Help Need Advice First time to Disney

Please Help!! We are going as a family to disney sept 25-30th. There are 11 of us which includes 4 children under 11. We are staying at Port Orleans Riverside, purchase the hopper and meal plan. I could use some advice on if you need to make reservations for dinner, what is a must see/do, are there any good shows for the evenings? Any and all advice is welcome. We want to make this a memorable vacation for both the kids and adults.

Help Need Advice First time to Disney

Port Orleans Riverside is a great resort, in my opinion the best of the moderates.

If your first trip you do not need a park hopper.

Yes make reservations, look at the menus on allears.net or wdwinfo.com to decide where to eat.

I say yes to the meal plan, we went in April and did not have the meal plan or reservations. We ate mostly counter service paid as much if not more then the meal plan and did not eat as good as we could of.

Finding a night to take the boat to downtown disney is a must. It is a nice ride and downtown is a great place to do shopping and grab something to eat. Downtown also has two of my favorite counter service places Earl of a Sandwich and Wolfgang Puck Express.

Help Need Advice First time to Disney

Not to alarm you, but you NEED to decide where to eat ASAP since you%26#39;re on the dining plan. Call 407-WDW-DINE and make your ADR%26#39;s as soon as you can. With a group of 11, it%26#39;s going to be hard to find decent times now. You%26#39;re at the trail end of the free dining promotion, so a lot of restaurants are going to be booked already.

I disagree with the opinion that a first-time WDW visitor won%26#39;t benefit from having the Park Hopper option. It all depends on how you like to spend your days. It%26#39;s not possible that it%26#39;s a bad idea for ALL novice visitors.

We used it to our advantage the first time we went. By near the end of our trip, we wanted to re-do some rides and attractions. We were able to go to 2 or even 3 parks over the course of couple of days in order to hit our favorite things.

For example, we went back to Animal Kingdom one morning ONLY to ride Expedition Everest and Dinoaur a second time each, and then took a bus from there directly to Disney%26#39;s Hollywood Studios to see a few of the shows my kids loved, as well as ride Star Tours again.

Another way we used the Park Hopper to our advantage concerned Epcot. Rightly or wrongly, we decided that our small children weren%26#39;t going to enjoy World Showcase, so we ended up leaving Epcot around 1:30 p.m. After a nap-and-swim break at our resort, we went to Magic Kingdom so my wife could watch Wishes (fireworks) again, her favorite thing in all of WDW.

So as you can see, a park hopper doesn%26#39;t have to be a waste of time for first-time visitors.

yes make reservation for dining try and get a character meal the kids will love it have fun you will love disney

As for dining ... I see that kat228 beat me to it. Make those Advance Dining Reservations (ADRs) ASAP. Since you already paid for the Disney Dining Plan, you will not get your money%26#39;s worth unless you eat the equivalent of one table-service meal per day on average. If you eat almost all counter-service meals, then the DDP would have been an unfortunate waste of money.

We eat counter-service almost exclusively. I looked at all of the online menus before our first trip. The DDP was a very bad deal for us, so we didn%26#39;t buy it. It%26#39;s also important to keep in mind that the DDP provides an average of 2 meals per day, and thus if you plan to eat 3 meals a day you must budget for a substantial number of out-of-pocket meals. [There is a deluxe dining plan that offers 3 meals a day, but the price of it is much higher than the basic DDP].

I see everyone has already said ';make those dining reservations';

I will add

Make those dining reservations ASAP

Take a good look at all the menus www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/dining.htm

A few character meals would be swell but don%26#39;t get your heart set on them just yet, ask what is available for the time you will be there, they are all good fun. Hoop de doo would be a very good night out for everyone too

I think having the Park Hopper will come in handy, you can Dine at any Park on any day and therefore you won%26#39;t be limited. Don%26#39;t forget all the Resorts. some of our favourite Restaurants are at the Resorts

Have a look at the Park Hours www.wdwinfo.com/wdwinfo/hours.htm and start planning your days. I highly recomend taking advantage of the Extra Magic Hours, am and pm, that%26#39;s a great Perk for staying at a Disney Resort

Enjoy POR, it%26#39;s a wonderful Resort :)

Any suggestions on restaurants?

Because it is so late and if you have difficulty getting a character meal you qualify as a Grand Gathering and you have other options available. One is Tony%26#39;s Town Square for breakfast with Mickey. A great subsitute if you can%26#39;t get Chef Mickeys. This is a one credit on the meal plan. There is also a cruise with Peter pan, illuminations dinner show and a special safari ride and dinner with characters at Tusker House in AK. Those are 2 credit options.

Magic Kingdom - Table Service, Crystal Palace. Counter Service , Columbia Harbor House

Animal Kingdom - Table Service, Yak %26amp; Yeti. Counter Service, Flame Tree BBQ

Hollywood Studios - Table Service, 50%26#39;s Prime time and Mama Melrose%26#39;s. No favourite counter service options here, we rather like going over to the Boardwalk on the day we visit HS

Epcot, where to begin ! there aren%26#39;t too many Bad choices here :) favourite counter service is Sunshine Seasons

Favourite Resort Restaurants

Boma @ Animal Kingdom Lodge

Kona Cafe @ Polynesian

Artist Point @ Wilderness Lodge

Chef Mickey%26#39;s @ Contemporary

Cape May Cafe @ Beach Club

I could go on and on :)

We are leaving for Disney in 2 weeks, its our 4th time there in as many years. We love Disney. Everyone is right about Dining Reservations the quicker you get them the better. Character breakfasts were hard to get into, even 4 months ago when we started planning our reservations.

My Daughters enjoyed Ashersush in Epcot- its a princess breakfast/lunch. Also loved Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom w/Pooh and friends. As a family we like the Princess Gala Buffet at The Grand Floridian Resort, it has Cinderella, Prince Charming and a few others at dinner and Mary Poppins and the like for breakfast, a very good buffet, something to please everyone.

In the Downtown Disney area you may like Planet Hollywood-it is also on the dining plan --also downtown we like to go to the 24plex AMC Movie theatre each time we visit, just for some evening downtime, usually a wide variety of movies to choose from.

Look into and take advantage of the Grand Gatherings, with your party being this large you should call ASAP to see what they will be able to offer you. Sept is usually a slower month, thus the great deals on vacation/dining packages.

It still tends to be very warm at the end of September in FL. Take advantage of the hopper passes by going back to your hotel during the hottest part of the day and taking a dip in the pool.

Also in Epcot, they have cooling stations..mists of water, to cool yourselves off in, mostly on the west side of future world over by Test Track area.

One last thought, make sure to get Photo Passes, just see one of the Disney photographers and they will give you a free PhotoPass card for you to use during your stay. Whenever you see a cast member w/ camera, present your card and they will take your pictures for you and load it onto the card(s). You can either view your pics there in the parks or take it home and view them on your own pc. Either way you can choose what pics you would like to print, get them all on keepsake CD, make a Disney DVD, or make a scrapbook from the website. Great Idea and the cost isn%26#39;t that steep.