Hello! I’m taking a break from my “50 Years of D&D” posts to talk about the great family vacation I just got back from. Last week, I took my family to Disneyworld! We had a great time, but wow, you just gotta know some stuff about how things work in Orlando to plan a trip.

We did the “4-Park Magic Ticket,” which got us one day each in Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Disney Hollywood Studios. You have a week to use your four days, so you don’t have to use them all in a row or in any particular order. On our last day in Orlando, we went to Universal Studios Florida for Harry Potter stuff.

Okay, on to lessons learned:

“My Disney” is mandatory. Start by making an account on https://disneyworld.disney.go.com, and download the My Disney Experience mobile app on your phone. Make sure to link all members of your party so you can reserve things together easily.

Get park passes early. They can sell out if you’re going at a busy time of year, and why go if you can’t get into the park? Also, they *will* be more expensive than you think. Our 4-day pass “starting at $109 per day” actually ran $140 per day. Which, with four people and four days, meant an extra $500 just on park admission. And we were supposedly in one of the least-busy weeks of the year.

Choosing a hotel. We’d all love to stay at the Polynesian or the Contemporary or the Grand Floridian, but the nice Disney resorts run $700 to $1000 per night. There are some middle-tier Disney properties like the Caribbean Beach Resort that are more like $350—pricey, but not crazy. Staying in a Disney resort does provide a couple of extra benefits, like monorail stations, ferries, and early access to the parks. Finally, many non-Disney properties near the parks are “Good Neighbor” hotels that also have early-access privileges. Remember, you’re going to be spending a lot of time in the theme parks, so a place to sleep is all you need.

We stayed at Drury Plaza Disney Springs and it worked great. First off, we got a small suite for less money than we would have spent for a room in a middle-tier Disney resort. The Drury ran numerous shuttle buses to all the parks all day long, and it was much better than driving ourselves. They also had a decent free breakfast every day, and a “kick back hour” in the evening with complimentary drinks and food. You could make a free dinner there every night if you really wanted to save money, although it’s just-okay food, nothing fancy.

You can make dining reservations 60 days out with your My Disney account. You will probably need to if you want to make sure you get a premier in-park or Disney hotel restaurant reservation. You can also use the My Disney site to make reservations for the restaurants at Disney Springs. We booked early reservations for the Boathouse and Morimoto’s in Disney Springs, the Rose and Crown in Epcot, and ‘Ohana at the Polynesian.

Standby Queue/Virtual Queue/Individual Lightning Lane/Genie Plus. It took us a day to really figure this out. “Standby Queue” means you walk up to the ride and stand in line. If no standby queue is available, you can’t just walk up. You need to find another way to get onto the ride. There are three options:

Virtual Queue: Twice a day (7 am and 1 pm) you can attempt to get a Virtual Queue spot. It’s a digital lottery on your My Disney app. If you get in, you’ll be assigned a boarding group. When your boarding group time comes up, you have an hour to go get in line. You may be in that line a LONG time. When our boarding group came up for Tron we went to the ride, and then waited almost two hours in line. That was an unpleasant surprise!

Individual Lightning Lane: Pay extra, and you can just buy an entry time on My Disney if one’s available. You have to wait until the park opens (and you might need to actually be near the park, since I couldn’t do it from the shuttle bus on the way there). We bought seats on Guardians of the Galaxy for $14 each, and Avatar Flight of Passage for $20 each. Yes, it’s profoundly annoying to throw *more* money at the park when you already paid more than $100 each to get in, but this may be the *only* way you’ll get to ride a high-demand attraction. Plus, the Individual Lightning Lane means you ride when your time slot comes up without joining a big line, unlike the Virtual Queue.

Buy Genie Plus for the day: I didn’t try this, but in retrospect I would have liked it for our Magic Kingdom day. Lots of rides with big waits there. You pay something like $30 each to activate Genie Plus for the day, and you can sign up for Lightning Lane-like ride slots. You can only be signed up for one thing at a time with Genie Plus, so don’t reserve a late-day slot first thing in the morning or you will only get one use of your Genie Plus.

Some rides aren’t available some ways. Your Genie Plus purchase might not include every ride you’re looking for. Some are only available through the Virtual Queue lottery or the Individual Lightning Lane purchase.

If the Standby queue is less than an hour, you can probably just wait it out. We missed things in Magic Kingdom because wait times accumulated on us, but in Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios we got to the things we wanted to do simply by going there first and putting up with the wait. That worked for Kilimanjaro Safaris, Rise of the Resistance, and Smuggler’s Run.

Expect a Morning Rush. We parked at the Magic Kingdom Transportation Center half an hour before the park opened, and then had to wait 45 minutes for the monorail ride to get to the park. Go to the Magic Kingdom REALLY EARLY if you’re trying to take advantage of early admission. However, we did okay showing up to Epcot and Hollywood Studios an hour after opening. We went right at opening time for Animal Kingdom, since it’s best to do the Kilimanjaro Safari ride early while the animals are active.

The Magic Kingdom is the most crowded park. Maybe it was just a fluke of our timing, but we had the longest wait times in the Magic Kingdom proper. Some rides we just had to give up on for this trip. However, most rides in the other three parks had tolerable wait times.

“Counter Service” is bad. There are good (if expensive) table-service restaurants in each park. We just walked up and had a nice lunch at the Sci-Fi Drive-In in Hollywood Studios. However, they are expensive and you’ll likely need a reservation for the better-known ones. The alternative is a counter-service stand. They’re cheaper than table service, but you’ll have a hard time finding a place to sit and you’ll be paying $15/meal for cafeteria food. Only get what you need to keep going.

Save an evening or two for Disney Springs. This is a huge shopping area loaded with high-end retail, excellent dining, live entertainment, and plenty of fun shopping like the M&M Store or the Lego Store. We ate 3 of our 6 dinners here, and they were all fantastic.

That’s all for this edition. I’ll be back with more D&D next time!