100 Days of Wonder – #85

Happy 4th Sunday in Advent! Here’s Christmas tree number 4 added to the other 3 – this time from the Animal Kingdom. Again not my photo, a Disney stock photo that came with one of our downloads. I hope you are having a lovely Sunday. Mine has been lush so far. I slept late, had coffee in bed with Odin-cat keeping me company. I started to sort out my running gear for our Disney trip so I don’t end up in a last minute having to wash stuff panic in just over 2 weeks’ time. Then I had more coffee and a mince pie with Kath and her mum who dropped by. And I watched a flurry of snow flakes fall from the sky but not settle and then the temporary darkness turn back into glorious blue sky and sunshine. It’s a day with no plans. That’s made me think about how we plan Disney. I have said several times before that planning is part of the fun – and it really is – but I also see so many social media posts about extreme planning. We don’t plan Disney down to the last second like some do. When we had the Deluxe dining plan previously a lot of the planning simply revolved around where we were going to eat – that determined which park we would need to be in when. That dining plan doesn’t exist anymore and the general plan requires less planning because there are fewer sit down meals available. We have park hopper tickets so we can move between parks as we want and therefore our itinerary is far less fixed. We won’t spend money on Lightning Lanes (or whatever we are calling paid for access to skipping queues for popular rides this month), we’ll just roll with it. That might mean long wait times for some things and we might decide to queue for things, or we might not bother but the one thing we won’t do is rush from ride to ride. I don’t really understand people who try and rush round and do all 4 parks in 1 day. It just doesn’t sound like fun. But each to their own.

It seems to me there can be a fine line between planning so as to avoid stress – I have a plan for making Christmas dinner for example, with timings and instructions to myself – and over planning which just causes stress. Disney seems to bring out the latter in people. Although maybe that’s coming from a particular perspective of having the privilege of having been lots and the luxury of time. We are not trying to ‘do’ Disney World as a once in a lifetime holiday and nor do we have to cram in all our must dos into a weekend. And in addition, our must dos are not necessarily rides. My main must dos are to walk up Main Street USA and breathe, to sit watching the gibbons and stand watching the manatees, to listen to the Japanese drummers and get a popcorn bucket with maple popcorn. I think the only ride I would be really disappointed to miss is the Winnie the Pooh ride and that’s not because the ride is brilliant but because it’s the centre of my Hundred Acre Wood where I recharge ready to head out to explore some more.