PART ONE PLANNING before YOU LEAVE HOME Visiting Walt Disney World is a bit like childbirth—you never really believe what people tell you, but once you have been through it your- self, you know exactly what they were saying! —Hilary Wolfe, a mother and Unofficial Guide reader from Swansea, Wales GATHERING INFORMATION IN ADDITION TO USING THIS GUIDE, we recommend that you visit our website, touringplans.com, which offers essential tools for planning your trip and saving you time and money. One of the most popular parts of touringplans.com is our Crowd Calendar, which shows crowd projections for each Disney and Universal theme park for every day of the year. Look up the dates of your visit, and the calendar will not only show the projected wait times for each day but will also indicate for each day which theme park will be the least crowded. We’ve launched two new website features since the last edition of this book. First, with our computer-optimized touring plans, you choose the attractions you want to experience, including character greetings, parades, fi reworks, meals, and midday breaks, and we’ll give you a step- by-step itinerary for doing all those things while minimizing your wait in line. It’sCOPYRIGHTED great for fi guring out how much MATERIALyou can realistically see in the amount of time you have available. A particularly cool feature of the software is that you can use it to update your plans as your needs change. Let’s say your touring plan calls for riding The Haunted Mansion next but your family really needs an ice-cream break and 30 minutes out of the sun. Get the ice cream and take the break; when you’re done, just click the “Optimize” button on your phone, and your plan will be updated with what to do next. Want to add another ride on Space Mountain? Tell the software and click the “Optimize” button, and another updated plan will appear. Nifty, no? 004_9781118277560-ch01.indd4_9781118277560-ch01.indd 2626 77/18/12/18/12 33:57:57 PMPM GATHERING INFORMATION 27 We’ve also added complete dining menus for all of Walt Disney World. We spent more than a month collecting menus from every food cart, stand, kiosk, counter-service restaurant, and sit-down res- taurant in Walt Disney World. Then we entered everything—more than 11,000 items—into a giant database and put it online. The whole thing is searchable, too, so you can fi nd every restaurant in Epcot that serves steak (and its prices), or see which snacks at the Main Street Bakery are eligible for the Disney Dining Plan. Updated constantly, these menus represent the most accurate collection of Disney dining information available anywhere. Both the computer-optimized touring plans and menus are available in Lines, our mobile application, which provides continuous real-time updates on wait times at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. Using a combination of our in-park research and updates sent in by readers, Lines shows you the current wait and Fastpass-distribution times at every attraction in every park, as well as our estimated wait times for these attractions for the rest of today and tomorrow. For example, Lines will tell you that the posted wait time for Space Mountain is 60 minutes, and that based on what we know about how Disney man- ages Space Mountain’s queue, the actual time you’ll probably wait in line is 48 minutes. Lines is the only Disney app that shows you both posted and actual wait times. Lines is available free to touringplans.com subscribers for the Apple iPhone and iPad at the iTunes Store (search for “TouringPlans”; requires iOS 3.2 or later) and for Android devices at the Google Play Store (requires Android 2.1 Eclair or later); owners of other phones can use the web-based version at m.touringplans.com. As long as you’ve got that smartphone handy while visiting the World, we and your fellow Unofficial Guide readers would love it if you could report on the wait times you see while you’re there. Run Lines, log in to your user account, and click “+Time” in the upper right corner to help everyone out. Lines has been extremely well received—so well, in fact, that some users can’t wean themselves off of it when they return home. A Deerfi eld, New Hampshire, wife writes: We absolutely LOVED Lines. We’ve been home from vacation for several days, and my husband is still checking the wait times and lov- ing the fact that we got out of there before the Thanksgiving rush. From a Philadelphia reader: Your app is amazing! I took my iPad with me to the parks, and it was very helpful. Several times the posted wait for the standby line at an attraction was long, but Lines said it wasn’t. I took a chance and used the standby line, and you were right—I walked on without any more wait than the Fastpass users. A Clinton, Massachusetts, mom using Lines discovered an unex- pected benefi t: The phone app was also great for occupying my 9-year-old son. He loved checking wait times! At night, back at the hotel, he would ask 004_9781118277560-ch01.indd4_9781118277560-ch01.indd 2727 77/18/12/18/12 33:57:57 PMPM 28 PART 1 PLANNING BEFORE YOU LEAVE HOME to borrow my phone so he could see how long people at MK were waiting for Splash Mountain. A big money-saving feature of the website is our Disney Ticket Calculator (see page 50), which tells you the most economical combi- nation of tickets to buy (and where to buy them) to see everything you want in the theme parks and water parks. Much of our web content, including the computer-optimized touring plans, menus, resort photos and video, Ticket Calculator, and updates and changes to this guide, is completely free. Access to part of the site, most notably the Crowd Calendar, additional touring plans, and in- park wait times, requires a small subscription fee (current-book own- ers get a substantial discount). This nominal charge helps keep us on- line and costs less than a sandwich at Flame Tree Barbecue in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Plus, touringplans.com offers a 45-day money-back guarantee—something we don’t think Flame Tree can match. Next, we recommend that you obtain the following: 1. THE WALT DISNEY TRAVEL COMPANY FLORIDA VACATIONS BROCHURE AND DVD These cover Walt Disney World in its entirety, list rates for all Disney resort hotels and campgrounds, and describe Disney World package vacations. They’re available from most travel agents, by calling the Walt Disney Travel Company at ☎ 407-828-8101 or 407-934-7639, or by visiting disney world .com. Be prepared to hold. When you get a representative, ask for the DVD vacation planner. 2. THE DISNEY CRUISE LINE BROCHURE AND DVD This brochure provides details on vacation packages that combine a cruise on the Disney Cruise Line with a stay at Disney World. Disney Cruise Line also offers a free DVD that tells you all you need to know about Disney cruises and then some. To obtain a copy, call ☎ 800-951-3532 or order at disneycruise .com. 3. ORLANDO MAGICARD If you’re considering lodging outside Disney World or if you think you might patronize out-of-the-World attractions and restaurants, obtain an Orlando Magicard, a Vacation Planner, and the Orlando Official Vacation Guide (all free) from the Orlando Official Visitor Center. The Magicard entitles you to discounts for hotels, restaurants, ground transportation, shopping malls, dinner theaters, and non-Disney theme parks and attractions. The Orlando Magicard can be conveniently downloaded for printing at orlando info .com/magicard. To order the accommodations guide, call ☎ 800-643-9492. For more information and materials, call ☎ 407-363-5872 weekdays during business hours and 9 a.m.–3 p.m. Eastern time weekends, or go to visitorlando.com. 4. FLORIDA ROOMSAVER GUIDE Another good source of discounts on lodging, restaurants, and attractions statewide is Florida RoomSaver, published by Trader Publishing Company. You can sign up at roomsaver .com to have a free monthly guide sent to you by unofficial TIP e-mail, or you can view the guide online. If you prefer Request information as a hard copy over a digital version, you can request far in advance as possible, one by calling ☎ 800-222-3948 Monday–Friday, and allow four weeks for 8 a.m.–5 p.m. Eastern time. To order by mail, write delivery. Follow up if you to 13709 Progress Blvd., Box 14, Alachua, FL 32615. haven’t received your The guide is free, but you pay $3 for handling ($5 materials within six weeks. if it’s shipped to Canada). 004_9781118277560-ch01.indd4_9781118277560-ch01.indd 2828 77/18/12/18/12 33:57:57 PMPM GATHERING INFORMATION 29 Important Walt Disney World Addresses COMPLIMENTS, COMPLAINTS, AND SUGGESTIONS Walt Disney World Guest Communications P.O. Box 10040 Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0040 CONVENTION AND BANQUET INFORMATION Walt Disney World Resort South P.O. Box 10000 Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-1000 MERCHANDISE MAIL ORDER (Guest Service Mail Order) P.O. Box 10070 Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0070 WALT DISNEY WORLD CENTRAL RESERVATIONS P.O. Box 10100 Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0100 WALT DISNEY WORLD EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS P.O. Box 10000 Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-1000 WALT DISNEY WORLD INFO / GUEST LETTERS / LETTERS TO MICKEY MOUSE P.O. Box 10040 Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0040 WALT DISNEY WORLD TICKET MAIL ORDER P.O.