Tips Please

[TSRE]

I posted a similar request for tips on another board last year, and the two best tips I got were actually about keeping the hotel room organized. The first was to pack pop-up hampers (that are sold at Walgreens, etc.) to throw dirty clothes into. It kept our room so much cleaner! Probably obvious to some, but i had just never thought of it before.

The other was to use a hanging shoe organizer to keep everyones bathroom stuff in. You have to find the kind that goes on a closet pole for DLH because there is no door on the bathroom. This was so nice to keep all of the toiletries off of the small counter in the bathroom, and to avoid digging through a bag for stuff all week, or having the stuff leak. We took a half hour on the first day to "unpack", and felt much more settled for the rest of the week that we were there.

Other great tips - bring lots of little toys to keep kids quiet in line (like a little magnadoodle or little puzzle toys) and I definitely second having lots of snacks. With a 2 year old and a 5 year old boy last time, we actually didn't have one problem in line or waiting for food last time the whole week. This time I am packing even more new little toys to keep them interested. I just try to be mindful of the people around us, so no noisy things, things that are likely to get thrown, or otherwise invade someone's space for us!

Hope you have a great trip!

 

[nursemelis374]

I would like to recommend Whitewater Snacks in the GCH for meals. I am a freqent DL visitor and the food there is pretty much the only place I will eat other than Blue Bayou. You can get there through DCA across from Grizzly River Run. The food is great and reasonably priced. Most of the meals are enough to share. For example, on Friday myself (28), my friend (32) and a 10 year old shared the chicken nachos (my fave) and the kids meal chicken strips. It was plenty of food! They also have free refills on drinks, making it feasible to share that too!

Have a great time! I go all the time, feel free to PM me if you ahve any more direct questions!

 

[SCohen]

A good money saving idea that I learned off of the WDW board is this: most counter service places serve a DOUBLE hamburger. If you're like us, two pieces of meat is way more than enough. For the 4 of us we order 2 double hamburger meals and two EXTRA buns. We then take one patty off of the burger and put it on the second empty bun- this gives us 4 hamburgers. They charged us like 50cents for each of the extra buns. So instead of spending $30-$40 we spent about $20. With the hamburger and half an order of fries we were just perfect with portions. There is a salad toppings bar so we all got to choose our own toppings too.

Take good care of your feet. Make sure you bring comfortable shoes. I also bring BandAid brand Blister Bandaids. They are lifesavers! It has a gel pack where the cotton part would normally be in a regular bandaid thus giving your ouchy spots a little bit more cushion.

We bring in a small backpack that we take turns carrying. Inside are:
1. Snack items like Rice Crispie Treats, granola bars, peanut butter crackers, gummy fruit
2. Brita Bottle. The Brita bottle has a filter that cleans the water as you pour it in. This eliminates the need for carrying around heavy bottles of water. We just stop at fountains throughout the day and drink what we need. ( I got ours at KMart)
3. Our camera that's inside of a gallon size ziplock baggie so that we can take it on water rides.
4. A "wet bag". I found one at the dollar store last time. It's just a medium weight plastic bag with a draw string. It will hold the backpack for getting on water rides.
5. Bandaid Blister bandaids
6. Autograph book that's inside of a gallon size ziplock baggie with a large marker. The large marker makes it easier for the characters to hold when signing the books.
7. Cheap rain ponchos from WalMart or the dollar store.
8. Pennies and quarters for the pressed penny machines.
9. An extra gallon size ziplock baggie to put your wallet and tickets in when getting on wet rides.

For our last trip we decided to give the kids a budget. First we had a garage sale and then we added extra money to the fund. We took the stash to the Disney Store at the mall and got Disney Dollars. Each kid had $200. We kept their money separate so that they could keep track of how much they had. This eliminated them bugging us all the time for souveniers. It was cool to watch them diligently choose what they wanted to buy.

Hope you all have an awesome time!

 

[c&m]

What we did on our recent trip was to collect pressed pennies. Before we left, I collected shiny, new pennies and lots of quarters. We went around DL and CA collecting those pressed pennies. It's an inexpensive souvenir for the kids. And it lasts forever. Not to mention that you won't have luggage issues when you start packing to go home.