My family will tell you I'm a bit nuts with planning for vacations. During our early trips, I had color coded charts with park hours/EMH and index cards with restaurant and attraction info, I packed daily outfits in individual ziplock bags for each person, etc, etc. But even though I enjoy that type of planning, I've become jaded about Disney because I feel like it's too much planning, too crowded, and not a value for the price anymore.
Probably the most "magical" part for us was being spontaneous about what park we would visit. Sometimes we would go to the bus stop and just see what bus came next to hop on. Sometimes we would have a random day where each of the kids would get a turn to choose something they wanted to do. Maybe we would go to MK just to get a haircut, hop on the monorail to Epcot to watch Miyuki make candy art, walk out the back entrance and take a boat to Hollywood Studios to do an animation class.
We felt free to have that type of spontaneity because with morning extra magic hours and low crowds we were able to do all of our "must see attractions" in that park in just a few hours and were then ready to head out of the park by 11:00. If we wanted to take a five hour nap or hop busses to wander around the other resorts that was fine, because we always had plenty of time to see and do everything we wanted during our trip. We often got 8-10 day tickets which were just a few dollars more than a four day ticket so even if we didn't use all the time it still felt like a value for the price.
Our last trip was in 2019 so before a lot of the post-covid changes, and even that was hardly enjoyable. At rope drop and during morning EMH, we had lines of an hour+ We felt restricted by the fastpasses we had pre-booked. And, honestly, most people in the parks just seemed stressed out, glued to their phones, and constantly keeping track of the time so they didn't miss their FPs, reservations, etc. Pretty much the entire trip we all (kids included) felt like it would have been better if we hadn't even bothered trying to go to the parks and just enjoyed the resorts instead. With the increased prices of the tickets, we also felt way more pressure to "get our money's worth" so we felt like we had to be in the parks for much of the day.
Obviously, I understand that prices will increase over time, but here's a sampling of ticket prices that I found in my email receipts. This is not what I would consider "normal" inflation rate for price increases over a 10 year period. There is nowhere else we vacation that has doubled or tripled in price.
8 day Park Hopper
2012-- I paid $203 (discounted, regular price was $355)
2019-- I paid $479
2022-- Current price for the same ticket is $792