Planning for WDW question?

I did a little of both. I used MDE to schedule the FP+ for the major rides in each park each day, and scheduled them around parades, ADRs, fireworks, etc. that I knew I wanted to see. I did have a list of things that I was hoping to get to see/do for each park. At the same time, if we missed something, no biggie. I also wanted to have hours where nothing was planned so we could wing it.

I always know what Park I'm going to on which day, and have a short list of things I want to do most. I also always know where I'm going to eat. Other than that, once through the gates I just play it by ear.

However that small planning process always seem to take me month to figure out and switch around and fiddle with to get just right. For instance, that cruise trip in my sig line that's over a year away - yea, there's already a spreadsheet for that.

We really only plan dinner meals by making ADR's. That dictates what we do all day. Most of the time, we end up eating dinner at EPCOT so we try to plan around that with EMH and such.

Most folks plan ADRs and if you are participating in mymagic+, they plan out fastpass+ as well. Then kind of wing the rest of it. I don't think we have anyone that plans out every second of the trip, which IMO, is just silly.

thats awesome!

I usually just plan what park we'll be at each day. We don't usually make very many ADR's since we don't like having to be somewhere at a certain time too often. Thanks to the DFB though, I have a list of places or snacks I want to try so we have to plan around those

Like many other people have stated, we know which park we will be at. We know which attraction we want to see the most, and will attempt to get fast passes for those ones. As far as parades and shows we dont plan ahead for. We make a few ADR's but not every meal, usually just for dinner.

Well, I said this all the time on another forum but for me, I can't subject myself to an absolute strict schedule because odds are, I'm going to break it and not follow through! So for me, normally, I plan my day based on priority so my favorite must rides come first because re-riding is not a problem. Getting at least one ride on favorites does! Then, if there's a large time window between my FP time and the current time, I'll explore other rides in all likelihood. The FP+ and MM+ is going to complicate things but I guess what I'll do is pick the three attractions I must ride or I'll never forgive myself for doing so. Usually, I'm done with most of my favorites before lunch and then, in the afternoon, I either go on other attractions, stop by and do character meet and greets, see shows, etc. Bottom line, you should have a basic plan but it shouldn't be too extreme. Know what rides are going to be popular and tackle those first (I would advise getting there as soon as they open to avoid the crowds.) Know what you and your party value strongly and prioritize your biggest needs being first. That's all I can really say in terms of planning your day.

For our upcoming January trip, we have plans for 1/2 the days and have left the other days completely open. We have some ADR's, but we have found that we can usually get in to the places we would like to go to without much fuss. For busier restaurants, we have booked ahead, ie. California Grill and Be Our Guest.

We've done a few trips in October. It's busier than early September, but the crowds are minimal still, and the lines are pretty short, if any at all. Busiest is Epcot on weekends because of the Food and Wine festival.

I second doing a few ADRs for the places that are tough to get in. In all our trips, we had never been able to try SciFi Drive-In, because DH didn't want to do ADRs. I finally just went ahead and made one anyway last fall, and he was glad I did. It turned out to be one of our favourite meals. While we were waiting to be seated, they were turning people away, so we wouldn't have had a chance to try it without a reservation. There are lots of places to get nice meals though, so don't worry too much if you don't book something ahead of time.

We went the first week of October in 2012 and found it to be perfect..
there was still some lingering heat & humidity but we dealt with it pretty good.
Lines were very low. Much better then what we just had a few weeks ago for
christmas.

Here is my trip report if you would like to read it,
and there is pics from Sci Fi Drive In (yum)

http://www.wdwforgrownups.com/forum/magic-mirror-back-world-video-added

Have fun planning!

We were there the third week in October 2012 and it was perfect. Really low crowds (except on the weekends at Epcot as previously mentioned)...the only thing we ever saw over a 20 min wait was Peter Pan's Flight, TSM, and Soarin which we just fastpassed to avoid the longer lines. The weather was awesome too, not to hot and I think it sprinkled once for 5 min the whole time we were there, though we may have just lucked out as that's probably not the norm. My trip report link is in my signature.

The relative amount of planning one does can be expressed as follows:

Number of kids (k) x level of OCD (c) over number of previous visits (v), or

k c
-----
v

"Acceptable" is a subjective word, however I believe they would let you in the gate.

I once saw a young female wearing a black see through shirt with a black bra (that was visible) in MK.