By Tink’s Planner, Allyson
When it comes to planning a Walt Disney World vacation, there is a lot of information available to you. Books, online articles, blogs, social media posts, stories from friends, and then there’s the travel professional who specializes in Disney Destinations. The big question is: Is it really worth it to use one of these Disney experts to help plan your vacation? Or are you better off using your own judgement and research skills to book your vacation on your own? By Hamilton, student of Tink's agent, Pollyanna.
Three weeks ago my family went to Walt Disney World. Hollywood Studios: First we went to Hollywood Studios where we went on the Tower of Terror. It was fun to be inside the Twilight Zone. Next, we went on a Rock n' Roller coaster starring Aerosmith. At the first part of the ride we had linear induction then we went through a loop. Animal Kingdom: Next we went to Animal Kingdom. We went on a safari. Then we went on the Avatar ride. It was an hour wait just so we could go on a Banshee and go to Pandora World. As the Navee say "Sivako" which means "rise to the challenge." Epcot: The next day we went to Epcot where they had Mission Space. We went on an orange team with more intense training. We went on the Test Track. Next, we went on the Remy ride in France. Then, we went on a canoe ride in Mexico. Magic Kingdom: We rode a monorail to Magic Kingdom and at first we went to Tomorrowland. We rode Tomorrowland Speedway and Space Mountain's alpha track. Next, we went to Frontierland and rode Splash Mountain. Next, we went to watch the fireworks show. After that we went to Big Thunder Mountain at night time. Next, we went on Pirates of the Caribbean. Then we went back to the hotel. The next day I went to the gift shop and then we drove home. "By Chief of Creative, Beth If you are hankering to head down to the Walt Disney World® Resort, a fun time to do this is when Mickey holds court over his "Not-So-Scary" Halloween parties. Requiring a separate event ticket, Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party officially begins after normal park operating hours from 7pm until midnight in Magic Kingdom. The Party is held on 37 select nights starting on August 12 and through October 31st. Ticket holders will be admitted to Magic Kingdom Park as early as 4pm on the valid date of their ticket - giving them even more time to enjoy their favorite rides before the event begins. These date-specific event tickets do not require an additional day theme park ticket or park reservation. Dates of the Party are: August: 12, 16, 19, 23, 26, 30. September: 2, 5, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30. October: 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21,23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31. Your Tink's Travel Planner can start booking party tickets for guests of select hotels at the Walt Disney World Resort as early as May 12, 2022. The advance purchase window is available to guests of ALL Disney-owned resort hotels, the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin (including Swan Reserve). All other guests may purchase tickets beginning on May 18, 2022. These "Not-So-Scary" Halloween parties can sell out, so Tink's highly advises you to purchase well ahead of time! As part of this limited capacity event, partygoers will encounter event-exclusive entertainment, will run into some notorious Disney villains, go trick or treating, enjoy some "frightfully" delicious food, and more! Overlays themed for the occasion will return to several popular attractions, the Sanderson Sisters will put on an unforgettable "Hocus Pocus" stage show, the Headless Horseman will ride his ghostly horse down Main Street, U.S.A. before Mickey's Boo-To_You Halloween Parade, Disney characters in their "haunted" costumes will hold meet and greets,, and the Pumpkin King (Jack Skellington) will host "Disney's Not-So-Spooky Spectacular" which is a a nighttime production featuring projections on Cinderella's Castle, special effects, and lighting mixed with fireworks, music, and Disney characters. Wonderful "not so spooky" memories will be made in Magic Kingdom, of that we have no doubt! Contact Tink's to book your "not-so-scary" tickets! And then start deciding on your costumes! By Tink's Planner, Mindy. Y’all know I have been to Walt Disney World® more times than I can count but here are a few takeaways from my first trip with two kiddos (of my own—10 months and 3 yo)! Written by Anna, daughter of Tink's Agent, Pauline. At Space 220, the newest restaurant in EPCOT, your magical experience begins right when you walk in. When you check in, a cast member gives you a boarding pass in order to board the space station. Then you will start your journey to space in the Stellarvator that speeds at 10,000 miles per hour fulfilling the magical, futuristic experience of space. By Tink's Planner, Pollyanna. Disney characters have always been a staple to a wonderful vacation at the Walt Disney World Resort®. Even though the characters necessarily interact with us differently because of the pandemic, they are still around and certainly not to be missed! There are plenty of places where you can still interact and enjoy character interactions. Many of the characters are in places that you would expect such as the Cavalcades (characters on vehicles that pass by), the entrance to the parks, and even where characters live. However you should always keep your eyes open for surprise character meetings as well! Here are just a few of the Disney characters I was able to encounter during my recent Walt Disney World® Vacation:
By Senior Travel Planner – Mindy S Located inside Disney's Contemporary Resort, Chef Mickey’s has been closed since Walt Disney World® reopened in July 2020. This week marked the grand reopening. We were there to experience Dinner. While it’s not the buffet you remember, the food is served family style and you can get all that you want of each course that is served. We were there at 8 pm on a Tuesday evening. The tables are very spaced out and explains why it’s so hard to get a reservation as there looked to be 3 or 4 sections with 10-12 tables around the edges of the room so the characters had room to come out and socially distance. We started with some of the signature cocktails and specialty nonalcoholic drinks. While those were being served, Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy and Donald came out and danced and waved to us. They would stop at each table for socially distanced pictures and brought the same magic they always do to Chef Mickey’s even from afar. First, we were served a basket of really yummy rolls with three kinds of salad to share. The salads were a plant-based salad that had sweet potatoes and fancy lettuce, Chef Mickey’s Caesar and Citrus poached baby shrimp with lime broccoli slaw greens and avocados. The salads were really tasty. Next, you’re served a big skillet (similar to the serving stye at Liberty Tree Tavern) of prime rib, turkey slices, carrots, succotash, asparagus, and pearl onions. Then, they separately serve salmon, Potato Gnocchi in a mushroom cream sauce, Potato au Gratin, Farro and Farro Wheat Fried Rice. The turkey was very good, as was the salmon (my daughter ate three pieces). The boys liked the prime rib. While the food was tasty, if you’re not a fan of mushrooms, you will not be happy. They were in absolutely everything. It wasn’t a problem for me, but my daughter and son had an issue with it. For kids, servers will bring a plate with macaroni and cheese, chicken tenders and broccoli. They are happy to refill anything, if requested. For dessert, our server brought a plate that had mickey chocolate mousse domes on oreos, a rather tasty strawberry cake, an apple tartlet and chocolate chip cookies. While the food was tasty, there weren’t a lot of choices like there used to be, now that it’s a family style experience. The price was $55 per adult and $36 for children. A bit pricey for what it was but you’re not just paying for the food, you’re paying for the experience. Where else can you see the Fab 5 up close??? Chef Mickey's will, in my opinion, still remain a favorite. By Tink's Vacation Planner, Missy. In the beginning of April I was lucky enough to go on a Disney trip with 2 of my sisters. We all live in different states and they had not been to Disney in over 10 years. I was super excited to plan this trip for us! It was kind of last minute and we only had two days to hit the Disney parks. We decided to go with the 2-day Park Hopper tickets. I made Park Reservations us beforehand -- we decided on Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. On our Magic Kingdom day we had planned to head to Epcot for the evening. We headed back to our resort around 3pm. We went to the pool and then got ready to go. Right before we were going to leave I called the Park Hopper Hotline. It was simple. They told me Epcot was not at capacity. We headed to Epcot and had an amazing time! Due to pandemic capacity restrictions, park hopping is allowed to start for guests after 2pm, and the theme park you hope to hop over to can't be at capacity. Once you've hopped to your second park, you can hop again to another park if you so desire, so long as that park hasn't reached capacity yet either. Photos taken by Hope Guillemette. Tink's Magical Vacations headed over to Disney Springs this morning to pick up all sorts of sweet treats at The Ganachery. The smells of chocolate wafting through the air when you enter the store are out of this world, and the items that are available for purchase look as good as they taste. The Ganachery recently opened up at Disney Springs and it has amazing items for those of you with a sweet tooth. You will find talented chocolatiers making beautiful items. Need to find some sweet bunny treats for an upcoming holiday? Need a Captain Marvel cake for your superhero about to celebrate a birthday? You'll find these items and more at The Ganachery. Tink's Magical Vacations highly recommends visiting this venue when you are on your next Walt Disney World vacation. Bon Appetit! By Tink's Planner, Donna. Are your kids excited waiting in line at the Walt Disney World® Resort? Do they love to run and around, touch everything they see or just have a hard time standing still? Most of the line queues have fabulous décor to keep them busy, but sometimes you just need a little bit more. Let’s face it though, sometimes adults do too! The Play Disney Parks Mobile app is a great app that you can download and play with family and friends while in line at the parks. This app has several different features that lets you explore the parks in a whole new way. While in-queue you can participate in interactive games, trivia and adventures. However, this is not only for the line queues. There are many places throughout the parks that you can explore. One of my family’s favorite things to play is the Soarin’ Challenge. This game is available while waiting in the queue for the Soarin’ Around the World attraction in Epcot. When you log into the Play Disney Parks app you are asked to join a team: Red, Green, Purple or Yellow. You will then join your team in a series of trivia questions competing against other guests, known as Travelers. Large screens display the questions and results so you can cheer along your fellow Travelers. These games are great on days when the lines are long to help pass the time. Here is a list of the available Play Disney Parks games and adventures within the parks:
Although, games like the Soarin’ Challenge are only available in the park, the Play Disney Parks app does have features that you can play anywhere. Many of the adventure games, trivia challenges and music are accessible from anywhere in the At Home Fun area of the app. By Tink's Agent, Missy. I recently had the most delicious cookie ever at Gideon's Bakehouse, located in Disney Springs at Walt Disney World®. The entire process of purchasing the cookie was an experience. We arrived at Disney Springs for shopping and a dinner reservation at around 5pm. I had heard from friends the previous day that there were crazy long lines for Gideon's. Challenge accepted! I went to see what the buzz about Gideon's was all about. There was a woman at the end of a short line with an ipad. I asked how long the line was and she told me three hours. Then she informed me it was three hours in a virtual queue. I put my name in and headed to dinner. About 2 and half hours later I received my text alerting me to head back to Gideon's Bakehouse. When I got back a woman asked my name and told me to wait in a short line. About ten minutes later I was at the door. Going into Gideon's is an experience. The doors that you walk through look like dungeon doors. When you walk in it is dark and a little smokey. The decor resembles an old library. Available for purchase are cookies and cakes. All cookies are half pound. I purchased the chocolate chip and peanut butter crunch. The clerk told me I should buy the containers of frosting to dip them in. I followed her advice and purchased vanilla and peanut butter frosting. So good! Over all, it was a really cool experience and the virtual line made it possible for me to get my yummy treats! The Christmas Shops at Walt Disney World are very special stores. They are fun venues to visit any time of the year and exist in two locations: Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe is located in Liberty Square at Magic Kingdom Park and Disney's Days of Christmas can be found at the Marketplace in Disney Springs. When you walk into one of these special shops, you will find all different kinds of holiday gifts, especially ornaments. A great gift idea is to buy a bauble or an ornament and have it personalized -- it can be a fun annual tradition for families who want to remember their magical vacations. Cast members can show you the best ornaments or baubles to personalize, and then your job is to come up with the wording. Practically any ornament can be personalized, but a flat and smooth surface works best. Often times, guests get items personalized because of special occasions like birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, even sports events like runDisney races come to mind! In addition, you can also get special celebration buttons personalized, which makes for a fun memory of something special. In order to get your item personalized, you will need to fill out an order form that a cast member will give you. Special celebration buttons are free, but to have them personalized at one of the Christmas stores at Disney costs an extra fee. The artists who personalize items are not available all day long, so your best bet is to place your order early in the day. The artists will show you all the different personalization options, from figures (fireworks, balloons, snow, bells, all sorts of images) as well as ink color options. Orders usually take a few hours to be completed, so heading there at the beginning of your visit allows you more time to experience Magic Kingdom or Disney Springs while your items are being personalized. Around the holidays, queue lines at the Christmas stores at Disney might be long, so plan accordingly. All of us at Tink's Magical Vacations hope you enjoy your personalized items for years to come! By Senior Travel Planner Mindy Sheldon You’ve been planning this dream trip to the Walt Disney World® Resort for months. All the reservations are made for the trip, the days planned and suddenly, things don’t go as planned. Someone in your party falls ill. Not what you want to deal with. Not what you want to even think about, but it happens way more frequently than one would think. It happened to me and my family on our recent trip. Four days into a 10-day trip this past December, my husband began feeling a sharp pain in his right side. He let it go for a bit until it woke him up intermittently during the night. At 4 a.m., I awoke to him walking around the room and not really knowing what to do. He had been looking up the nearest emergency room and thinking about getting an Uber there (since we hadn’t rented a car.) Working as a travel planner with Tink’s Magical Vacations had its advantages as all the agents frequently share information. I remember someone posting about a service called DOC’s on Call (407 399-DOCS) that they used on their trip. I went to our private Facebook page, looked up the information and had my husband call them first. He got an answering service and left a message. Within 5 minutes, a doctor called him back and asked him about 10 minutes worth of questions. He was very thorough and told us that he thought his service couldn’t help if they came out. He told my husband there was a button on our resort phone (emergency) that would call security at the Resort and they would escort him to the emergency room. We did just that. The security officer that answered the phone took my husband’s information, asked him if he was ready to go and said they ‘d be there in 5 minutes. An officer came up to the room and discretely escorted my husband down to a Reedy Creek ambulance and took him to the emergency room at an exceptionally good hospital that was nearby. They told him that the ambulance would not be charged to him and that if he needed to get back, to call a taxi and the front desk at our Resort would reimburse him. It turned out that my husband had appendicitis and needed surgery. He actually came back to the hotel the evening of the same day (thanks to a local friend.) The manager at the hotel called to check in on him and actually gave him 3 one day passes to use another time to replace the ones he would not be able to use on this trip. The Disney Resort and Cast Members helped us make the best of a very unexpected situation and went above and beyond anything we expected. I was glad that we had Disney on our side. You never think you’re ever going to need these services but it’s good to know about them and how things would be handled if you did. By Tink's Planner, Michelle R. As temperatures in Florida start to fall, now is a great time to take the family to the Walt Disney World® Resort! If you have spent any time in the media (social or otherwise), you know that we have a global pandemic going on right now. While there are many differing opinions as to if theme parks should be open, Disney in particular has gone to great lengths to ensure the health and safety of their guests. Specific rules regarding masks and social distancing is being strictly enforced while you are on your Walt Disney World® Resort vacation. Masks are required at all times, unless you are eating or drinking while stationary. Disney has even gone so far as to mandate, and enforce, that you can no longer walk and eat (some guests were using eating and drinking as an “excuse” to not wear a mask while walking). Having just visited the Walt Disney World® Resort with my family in early October, we came away feeling safer than visiting our local grocery store. Why? Because the actions that we personally witnessed and experienced for cleanliness were at the strictest levels! Cast Members were consistently enforcing the mask wearing guidelines and social distancing was the norm. We had VERY few instances of other guest not respecting that “spacing”. But I digress. Why go now? Well, for starters crowds are low, which is great if you are hoping to take in all four parks. While the most popular rides still had wait times of 45 minutes to an hour – we found most lines to move VERY quickly and were, on average, 15 minutes less than the posted wait times.
Christmas in Disney. Need I say more? The parks were transformed this past weekend and they are – SPECTACULAR! Looking for characters? The cavalcades that occur throughout the day give you that dose of your favorite Disney characters in the random “parades” through the parks on floats, trolley trains, horse drawn carriages & more! Can’t visit now (November 2020)? Disney is offering up some great special offers for early 2021 vacation packages – during the best weather time of the year to visit Florida – particularly with a mask mandate – making your time wearing it much more comfortable over the course of the day. (Mask Note: We chose to use disposable surgical masks. When they got wet in the rain, or from sweat, we simply trashed them and put on a new clean one throughout the day). But what about the downside of heading the parts right now: the restrictions in place have made park-hopping all but impossible (purchase a VIP Tour to regain the ability to hop). That means if your goal is to visit each park – you will need to plan four days of travel. Additionally, Disney’s Hollywood Studios has been very popular for the Park Reservation system. As the smallest park by size and with reduced capacity limits, the popularity of Rise of the Resistance and other Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge attractions has made it more challenging to secure last minute park reservations. Overall, this is a good time to go. The crowds are smaller, the wait times are down, and Disney is making the magic – every day – for their guests! By: Anna (age 12), daughter of Tink's Planner Pauline. The Walt Disney World® Resort has always been one of the most magical places and even in a pandemic you will be overwhelmed by the magic at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort at Halloween. It is family friendly without compromising on important safe guards to keep you and your family healthy. The guests and of Disney’s Fort Wilderness made no exception for COVID-19, still showing up and out with their spooky treats, over the top decorations, and unimaginable surprises! You can explore Disney's Fort Wilderness by foot, by bike, and of course by golf cart! Be prepared to deck out your ride, the more over the top the better and go “looping”! Looping is how the regulars refer to riding around the different campsite loops taking in the sites at night. We added lights to the top our rented golf cart as well as LED light strips that flashed to the beat of the music we played on a Bluetooth speaker! We were tame compared to many other golf carts who clearly spent some time planning their perfect Halloween golf cart theme – and yes, there is a parade if you are there on the days closest to Halloween. But it is not all about the golf carts the decorations at the guest campsites (and even a few cabins) are INCREDIBLE! You will be amazed at the effort and in some cases the true artistry of the displays. I was embarrassed that my mom packed a few inflatables and pumpkins, but boy was I wrong to be, we were clearly novices when it came to site decorating! People spend a lot of time and money creating out of this world attractions some including structures, animation, specialty lighting, and even projectors! Don’t forget to pack the chalk! There are all levels of chalk art at the resort from fun kids play to real artists! Stop and take photos and enjoy the incredible talent of some of the other guests. There are some fun extras if you follow Fort Wilderness camping groups on social media where you can learn about hidden painted rocks, different activities (guest led) like trivia, scavenger hunts, and giveaways from your fellow guests (these are not Disney sponsored activities). Joining these groups also helps if you need something or have an issue with your camper. We were so pleased at the welcoming and supportive groups that we followed during our stay. And finally, it’s not just the guest and Disney sponsored activities that will make your stay spooktaular, there are also sightings of the headless horseman galloping around the campgrounds! You might catch a glimpse at the Tri Circle D Ranch or in one of the loops in the campsite. Whether you are lucky enough to see him or not, make sure to stop by the Tri Circle D Ranch during your stay to score one of the Limited Edition Halloween trading pins. Don’t be shy, pack some fun decorations, lights, and costumes, you will fit right in! Fort Wilderness really comes to life during Halloween, so make some new spooky memories! |
Our vacation planners their children and yes, even some of our Tink’s clients, have written about their experiences in the Neverland Blog. The magic of Disney comes alive in an immediate way when our children visit the Land of Mickey and Minnie.
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