Hello everyone! Super excited to be sharing with you all my hacks and tips on my Walt Disney World Trip! This is my second time visiting Disney World, so there's a lot to share! I will be dividing this post up so it won't get too long. In today's chapter I will sharing with you when to visit Disney and where to stay! So let's begin!

When to visit Disney: 

First thing and the most important thing, is deciding when you want to visit Walt Disney World. For us we were a lot more flexible with our schedule so our ideal month to visit Disney was in September. September is one of the best months to visit as the crowd level is low and you get a peek of Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party (an exclusive event for their Halloween season). The weather at Orlando is also a bit less hot during the month of September. However, due to some conflicts we weren't able to go during this month. With lots of planning we finally settled for end of May 2017. Before heading over, it didn't seem like the best time to be visiting as it was Memorial Weekend and end of school for the United States. So why we picked this week to visit you may ask? Simple, it was the opening week for both Volcano Bay at Universal and Pandora the World of Avatar at Disney (will give more information on these parks!)



I have to say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Crowd level wasn't crazy but there were a lot more people as expected. We did see a few school tours but it was never a huge problem for us. I will get into more hacks to avoid crowds in a later post. The weather was HOT! We were a bit lucky because it was raining most of the days. Yes, you heard me - we were actually happy it was raining cause it cooled down the place so much!
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I also visited end of August for my first time going - so if your schedule is a bit more tight and have to visit during summer holidays I got you. I have to say though my first visit to Disney was a huge mess, as I had nothing planned and just went. August has a huge level of crowds, so you will be spending hours in line if you don't prep well. I will get into all this in just a bit!

I used a few websites as guides and I think they were pretty accurate:

1. "Undercover Tourist" has a crowd calendar that I used a lot for my planning! It shows which time of year is the best to visit and which park they recommend visiting for lower crowds.
   https://www.undercovertourist.com/orlando/crowd-calendar/
2. I also checked out "Dad's Guide to WDW" a lot for my planning.
   This website provides a lot of hacks and tips!
   http://www.dadsguidetowdw.com/

Where to stay in Disney:
Another important thing to decide is where to stay when you are visiting Disney. For my first visit I stayed outside the resort and although price was a lot cheaper I would still highly recommend staying inside the resort.  This visit we decided to stay at the All-Star Movies resort. In all honesty, you get what you pay for. It was not the most fancy resort, but it was enough for my boyfriend and I. We booked this resort with the mindset of "we're just sleeping in here", which was the case as we stayed at the park till midnight almost every night.



Now why would I recommend staying inside the resort? It is super convenient! Seriously we did not have to worry about ANYTHING. Disney has a magical express bus that would take you from the airport to your resort directly. There is also bus transportation from each resort to each park as well as Disney Springs (Downtown Disney). Each bus runs 2 hours after park closing, so you don't have to worry about having to catch the last bus or missing the fireworks show.

The best part about staying inside the resort is the priorities we get. For example 60 days before our visit we were able to reserve our fast passes! This meant we were able to plan all the rides we wanted to do in advance and didn't have to worry about the long waits. I will get into a bit more detail on this later. Also, magic wrist bands - I'm sure everyone have heard of these. They're a wristband you wear throughout the parks and it works as your hotel keys, wallet, park tickets and fast passes! There's also magic hours on certain days for different parks when you live inside the resorts. This means you get to either enter the park one hour prior to park opening or stay one hour after park closing!

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That's it for today's chapter on Disney Trip hacks. Next post I will talk more about the parks and park tickets! So stay tuned!