Never Doing That Again - Planning Strategy Fail

Our last trip this past October we were upgraded to a pirate themed room to be able to get the free dining. I thought what a great time we will have in this room and it was kind of fun but oh man those beds are sooooooooo uncomfortable. They are a boxspring with a very thin mattress on top. Don't get me wrong the room was fun and great but the beds....OUCH!! I would recommend a stay in these rooms especially for families, however you might want to consider two or three days and then switch to a regular room for the rest of your stay if you value a good nights sleep.
Now Kristen I am thinking there is an interesting story concerning pests ....please tell.

After a couple trips with intense commando planning, we tried one that was too laid back. Didn't get ADRs, just decided to go with the flow. That was a disaster of frustration and disappointment!

For meals, we didn't like having to settle or compromise on what was available; we like table service and good food. We had to have too much counter service and it just . . . wasn't our best trip. So we learned to plan intensely around the ADRs we wanted, and THEN be laid back!!

On our first family trip I didn't pay attention to which parks had the late EMH because I didn't think our family with such young children would want to attend them. Well they did and stayed awake and rode several rides til 1 am and even 3 am one night. The problem with this was I had made 8am adr for breakfast most mornings. So we didn't sleep much that first trip. Now we rarely schedule breakfast unless the kids want to see a certain character. We do snacks for breakfast and get some much needed sleep.

I was on this trip and since I was the one dealing with the...ahem...critter, I'll be happy to share! We were staying in a really lovely vacation rental home in the Windsor Palms complex. As I recall it was our first evening in Florida and Kristen, her oldest daughter and I were just returning from a lovely dinner at California Grill followed by fireworks at the Top of the World Lounge. We were all quite pleasantly tired when we walked in the door only to be greeted by this um....gentleman.

(This size of the picture is only a tiny bit bigger than what I recall - just about the size of my whole thumb.)
Needless to say, we were all a bit icked out but Florida is well...Florida. It's warm and lush and humid and lovely but that means there will be bugs to contend with. I don't quite know why but I was elected to deal with the situation. (I guess nurse = able to deal with gross stuff) I grabbed a glass and a handy sheet of paper, covered Bugzilla up (it freaked and ran up the side of the glass) and slid the paper under the glass. I picked the glass up and here's where the whole thing goes a bit pear-shaped: Bugzilla was so heavy he bent the paper, darted out from under the glass and made a break for it. It pains me to admit but there was some screaming and squealing on all our parts. Fortunately, Mr. Bug didn't get too far before he was re-captured and wiser in the ways of wily, ginormous Florida bugs I used a piece of stiff heavy cardboard to corral him in the glass before he was re-homed in the shrubbery by the front door.

Your better than me, I'd have looked at it and then taken my size 12s to it. Sorry if its wrong, but bugs freak me out.

What a great story! The worst we had at a resort was a gecko and he was much easier to relocate. Love the picture

LOL - thought about it! But we'd just walked in the door and I was barefoot since I'd left my flip-flops in the car. No way in heck was I going to stomp that thing and get the squishy bits on my feet.

Poor planning: On our very first trip to WDW we knew nothing, even with doing Internet and Unofficial Guide research. So we showed up at MK on EMH night (we were staying offsite) and got stuck in huge crowds with no EMH benefit to us. We had no park touring plans and wasted half our time standing around discussing what to do next. We didn't know that we weren't getting into most table service restaurants without ADRs. We also didn't realize that the offsite timeshare resort we'd selected was on the other end of road construction and it would take us close to an hour to reach the parks. I've never made those mistakes again.

My most recent really big planning mistake was two years ago. This was the trip where hubby and our 60-something travelling companions all wanted to end our day at MK just as MVMCP was starting even though we'd paid the extra fee to attend the party that evening. (I've told this story half a dozen times by now so won't rehash the details.) Lesson learned - never schedule regular MK visit and any MK party on the same day when travelling with those folks.

My story isn't really a planning error but goes in line with Becks creepy crawly story... I think it was the first year we were there as DVC members which would be 2009. It was our first time staying at AKL and we had left the doors to the balcony open... Well we ended up with a critter in the room that looked like a bat. So we called down to the desk and they had to send special people up to come retrieve it.... But at this point i don't remember if it was really a bat or if they determined it to be something else.... Mase might remember

Hmmm... what was it...? It wasnt a Bat. I think it was some type of frog if I remember right. It was so scared it smashed itself into the corner of the room.

On our last trip we scheduled two days at Univeral Studios/IOA....never again! We just wanted to be back at Disney the whole time!

I wouldn't call it a fail, but next time I think I will plan on being a little more laid back. We had a lot of fun, but going from 7am to 1am every day really wore us out!

When we go to the Universal parks, it's because we're with sister and her family/friends who are huge Universal (i.e. Harry Potter) fans, and we just want to hang with them. I don't, and never will, go for the Universal parks themselves. But it's a lot of fun hanging in them with sis and her bunch.

I did New Year's Eve in Epcot and it was one of the best NYEs of my life. Just a huge all day party. I went back again for NYE and let someone talk me into spending NYE on a boat in Seven Seas Lagoon. What a let down. Cold, miles from other people, miles from the fireworks...just a terrible, awful idea for NYE. Not my plan but I went along with it.

We actually loved these beds, and I have spinal arthritis. Odd

In 2006, we were some of the few guinea pigs that were trying the "free" dining plan! We did not make ADR's because frankly I had no idea we would need to. Everyone else and their momma also got the free dining. We were stuck trying to find a place to eat each night. This is when we were stuck eating at Restaurant Marakesh. Yuck! It was not fun at all! I do miss the bigger portions you received with the first dining plan, plus an appetizer was included! Those were the good days....when Disney realized they were losing money... Is that even possible?

My next epic fail was staying at the value resort...twice...in a row..after I hated it the first time. I tried to give a second chance, but the room is teeny tiny and the beds are so small. It was VERY noisy at all hours of the night. (Kids were playing football outside our room at like 1:00AM.)

Lesson learned...