Finding the Perfect Mix of Planning and Spontaneity at Disneyland with Adventure & Mousecapades

Ever find yourself meticulously scheduling every minute of your Disneyland trip, only to end up more stressed than enchanted? Nathan and Alicia from Mouse Gepads and I share the secret sauce for that perfect balance between a carefully-crafted itinerary and the sweet serendipity that makes Disneyland so joyful. . We dive into how over-planning can actually derail the joy of your visit, swapping out those potentially stress-inducing timetables for a sprinkle of spontaneity.  

Right now, our tools are just for Disneyland, but we hope to expand to other parks soon. Disney changes policies, prices, and shows often. Be sure to visit our website at Parkmagic.com or Disneyland's Website for more information.

Park Magic is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Walt Disney World, Disneyland, or Disney Enterprises, Inc. Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Mickey Mouse are all registered trademarks of Disney Enterprises, Inc. Any use of third-party names or trademarks is for identification purposes only and does not imply, nor is it intended to imply, any affiliation with, endorsement from, or business relationship with any third party, including with Walt Disney World, Disneyland, or Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the Park Magic podcast, your place for insider tips for your next Disneyland adventure. Whether you're a first-timer or first-time in a while visitor, we're here to unwrap the secrets to creating and simplifying your dream Disneyland vacation.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Today I'm going to be talking about one of the most important things about planning your vacation, and this is especially to all of you A-type personalities. I say that as an A-type personality, but this is the biggest mistake, where you see kids crying, being dragged basically on the floor across Disneyland, people who are like I will never, ever do Disneyland ever again. A lot of it comes from this one mistake that people make when planning. And I have some of the coolest people I got to know them when I was on their podcast, mouse Gepads, and they are so much fun and wonderful and I wish I could go on like seven cruises with them. So, nathan and Alicia, can you guys share a little bit about you and your experience with Disney? Sure, sure.

Speaker 3: 1:09

We started I guess we started Disney probably in around 2009 with our daughter, who was, I think, four or five at the time, and did a cruise and a couple days in the parks and just totally fell in love with it. And we have tried to do Disney something or another Every year after that or every other year. We've gone on many, many cruises with Disney. We've been to Disneyland, we've been to Disney World, been to Owlani in Hawaii. My daughter and I went to Disneyland Paris for her graduation trip this past summer and we just honestly go as often as we can.

Speaker 4: 1:47

Yeah, it started out being a once a year thing, or maybe every other year, I think. Now it's probably three or four or more times a year. We have three Disney cruises on the books. We just got off one a few weeks ago. We are often in the parks, which is ironic because we live in the Seattle area, so we're familiar with getting on a plane to either go down to California or across to Florida. It's just been worth it. It's a little cliche, but it's our happy place. It's where we just love relaxing and doing whatever and letting the magic that is the Disney experience and the Disney cast members just letting that magic happen. It is our happy place.

Speaker 2: 2:29

I think that you said something that would throw a lot of people who go to Disneyland once or once in a lifetime for a loop. Is you relax at the parks? It's so stressful when I go, or I went, and it wasn't relaxing, and I think that the experience and that's kind of the reason we started this podcast is to have help people who love the parks, help other people experience the parks the same way that we do, and I think that there's a lot of things out there like you have to do some planning and a little planning does go a long way, like knowing what rides you want, knowing hey, we love cars and what rides do they have in Cars Land. Some planning goes a long way, but you and the three of us have talked about how the biggest mistake people make is really over planning. Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on?

Speaker 3: 3:19

that Definitely definitely. Well, with Disney nowadays you really can't do spontaneity anymore. You do have to have some amount of planning involved. But also with that is you can't over plan because Disney just doesn't kind of allow that to work anymore.

Speaker 4: 3:37

Yeah, you're in a park with 40,000 other people. You're relying on a mechanical set of operations for various rides to never have a problem. You're assuming that those 40,000 people are going to be doing things that you don't want to do. Let's just face it having the fully detailed, down to the minute plan is kind of setting yourself up for non-success, for failure. You're not going to be able to stick to that plan.

Speaker 4: 4:06

I think when people have an idea of minute by minute, here's the blowdown of how we're exactly going to go through our park day. When something happens, that means they have to deviate from that plan, they're setting themselves into failure. And now, all of a sudden, you have this negative thing and like, well, I wanted to do this, but I have to go do this other thing, versus if you just change your perspective and just go like, hey, now I get to go do this other thing. I don't know what it was going to do, but do I feel like a churro now, or do I feel like going on Haunted Mansion, or are we going to go check out Autopia, or I don't know? Whatever we're going to do, you just kind of go do it.

Speaker 2: 4:39

When my son was five. It was when Cars Land first opened and we were obsessed with cars. We did the whole trip because I wanted to do that Radiator Springs Racers car. Now, to give you an idea of my son, if you can imagine C3PO as a four year old, that would be my son. And so you know, we went to Cars Land. I was so excited for him, we went on it and he hated it. You know he's like mommy. I thought my head was going to pop right off, you know. So you know. I think that sometimes the things that we are really excited about something for our kids or we don't want them to miss out on this one thing, your kids haven't watched all the TikToks, they don't know.

Speaker 2: 5:20

You know they might know one or two things and kind of like with what you said. You know when you build that minute by minute itinerary, you're probably going to be off schedule the moment you start because even if you get everybody out of the hotel at the right time, even if you don't have to go back to the hotel because somebody left a sweater or a shoe or a backpack or a phone, then you know when you get you people try to rope drop rise and then rise doesn't open on time, which you know.

Speaker 2: 5:50

There's all it's in. I've never been to Disneyland where all of the rides open exactly when they're supposed to and there's some rides that it is expected that they go down, Like it would be a miracle if Indiana and rise didn't go down one day, or racers didn't go down one day, and it doesn't mean the rides are broken. Space Mountain goes down for like 20 minutes because you know if grandma took too long getting out of the car, they have to recycle those things. So if somebody paid me a million dollars that I could have lifetime passes, I don't think I could craft a minute by minute plan for Disney, even having gone hundreds of times.

Speaker 3: 6:26

It's not only just the rides that have unpredictability, it's people too. It's everybody in your own party. Sometimes somebody will trip and skin a knee, or somebody will get hungry unexpectedly, or there's an emergency bathroom break. That has to happen, and these little things can throw a wrench into your plans and just make you deviate from what you want to do. For us, the important thing is everything's going to change or something's going to change, and you just have to go with the flow. We are very much go with the flow, people. Oh, this unexpected thing happens. Well, let's change and do something else.

Speaker 4: 7:04

And that's frankly where I think we've had. Some of our best Disney experiences are from some of those unexpected things that just happened to happen and we were going to go to this ride but we just weren't feeling it or the line was too long or whatever it was, and then we stumble into some random, rare character that you hardly ever see in the parks and it was the most magical, almost like one-on-one kind of experience. And when you have that detailed plan, you almost are taking the magic out of the hands of the cast members in the Disney experience by trying to over plan. You know, just let Disneyland happen.

Speaker 2: 7:42

You know that same trip my son was at Toontown and they spent like three hours in Toontown's playground and when Toontown reopened he's 16 now he's like did they reopen that piano part? You know, like that was a core memory for him. Not all of the other things, not the. Let me rush you over to Disney Junior. Like it was those little moments. In what you like.

Speaker 2: 8:04

There's so much magic that people kind of dismiss as a dapper dance. I don't need to hear some people sing in front of a fire station. That's dumb. And then you're like oh, they're singing this song and I'm with my kids and I'm making this core memory and you miss that magic. And I see so many, especially on the playgrounds I'm sure you've seen this too where parents are like we did not pay a thousand dollars for you to play on a playground, and I totally get that. You paid a lot of money. They can play on a playground anywhere else. But you might be surprised that that might be the thing that they really remember. And for me, disneyland some of you love Disneyland. It's a lot of sensory input. So you know, I find that you know my kids having a little wiggle time or even going to Pirate Slayer to even just walk around giving a couple of sensory breaks, and you can't plan it to the minute. It's just not really possible to anticipate who's going to need that five minutes or how tired your feet are going to be.

Speaker 4: 8:55

Yeah, we walked into Disneyland a few months ago. When we were there and it was, it was in the evening, we had just flown down from Seattle and we wanted to go do the Mickey and Minnie's Runway Railway. We've done it a bunch in Florida, we haven't done it since it's open in California yet and we really wanted to see that queue because it just looks amazing and Roger Rabbit had just gone down and so everybody had kind of shifted over to the railway and the line was like an hour hour and a half long and we were just we weren't going to wait that long and we spent 20 minutes playing around with you know, lifting the cartoon weights and breaking ourselves out of jail and lifting all of the crates up that say you know, don't touch this or you know full of some you know sound effects or whatever, and just having that. All that interaction Like that's probably the biggest thing that sticks in my memory from that night was just playing around for 20 minutes in cartoon land.

Speaker 2: 9:55

And then the other thing I've done it Disneyland. But I also took my family to Costa Rica and went on a hundred percent recommended. The float down the jungle reminded me so much of the jungle cruise Pretty sure it's supposed to go the other way around, but it was great. But there was one day where I had you know so many things on IRI, tinnary, and you know, after we had done a hike through the jungle looking for the rare Quetzal bird or whatever, and then we had done trip looking for sloths. And then I had another thing afterwards and my family was like, look, I'm tired. And I was like, no, we plan this, we're doing this, and nobody had a good time. It was the biggest waste of money because everybody was tired. And I've done that at Disneyland too, where you're like no, I have it on my list that we're going to do these three things and everybody's tired, everybody's grumpy, and then by the end of it you're just snapping at each other.

Speaker 4: 10:43

Yeah, we actually. We were in the parks for three days over that long weekend and we never made it on runaway railway. It just didn't happen.

Speaker 2: 10:51

So we've talked about some of the negatives, but I kind of feel like all past holders have some variation of this same strategy. Why don't you tell me what your strategy is and I'll tell you how different if it's the same or if it's different from from our strategy?

Speaker 3: 11:04

So usually we try to do when we visit, one or two things that we want to do for that day. It'll be different if we have like Genie Plus or anything like that, because you're kind of on the whim of Genie Plus. If you're going to use that, it's whatever times you happen to get, whenever you get them. So if I say if we're doing Genie Plus, it's it's kind of up to the program. We have rides that we want to do, but it's it's really up to Genie Plus what we get to do and what we don't get to do. Other than that it's really let's pick. Let's pick two rides that we want to do, maybe a show, and everything else that day is a bonus.

Speaker 3: 11:38

We want to make sure we have some breathing room throughout the day as well. We don't want to be go, go, go. I especially need a little bit of rest times during the day because I have a bad knee and Nathan sometimes needs rest time for his knee as well. So you know we we do like to do sit down restaurants when we can. I know not everybody can do that. There's a lot of folks that this is their one time there that tried to do as much as they can, but I really recommend giving yourself some breathing room, only doing one or two things a day if you can Big things.

Speaker 2: 12:10

I'm a big believer in the nap, Ah yes, the big, big nap.

Speaker 4: 12:14

I was just going to say that, like, especially in California, all of the well, not all, but many of the hotels and especially the stuff on property is so close, it's really easy to take off for, you know, a few hours in the afternoon and then come back in the evening. It's just so convenient. It's not as convenient in Florida you got to deal with the transportation headaches and all the rest of that but in California, I mean, it's, it's a no brainer to take a few hours off from your long day and, you know, take some pool time, grab a nap, whatever you want to do, and it's easy to just hop back in into the park later in the day.

Speaker 2: 12:53

And somebody's saying that's easy for you to say as a pass holder because you're there all the time, but let me tell you, for a while we didn't have passes, none of us did. For a while.

Speaker 2: 13:01

But, even when I only have a single day ticket, I will still take a nap, and the reason for that is I usually don't rope drop a ton. But if I was to even get there, like nine or ten, I'll stay till one or two go take a nap. Now, that time that I'm taking a nap, that's when the lines are the longest. That's when the park is the most congested. It's the least fun to be with. It's usually the hottest in the summer. I go home, I take a nap and then I'm able to be there at Disneyland from 10 to midnight when the park is empty. You can walk on rides. You know, it's so much more enjoyable. Rope drop has gotten so intense that it's no longer really as fun. It used to be a lot of fun. Now I feel like it's like Black Friday, so I like to get there a little bit after that happens. But by giving yourself a nap you actually get more time in the parks, not less, from what I find.

Speaker 4: 13:48

I would say that we often have a game plan going into a trip of hey, there's this day that we want to try to rope drop and I'd say we have a probably 90% miss rate on actually making it to rope drop. But to your point, we would love staying late at night and we will always try to optimize for being there when you know it part close, like make that Savvy's reservation or Ogas Cantina or other reservation for really late at night in the parks, and then it becomes this really magical experience. We haven't been pass holders. We literally just bought our annual passes Excuse me, magic keys for Disneyland. Just this week, when they went now on sale, we were able to snag one before they almost immediately sold out. And so, to your point of like, it's easy for a pass holder to say go take a nap. We've never been pass holders at Disneyland. And, yeah, we go take a nap.

Speaker 4: 14:45

It's just, it's worth it, because when you get too tired, you know you run up, you know 25,000 steps a day and you've been on your feet since you know 7am and it's come you know 10 or 11 at night and you're still trying to do this because you have stuff left on your list that sounds like a job, that doesn't sound like a vacation, disney, is there. So much for the vibes, at least for us, that you know, like Alicia was saying, we do a couple of things that we want, like we'll try to go hit haunted mansion or we'll go ahead of Rise or the Incredicoster or Radiator Springs Racers. You know we're not afraid to say, oh, that's a fancy ride. You want us to pay, you know 15 or 20 bucks to just guarantee we get on that. Like we're lucky enough to say, yeah, we'll just do that. So we know that we get those things in and then whatever else happens happens.

Speaker 4: 15:35

This comes to reservations too, for restaurants. We've done whole trips where we don't have any advanced reservations and when we were in California a couple months ago we had no advanced reservations and I was making like character dining reservations for the next morning at like 10 or 11 at night and getting great character dining or dinners or whatever. The world is your oyster if you just have a little patience and wait for people to start cancelling the day before.

Speaker 2: 16:04

If you have that flexibility then you're able to do that. So we do it as a family when we're going, and especially if we're going with somebody who doesn't get to go all the time, everybody creates their three must do rides, or three must do attractions, or three must do shows. If they're a kid, that's too little. I ask them isn't anybody they're excited to meet? Is there, you know, do they love cars or do they love Star Wars? And then you research the attractions and shows and you do that planning ahead of time so you don't feel like you're meandering through the park hoping that you find something.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Most of the time as a family we have our most used will overlap me and my son, both like Star Wars, you know, like me and my daughter, both like coasters, and so I pick the must do. Is you just go in saying, ok, we've got three things, we've got five things that are must do on this trip and that's what we're going to do, then that leaves you open for the magic to happen. It leaves you open for them things and then you can have like a list of things that I would like to do, things that you know, if we have time. So you don't feel like you're meandering and if you're an A type personality, you can put it all in a plan. Just know that it's going to move, it's not going to be tied to a time and that order is going to have to change. You know, please, I feel free to be like that's not how we do it. I don't like that. I think that's dumb.

Speaker 4: 17:15

I think that's 100 percent how we do it. You know, alicia has to hit haunted mansion, I have to do Rise of the Resistance. Those are kind of our must do's. I think there may be a few others that we love, things like Jungle Cruise or Pirates, especially when we're in California, because those rides are just better than the versions that are in Florida and so we have those on our list. But we'll say, hey, we're going to be here in the parks for three days or four days or whatever it is.

Speaker 4: 17:38

At some point we want to do these rides and you just kind of go with that just general target. You know it's less of a day by day kind of thing. When it comes to the last day, of course we'll like, oh, we haven't been able to go hit runaway railway yet, for example, and so, yeah, we try to do that. Now it didn't work out for us because of various and sundry reasons, but it's okay Because you know what we're going to be back in and that is kind of a luxury statement. You know, not everybody has that, and so sometimes you need to put a bigger priority on some things or make more of an effort to follow up on your priority list. It just really depends on your family situation. For us, we're blessed to be able to just be really flexible, and if something doesn't happen this trip, it's okay because I'll guarantee you something else really awesome did happen and we'll be back to do whatever that thing is that we missed.

Speaker 3: 18:33

I'll say we did very much used to be planned everything down to the minute people and we learned pretty quickly on that that doesn't work the way we want it to and over the years we have become very much more just kind of let things go as they go type people.

Speaker 2: 18:51

Yeah, because it does and it stresses out everybody in your group. Now some things that I think that Disney people you know it's all about insider tips. I think that when people go to Disneyland there's certain rides that we know will break down often and so we know if they're make or break. Then we usually prioritize. So let me see if I miss any.

Speaker 2: 19:07

So Disneyland, indiana and Rise are the worst, probably followed by Matterhorn and Mickey's and Minnie's runaway railway, and then space can be a little unpredictable sometimes, but for the most part everything else they do go down, but it's not going to be for three to four hours at a time on most days. And then in California adventure I would say racers is the number one that goes down the most. And then soaring and Soaring go, I think, would say probably soaring and guardians can go down but they're not nearly at the pace, kind of more along the line of matter. So if those are on your must-dos Then you want to do them or plan them or book the individual lightning lane before about 11 o'clock this way, because rise usually goes down for about 90 minutes at a time it feels like.

Speaker 2: 19:58

So you know, mickey and Minnie's runaway railway is great, but if you know, they're closed from 8 to 10 for fireworks. So if you plan on doing it at 10 and they don't come back up after fireworks, then you missed out on that. So I usually will tell people. For those that offer individual lightning things, if you want to do them, do the individual lightning lane, cut corner someplace else and Book them as soon as you get into the park, because if they go down during that time period where you have that, that past, then you can go back and use it later in that day. So it gives you the most flexibility. And then to prioritize Indiana Jones is always something that I, if somebody wants to do that, I always tell them to make sure that they do that as early in the day as possible.

Speaker 4: 20:40

Rise of the resistance is, for us, the best Attraction that Disney has ever built. I just wish it was more reliable because, boy Howdy, it is not.

Speaker 3: 20:51

Oh no, there's just so many different effects and different things that have to happen to make it an a show and somebody might be listening thinking Well man, that must mean that ride is unsafe. If it's breaking that off, then there's different modes if something doesn't work. And we're not talking about safety and nothing. Safety, it's just. It's just what's showing in front of you. Really is all it is.

Speaker 4: 21:12

Sometimes those animatronics just break and and it's not a safety thing, it's just does the full ride experience Happen anymore? And yeah, a lot of these things go into b-mode. I'll take rise. For example. You know there's there's one spot where you're on the car and you're going through the, the gun battery on the Star Destroyer, and those guns used to move when they fired and they don't anymore. But I think, kind of like the the Yeti on Everest at Animal Kingdom in Florida, like I don't think those are ever gonna move again. I think it's the upkeep of them just isn't worth their the problems that they had with with making that stuff.

Speaker 2: 21:55

Yeah, and there's some rides that go down, mostly because of guest issues. So if you ever have a cast member who's like, take off your glasses, or like you need to take your backpuck off now, it's because of Like, if somebody loses their sunglasses on the track of rise, they have to re clear the track. They've got to reset it. It takes them a long time. So if it seems like they're extra excited about that, it's because they're trying to protect the guest experience for everybody out. And then this is also important to know because lightning Leans. I usually tell people to plan five to twenty minutes online but, like, for example, space Mountain, if grandma takes too long to get out, the ride will go through a testing series.

Speaker 4: 22:33

It takes about 20 minutes, so that means you could potentially be in that lightning lean for 40 minutes as much as I am not a fan of the whole genie plus experience where you have to now buy your way into it, versus the old fast-pass stuff where it just was Part of your park day, I get it.

Speaker 4: 22:50

And for us again, we're kind of blessed to just go like, yeah, we're just gonna more often than not, cough up and and Get into that genie plus experience, just so we can ironically have a little bit more planning of our day and what that's gonna look like now, the exact order and what's available and when is gonna be completely random.

Speaker 4: 23:11

And Sometimes you know that next thing that we're interested in doing, that lightning lanes gonna be, you know, two or three hours out, and so you can start stacking those lightning lane passes if they're really long out. But that gives us also time to say, hey, well, we're not gonna be able to do this ride that we really want, you know, for another couple hours. Let's go do a filler show, let's go have a meal, let's go do this or that or the other thing, and so it actually we've incorporated that into our flexibility, like it's become part of how we do Disney in a Unplanned, if you will, way. You know, we're still kind of in control of what's gonna happen, but the the genie plus service really lets us have a plan without having a plan.

Speaker 2: 23:57

If you go to park magic comm for Slash LL, we have a lightning lane and a recommended order and it's, you know Somebody was like that's a lot of Chris crossing across the park. Well, the way that you booked the lightning lane might not be the order that you experienced the rides in, and if it means 50 less minutes standing in line, I'm over. The parks are small enough. It's not like Disney World where Chris crossing makes a little bit more sense in land than it does in world. But the biggest thing is, you know we want to look at the not all lightning lane have the same value. So an utopia Lightning lane is not going to give you the same discount on the amount of time in line as Space Mountain or Indiana Jones or Mickey and Minnie's runaway railway.

Speaker 4: 24:36

Right, exactly, and you have to remember that if you're doing a lightning lane that sometimes you're bypassing important areas or impactful areas of the mainline queue. That's the reason we didn't want to do a lightning lane for Mickey Minis Runaway Railway Like we've done that ride in Florida a bunch, love that ride In California. I want to go through the queue Now. I don't want to stand in that queue for two hours, but I do want to go through that queue and so I'm willing to wait or time it until that queue is of a manageable, you know length. You know a half hour, 45 minutes maybe that we can really enjoy the queue but not have to stand on our feet for two or three hours or however long that line gets.

Speaker 2: 25:20

And in Disney World that's a much bigger issue. At Disneyland, I really think it's only Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway that you have a big story element that's bypassed by Jeannie and it's basically it's really cute. And if you're not like a huge Mickey fan, if you're just like a normal person, you might, but it's all of these cute little vignettes of like the cartoons, like come to life, that we grew up with. So it is, it is really awesome.

Speaker 2: 25:45

So I think, when it comes to planning, if somebody is like, but I don't want to miss out, I think that what I usually tell people is is that when you plan to the point where you don't miss out, you miss out just different things. So you miss out on, you know, and the shows that even people like oh, tiki Room's the Tiki Room one is very entertaining and if you have a toddler they will love it. And two, you're sitting down eating a dull whip. Probably. You know these are all good things and you need that rest time. And it can be hard, especially if you have teenage kids, to get them to say, let's sit down and stay at Rivers of America for 15 minutes, but you can't get them to sit down and watch a show.

Speaker 4: 26:24

And stuff like that is great to do as fillers between. Say, if you're using Jeannie Plus and you've got a little bit of a wait until you can go do Jungle Cruise or whatever else, hey, let's go do Tiki Room while we're waiting, because there's, you know, there's never going to be a long line, you're just going to be waiting for the show in front of you to get over. So you know, those kind of experiences, those are the great ones.

Speaker 2: 26:46

to just pick up on a whim and like the things like there's like storytelling pavilion where Belle tells her story and it's really fun, like even as an adult I enjoy it. And there are these like Broadway quality shows that you know they're not always available but like whatever, if something's playing in Hyperion Theater, in California Adventure or something is playing like when Tails Align King was, these are Broadway quality shows and especially if you don't have the budget to maybe go to Disney and take your kid to Hamilton, then you know these can be a great way to get that your kids to experience Broadway and experience live performance. And nobody is better at telling a story than Disney. These shows are not like the shows that you might see at Cedar Park.

Speaker 4: 27:27

That said, don't expect to see Hamilton at the parks.

Speaker 2: 27:32

Yes, that is not currently playing. Well, he's tight with Disney and not that tight yeah.

Speaker 3: 27:39

No, the cast members and the performers do such an amazing job. If you can go see a show, take a bit of the slow path, do it. I highly encourage you.

Speaker 2: 27:48

So I hope this is helpful. You know, kind of the summary and planning the perfect day. It means doing planning work ahead of time, which I see in like the Facebook group. Pass holders will be attacking single day tickets, like you're not on your phone all the day. I don't understand why you're complaining about being on the phone so much. I think a lot of that goes to if you haven't done any research about the rides and the menus, you end up doing that on your phone on top of Genie Plus and it feels like a lot. So making sure you have an idea of what you want to do and what's important to you, but then letting the day unfold and just prioritizing the things that you would feel like your trip was not complete if you didn't do, but keeping that, I would say, under like five things, including shows and meet and greets.

Speaker 4: 28:28

Yeah, absolutely, I think three to five. Whatever you want to do, you know, have those top priorities and whatever else is is is is just great that that happens to happen.

Speaker 2: 28:39

I agree it can be so overwhelming if it's your first day, if your first time, or even if it's your first time at a specific park or you know this is a huge budget item. This is more money than you would normally spend on a vacation. It can add to that pressure and especially if you're watching all of these TikToks that are like, oh, this is the must do, this is the must eat. Those people all have passes, they have an unlimited amount of time in the parks. So you know you keep that in mind as you're watching those that if I had an unlimited amount of time, that might be my must do experience. But if you know, but really look at what does your family need and what do your family enjoy doing and build your day around that, because that TikTok is not going to be with you. So you live your best Disney life and try not to yuck other people's yums.

Speaker 4: 29:27

Absolutely, I think, the other thing, just because you've brought it up a couple of times, I would just say to all those pass holders who love to get a little negative on on the single day passes or have very strong opinions, just let let people have their own magical experience and if you see somebody struggling because they don't know what's going on, or or have those frustrations because they feel like they need to be on their phone a lot, maybe offer some tips. We're all here in this big Disney community to help each other out. It's the reason that that, robin, you've got a podcast. It's at least the reason that Alicia and I have a podcast. We have a lot of knowledge.

Speaker 4: 30:06

That's been hard one and we want to share that. So, just to have a positive spin and and let's be supportive of each other whether this is your, you know 10th time to Disneyland this year or this is, you know, you're one time that you've been able to save up to get your family to Disneyland let's all be there to support each other, no matter where our backgrounds are and what our personal experiences are have been, and let's just all help everybody have the magic.

Speaker 2: 30:37

So people want to listen to you've got a great podcast and what's the best way for them to, to follow you, to, to find the podcast, those kinds of things.

Speaker 4: 30:45

I feel like I've spoken a lot. Of Alicia, why don't you take this one?

Speaker 3: 30:47

Our podcast is called Adventures and Mouse Capades and you can find us on pretty much all the socials. We are at our mouse capades. We do a weekly podcast. It drops every Monday all about our Disney experiences.

Speaker 2: 31:00

Thank you so much for coming on. I think this show will be really helpful to people who are planning their first trip, so thank you so much.

Speaker 4: 31:05

Well, thank you, robin, and yeah, good luck to everybody who's going to go take their first Disney experience. You're going to have a great time.

Speaker 1: 31:13

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Park Magic podcast. For more tips and planning tools designed to help simplify your Disneyland adventure, visit parkmagiccom. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to hear more tips, be sure to subscribe to the Park Magic podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review. Your feedback helps us spread the magic even further. Leaving a review could also help you. Each month, we will be selecting one reviewer to win. A one hour planning session with Robin Winners will be announced at the end of the first episode of every month. Thanks for tuning in and remember that we are here to help you have a less stressful and more magical trip to Disneyland.