid to say, ‘Oh, that's a fancy ride, do you want us to pay, you know, 15 or 20 bucks to just guarantee we get on that?’ Like, we're lucky enough to say, ‘Yeah, we'll just do that.’ So we know that we get those things in. And then whatever else happens happens.
Snag Those Last-Minute Dining Reservations
This comes to reservations too for restaurants. We've done whole trips where we don't have any advanced reservations. And when we were in California a couple of months ago, we had no advanced reservations. And I was making, like, character dining reservations for the next morning at like 10 or 11 at night and getting great character dining or dinners or whatever. Like, the world is your oyster if you just have a little patience and wait for people to start canceling the day before.
Robyn:
If you have that flexibility then you're able to do that.
Robyn's Must Do Method
So the way we do it as a family when we're going, and especially if we're going with somebody who doesn't get to go all the time, everybody creates their three must-do rides or three must-do attractions or three must-do shows if their kid that's too little. I ask them, ‘Is there anybody they're excited to meet? Is there, you know, do they love cars? Or do they love Star Wars?’ and then you research the attractions and shows, and you do that planning ahead of time. So you don't feel like you're meandering through the park hoping that you find something.
Most of the time as a family, we have our most usable overlap. Me and my son both like Star Wars, you know, like me and my daughter both like coasters. And so I picked the must-dos. If you just go in saying, ‘Okay, we've got three things, we've got five things that we're must-do on this trip. And that's what we're going to do,’ then that leaves you open for the magic to happen. It leaves you open for the things, and then you can have like a list of things that I would like to do, things that you know if we have time, so you don't feel like you're meandering. And if you're in a tight personnel, you can put it all in a plan, just know that it's going to move. It's not going to be tied to a time. And that order is going to have to change. Please, feel free to be like, ‘That's not how we do it. I don't like that. I think that's dumb.’
Nathan:
I think that's 100% how we do, you know, Alicea has to hit Haunted Mansion, I have to do Rise of the Resistance; those are kind of our must-dos. I think there may be a few others that we love, things like Jungle Cruise or Pirates, especially when we're in California because those rides are just better than the versions that are in Florida. And so we have those on our list. But we'll say, ‘Hey, we're gonna be here in the parks for three days, or four days, or whatever it is, at some point, we want to do these rides,’ and you just kind of go with that just general target, you know, it's less of a day-by-day kind of thing. When it comes to the last day, of course, we're like, ‘Oh, we haven't been able to go hit Runaway Railway yet, for example.’ And so, yeah, we try to do that. Now, it didn't work out for us because of various and sundry reasons. But it's okay because, you know, we're going to be back and that is kind of a luxury statement. You know, not everybody has that. And so sometimes you need to put a bigger priority on some things or make more of an effort to follow up on your priority list. It just really depends on your family situation. For us, we're blessed to be able to just be really flexible. And if something doesn't happen this trip, it's okay because our guarantee is something else really awesome did happen. And we'll be back to do whatever that thing is that we missed.
Alicea:
I will say we did very much used to be planned-everything-down-to-the-minute people. And we learned pretty quickly on that that doesn't work the way we want it to. And over the years, we have become very much more just kind of let things go as they go type people.
Robyn:
Because it does, it stresses out everybody in your group. Now, some things that I think that Disney people, you know, it's all about insider tips.
Rides to Prioritize
I think that when people go to Disneyland, there are certain rides that we know will break down often. And so we know if they're make or break, then we usually prioritize. So let me see if I miss any. So in Disneyland, Indiana and Rise are the worst, probably followed by Matterhorn and Mickey's and Minnie's Runaway Railway. And then Space can be a little unpredictable sometimes. But for the most part, everything else, they do go down but it's not going to be for three to four hours at a time on most days. And then in California Adventure, I would say Racers is the number one that goes down the most. And then Soaring and Soaring, I would say probably Soarin' and Guardians can go down, not nearly at the pace, kind of more along the line of Matterhorn. So if those are on your must-dos, then you want to do them or plan them or book the individual Lightning Lane before about 11 o'clock this way because Rise usually goes down for about 90 minutes at a time it feels like. So you know, Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway is great. But if you know they're closed from 8 to 10 for fireworks, so if you plan on doing it at 10, and they don't come back up after fireworks, then you've missed out on that. So I usually will tell people, for those offer individual Lightning Lanes, if you want to do them, do the individual Lightning Lane, cut corners someplace else, and book them as soon as you get into the park. Because if they go down during that time period where you have that pass, then you can go back and use it later in that day. So it gives you the most flexibility and then to prioritize Indiana Jones is always something that if somebody wants to do that, I always tell them to make sure that they do that as early in the day as possible.
Nathan:
Rise of the Resistance is for us the best attraction that Disney has ever built. I just wish it was more reliable because, boy howdy, it is not.
Alicea:
Oh, no. There's just so many different effects and different things that have to happen to make it in a show.
Robyn:
And somebody might be listening, thinking, ‘Well, man, that must mean that ride is unsafe at its breaking that often.’
Alicea:
There's different modes, if something doesn't work, and we're not talking about safety and nothing safety, it's just, it's just what's showing in front of you really is all it is sometimes.
Nathan:
Those animatronics just break. And it's not a safety thing. It's just, does the full ride experience happen anymore. And yeah, a lot of these things go into B mode. I'll take Rise, for example. You know, there's one spot where you're on the car, and you're going through the gun battery on the Star Destroyer. And those guns used to move when they fired and they don't anymore, but I think kind of like the Yeti on Everest at the Animal Kingdom in Florida. Like, I don't think those are ever gonna move again. I think it's the upkeep of them just isn't worth the problems that they had with making that stuff.
Robyn:
And their submarines, they go down mostly because of guests issues. So if you ever have a cast members like your glasses, or like you need to take your backpack off. Now, it's because of like, if somebody loses their sunglasses on the track of rise, they have to re clear the track, they've got to reset it, it takes them a long time. So if it seems like they're extra excited about that, it's because they're trying to protect the guest experience for everybody out. And then this is also important to know, because Lightning Lanes, I usually tell people to plan five to 20 minutes on line. But like, for example, Space Mountain, if grandma takes too long to get out, the ride will go through a testing series that takes about 20 minutes. So that means you could potentially be in that lightning lane for 40 minutes.
Nathan:
As much as I am not a fan of the whole Genie plus experience where you have to now buy your way into it versus the old Fastpass stuff where it just was part of your park day, I get it.
Planning with Genie Plus
And for us, again, we're kind of blessed to just go like, ‘yeah, we're just gonna more often than not cough up and get into that Genie plus experience just so we can,’ ironically, have a little bit more planning of our day and what that's going to look like. Now, the exact order and what's available and when is going to be completely random. And sometimes, you know, that next thing that we're interested in doing that Lightning Lane is going to be, you know two or three hours out. So, you can start stacking those Lightning Lane passes if they're really long out. But that gives us also time to say, ‘hey, well, we're not going to be able to do this ride that we really want, you know, for another couple of hours. Let's go do a filler show, let's go have a meal, let's go do this or that or the other thing.’ And so it actually, we've incorporated that into our flexibility like it's become part of how we do Disney in an unplanned, if you will, way. You know, we're still kind of in control of what's going to happen. But the Genie plus service really lets us have a plan without having a plan.
Robyn:
Some Lightning Lanes Are Worth More Than Others!
If you go to parkmagic.com/ll, we have a Lightning Lane and a recommended order. It's somebody was like, ‘that's a lot of criss-crossing across the park.’ Well, the way that you book the Lightning Lane might not be the order that you experience the rides in, and if it means 50 less minutes standing in line, I know the parks are small enough, it's not like Disney World where criss-crossing makes a little bit more sense in Land than it does in World. But the biggest thing is, you know, we want to look at the, not all Lightning Lane have the same value. So an Autopia Lightning Lane is not going to give you the same discount on the amount of time in line as Space Mountain or Indiana Jones or Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway would.
Nathan:
Right exactly. And you have to remember that if you're doing a lightning lane that sometimes you're bypassing important areas or impactful areas of the mainline queue, that's the reason we didn't want to do a lightning lane for Mickey minis runaway railway like we've done that ride in Florida a bunch, love that ride, in California I want to go through the queue. Now, I don't want to stand in that queue for two hours. But I do want to go through that queue. And so I'm willing to wait or time it until that queue is of a manageable you know length, you know, a half hour, 45 minutes maybe that we can really enjoy the queue but not have to stand on our feet for for two or three hours or however long that line gets.
Robyn:
And in Disney World, that's a much bigger issue.
Avoiding the FOMO & Embracing the Shows
In Disneyland, I really think it's only Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway that you have a big story element that’s bypassed by Genie, and it's basically, it’s really cute but if you're not like a huge Mickey fan, if you're just like a normal person, you might, but it’s all these cute little vignettes of like the cartoons come to life that we grew up with. So it is really awesome.
So I think when it comes to planning, if somebody is like, ’But I don't want to miss out,’ I think that what I usually tell people is that when you plan to the point where you don't miss out, you miss out just different things. So you miss out on the shows, people is like the Tiki Room ‘meh”, Tiki Room, one, is very entertaining if you have a toddler, they will love it. And two, you're sitting down, eating a Dole Whip, probably. You know these are all good things, and you need that rest time. And it can be hard, especially if you have teenage kids, to get them to say, ‘Let's sit down and stare at Rivers of America for 15 minutes,’ but you can't get them to sit down and watch a show.
Nathan:
And stuff like that is great to do as fillers between, say if you're using Genie plus and you've got a little bit of a wait until you can go do Jungle Cruise or whatever else. ‘Hey, let's go do Tiki Room while we're waiting’ because there's, you know, there's never going to be a long line. You're just going to be waiting for the show in front of you to get over. So, you know, those kinds of experiences, those are the great ones just pick up on a whim.
Robyn:
And like the things like there's like Storytelling Pavilion where Belle tells her story. And it's really fun. Like even as an adult, I enjoy it. And there are these like Broadway-quality shows that, you know, they're not always available. But like what if something's playing in Hyperion Theater in California Adventure or something's playing like Tale of the Lion King. These are Broadway-quality shows. And especially if you don't have the budget to maybe go to Disney and take your kid to Hamilton, then you know, these can be a great way to get your kids to experience Broadway and experience live performance. And nobody is better at telling a story than Disney. These shows are not like the shows that you might see at a Cedar Park.
Nathan:
That said don't expect to see Hamilton at the parks.
Robyn:
That is not currently playing. Well, he's tight with Disney. And that not that tight.
Alicea:
No, the cast members and the performers do such an amazing job. If you can go see a show, take a bit of the slow path, do it, I highly encourage you.
Robyn:
Doing Research Before You Go Is Key!
So I hope this is helpful, you know, kind of the summary and planning the perfect day. It means doing planning work ahead of time, which, like seeing the Facebook groups, passholders will be attacking single day tickets like you're not on your phone all the day. I don't understand why you're complaining about being on the phone so much. I think a lot of that goes to if you haven't done any research about the rides and the menus, you end up doing that on your phone on top of Genie plus, and it feels like a lot. So making sure you have an idea of what you want to do and what's important to you. But then letting the day unfold and just prioritizing the things that you would feel like your trip was not complete if you didn't do, but keeping that, I would say, under like five things, including shows and meet and greets.
Nathan:
Yeah, absolutely. I think three to five, whatever you want to do, you know, have those top priorities. And whatever else is, it's just great that that happens to happen.
Robyn:
You Literally Cannot Do It All in One Trip!
I agree. It can be so overwhelming if it's your first day, even if it's your first time or even if it’s your first time at a specific park, or you know, this is a huge budget item, this is more money than you would normally spend on a vacation. It can add to that pressure, and especially if you're watching all of these TikToks that are like, ‘Oh, this is the must-do, this is the must-eat.’ Those people all have passes; they have an unlimited amount of time in the parks. So, you know keep that in mind as you're watching those. If I had an unlimited amount of time, that might be my must-do experience. But really look at what does your family need? And what does your family enjoy doing? And build your day around that because that TikToker is not going to be with you. So live your best Disney life and try not to yuck other people's yums.
Nathan:
Absolutely. I think the other thing, just because you've brought it up a couple of times, I would just say to all those passholders who love to get a little negative on the single-day passes or have very strong opinions, just let people have their own magical experience. If you see somebody struggling because they don't know what's going on or have those frustrations because they feel like they need to be on their phone a lot, maybe offer some tips. We're all here in this big Disney community to help each other out. It's the reason that Robyn you've got a podcast; it's at least the reason that Alicea and I have a podcast. We have a lot of knowledge that's been hard-won, and we want to share that. So just have a positive spin and let's be supportive of each other. Whether this is you know your 10th time to Disneyland this year or this is your one time that you've been able to save up to get your family to Disneyland, let's all be there to support each other, no matter where our backgrounds are and what our personal experiences have been. And let's just all help everybody have the magic.
Robyn:
So, if people want to listen, you've got a great podcast, and what's the best way for them to follow you, to find the podcast, those kinds of things.
Nathan:
I feel like I've spoken a lot. Alicea why won’t take this one?
Alicea:
Adventure and Mousecapades
Our podcast is called Adventures and Mousecapades, and you can find us on pretty much all the socials. We are @ourmousecapades. We do a weekly podcast that drops every Monday all about our Disney experiences.
Robyn:
Thank you so much for coming on. I think this show will be really helpful to people who are planning their first trip. So thank you so much.
Nathan:
Thank you, Robyn. And yeah, good luck to everybody who's going to go take their first Disney experience. You're going to have a great time.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of the ParkMagic Podcast. For more tips and planning tools designed to help simplify your Disneyland adventure, visit ParkMagic.com. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to hear more tips, be sure to subscribe to the Park Magic Podcast. And don't forget to leave us a review. Your feedback helps us spread the magic even further. Leaving a review could also help you; each month, we will be selecting one reviewer to win a one-hour planning session with Robyn. Winners will be announced at the end of the first episode of every month. Thanks for tuning in, and remember that we are here to help you have a less stressful and more magical trip to Disneyland.
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