(jazzy music)
- Thank you for joining us, this is Travel Top Five,
and today we're gonna talk about top five tips,
insider tips, for Disney, and I love doing these top five
videos, and we did one a while back about top five hotels
at Disney, and I felt a little bit out of my element there,
but doing a top five video, I have never felt
more unarmed compared to my counterparts
as I have this time, 'cause we're doing a top five
insider tips on Disney, and you used to work at Disney.
- I did, both parks.
- And you've been there how many times?
- It's just shy of 40.
- Okay, so I have some tips here,
we'll see how I stack up against these guys.
But anyways, we're doing a top five, so let's,
I'm sorry, we got Leslie here, we have Alyssa, and I'm Phil.
Leslie, why don't you kick us off with your number five tip?
- Okay!
It seems simple, but it's something
a lot of people don't think about.
Get a button.
So when you first get to Disney, they always ask you,
is it your first time, is it an anniversary,
is it a honeymoon, is it Monday, I mean,
it really doesn't matter, they will give you a button,
and usually you get more special treatment,
I mean, Disney does it above and beyond
no matter what time it has been for you traveling there,
but always get a button, because characters point it out,
staff members, cast members, excuse me, point it out,
and it's just really special if you're wearing a button
that says first timer, anniversary,
always wear a button for extra special treatment.
- Cool, I didn't know that.
Here's one that's interesting,
throughout the park at strategic places,
you'll see some staff, staff?
- Cast members. - Cast members
who take photographs, their job is to take photographs,
but if you ask them, they will use your camera
and take a picture of you with your camera or your phone,
now they're not gonna adjust the settings,
that kinda stuff, so have it already set up, ready to go,
but people might think that they wouldn't do that
'cause they're kinda trying to sell their own,
but they will, they will absolutely take the photo
in a great place for you with your camera,
so very kind of Disney to offer that.
What's your number five? - My number five
is to utilize the extra magic hours.
On given days of the week, a park is either open
one hour before it's open to what you would call it,
non-hotel. - General public.
- General public, yeah, and then on some days it's open
two hours later to only resort guests
staying at a Disney hotel and it's a great way
to go on some of those big-ticket rides
that normally have an hour, hour and a half wait
and sometimes at Magic Kingdom, I've been there
and it's completely dead and it's really magical
just being one of the only people there, so do that,
it's a great way to do things without the crowd.
- Okay, my number four, a couple of these are specific
for a certain group of people, so I kind of feel bad
about that and this one I understand is pricey,
this one's expensive, so everyone won't be able to do this
but if you can swing it, my number four is to get
the VIP tour guide, now it is expensive.
You're probably talking about a couple of grand for a day
but what this person will do, they will take you around,
you're gonna get to kinda cut in line at the rides,
they're gonna figure out with you what you wanna do
and they're gonna help you get everything done
you wanna get done, you can take up to 10 people
with one tour guide, so if you've got two or three families
together, you're gonna split the cost among the families,
it gets slightly more reasonable.
I think if you can swing it for one day, knock it out,
it's gonna be a fantastic experience for you.
I know it's expensive, but if you can swing it, do it.
- They get preferred seating for the shows
and for the parades and everything too,
so it's really good value if you can swing it.
- Value might be the wrong word but yeah, it's great,
it's great if you can do it.
Number four.
- For me number four is Disney Springs,
formerly known as Downtown Disney,
it's a really great way to, you don't need a park admission
to access to Disney Springs and they just recently
really expanded it, you've got bowling down there,
you have Cirque du Soleil, it's my favorite
Cirque du Soleil show I've ever seen, it's called La Nouba,
they have an AMC dine-in theater, there is just so much
to do so if on that first day, you don't want to spend
the money on a park ticket, that's a great way
to still make some of your day, make something of it
and not have to pay the park admission and have a lot to do.
- Smart.
My number four is bring a poncho.
This sounds so simple, it's not, don't bring an umbrella
because nobody wants to carry that around the parks,
but a poncho is so easy to fold up and put in your bag,
even your pocket if you can get it small enough,
but when it is raining at Disney, that is the best time
to ride rides, everybody's indoors, they're shopping,
they're eating, but when you have a poncho,
you can easily slip it on, continue to wait in line
and you get through a lot of those lines
a lot quicker than if you didn't have one.
- Absolutely, I need a class on how, when the rain's over,
how you get the poncho back, I have never.
- Then you can toss it and buy another one.
- Yeah, maybe, I've never been able to get it
to fold back up.
Number three, Miss Alyssa.
- Sure, my number three is to utilize the Disney app,
I think it's called My Disney Experience.
- Love that app. - And it's really wonderful
because it's kind of hard to structure out
and plan your days at Disney so that gives you a little more
flexibility because you can plan a lot on the app,
you can do your fast passes, you can make dining
reservations, so if you're not sure what park
you're going to that day, just wait, you might not
have all the options to choose from,
but you can see what dining's available,
just book it right there, look at the park hours,
wait times, everything, so really great,
and you can see those pictures Phil was talking about.
- And the, maybe a different app, I know there are several
apps but another one to look at also, one of the apps
that will give you wait times, I don't know if it's that one
or a different one, but boy, that's really helpful.
- I think it does it on that one too, yeah.
- It gives you a guide of how long you have to wait
for certain rides. - Can I sidetrack
really quick on that? - Absolutely, go for it.
- This might be another point but I didn't put it
on my list, sometimes wait times are totally inaccurate,
just because it says an hour, does not mean it's an hour.
I mean, it's a little hard to gage that,
but sometimes you walk right on the ride
and they're just putting that, I don't know if they're
trying to deter people or what, but sometimes it's not
always accurate, so use your judgment,
if you don't see a line wrapping around the building
three times, it's probably not two hours, try it.
- Yeah, and even still, to go off yours, the lines,
they're so themed at each ride, they're kinda fun
to wait in sometimes. - I don't know about that.
(laughs)
- Sometimes.
My number three is head to the back of the park first.
So this is a little, it's not really a hidden secret,
but sometimes when it's your first time at Disney
or even third time, you get so distracted right when
you walk in the park, there's Mickey over here,
there's the castle up here, and it's really easy to just
stop and wait and see everything right there,
if you head straight to the back of the park,
I promise it'll still be there when you come to the front,
but most people get so distracted that they forget
that there's the rest of the park, so if you go all the way
back and start riding those rides,
you're gonna avoid a lot of the lines
than if you were gonna start at the front and then work
your way back, so, that's one of my hidden tips.
- Absolutely.
Mine is don't try to do everything.
Pace yourself, go slow, enjoy it.
When my daughter was probably two years old or so,
we were there and we were trying to do everything,
and at one point, my wife was pushing her,
we were trying to get to a certain place at a certain time
and my daughter was just crying,
saying, "I wanna go home, I wanna go home!"
Slow down, have fun, don't try and do too much.
Just enjoy what you do, get to do.
Number two.
- My number two, it's a little off of the app,
kinda what Alyssa said, but it's the magic bands.
So if you stay on a Disney property,
you automatically get those magic bands for free
and if you don't stay on property, you can still purchase
the magic bands once you get to the park,
so you can just exchange your ticket and just buy
the magic band, it is so worth it.
It's a wrist band, almost like a Fitbit that you wear,
but it holds your credit card info, your ticket info,
your fast passes, dining reservations, meal plans,
I mean, it holds everything so you don't have to bring
cash or credit into the park, you literally just walk up
to make a purchase and scan your magic band and you're done,
you can just pay for it all at the end of your stay.
So even if you don't get a complimentary,
if you're not staying on site at a Disney property,
I think it's totally worth it
and you should take full advantage of it.
- Okay.
My number two is kind of a two-fer,
it's called the hand off and it's used two different ways.
One way, this is for people who are traveling
with small children, let's say there's a ride
that you wanna go on but the child shouldn't go on it,
like Space Mountain or something like that,
and if you have, both parents are there,
you can wait in line and one parent will go on the ride
and the other will stay at the front of the line
with the child, when the ride's over, you hand off the child
and Disney's familiar with this, and then they let you
hand off and then you go on the ride, no one waits.
So that's one way it's used.
The way it's used more often, the way we used it
when our kids were small, if you have a ride
that has a significant wait time, have one parent
wait in line with the child, other parent will be 20,
30, 40 people behind 'em, let them ride it,
and then when the parent's through, they hand off the child
to the other parent if they wanna do the same ride
over and over again, there are some of these rides
that the kids wanna do over and over again
and you just take turns handing them off
until the child gets tired of it.
And when we went with my daughter, I think it was,
we had grandparents with us, so we had a three or four
change going where she got on, back then it was the Dumbo
ride and that was her thing and she rode it over and over
until she got tired of it, got tired, we left and did
something else, but the hand off is a great strategy.
- That's funny.
Another thing kind of for families with younger children
is that Disney offers stroller rentals
so you don't need to pack your stroller
if you've got your kiddos that you're bringing to Disney
unless you like the comfort of having your own with you
and you kind of are familiar with it,
but my family always used the strollers that Disney rents,
they're very easy to maneuver unless it's crowded,
then of course you're dealing with the crowd,
but you can either rent the stroller for a day
or get one for the duration of your whole stay.
I would just recommend bringing a bandana or something
that's not valuable to mark that stroller as your own.
They do have a name plate that you can put in there
and you write your name on it so you know it's yours
but yeah, do that, and it's a nice way to not have to
lug the stroller on the bus when it's crowded,
that's miserable and if you can avoid that, then you should.
- Fantastic.
Okay, now our number one picks.
My number one, a video we'll do in the future
is gonna be our top five rides or events or shows at Disney,
so spoiler alert, this one will be on mine.
I love Fantasmic? - Uh-huh.
- Over in Disney's Hollywood Studios,
I enjoy that show a lot.
The deal is that when we went to it,
we wanted to get good seats and wanted to sit together
so about two hours before the show started,
I went and saved seats and I sat there for two hours
waiting while my wife and daughter went out
to do good things, wasn't the best two hours of my life,
but you do what you gotta do.
Well, my tip is that you've got some restaurants
at Disney Hollywood Studios, you got the Brown Derby,
Mama Melrose and Hollywood & Vine,
that have packages that you can pay where you get a dinner
and access to their VIP seating at Fantasmic,
so you get to have a dinner, so instead of me sitting there
for 2 1/2 hours by myself, family could have been
having dinner together and then leaving dinner
and going straight to the performance in the VIP section.
Of course, it's a little bit extra charge
than what you would normally pay to eat at those restaurants
but really worth it, so that's my number one tip.
- That's a good one.
Similar to that, everyone has access to Fantasmic,
everyone has access to the fireworks,
but a different way to do it, most of the parks
that have fireworks shows have a dessert package
or a dessert buffet that's partnered with the fireworks
show and you have preferred seating,
usually it's right there, smack in front of,
in Magic Kingdom's instance, right in front of the castle,
a little to the side, and it is an additional charge
to do that but you have this gorgeous dessert layout
and I have a huge sweet tooth so I do it every trip
and it's just the best view and the best seating,
you don't have to worry about trying to grab a seat
an hour or whatever before the firework show
so a really cool, different way to experience it.
- I didn't know that, so obviously you gotta have
reservations for that just like this one.
That's fascinating, I didn't know
you had the dessert thing, that's great.
- Mine's kind of a two-parter two but it's about meeting
characters, so a lot of people think to meet the princesses,
you have to be in Magic Kingdom or to meet Mickey
you have to be in Magic Kingdom, but if you're okay
with venturing out to Epcot, Animal Kingdom, even Hollywood
Studios, you can meet a lot of those characters there.
The princesses, for example, because Epcot is a world
destination, a lot of times they'll have the princesses
in their respective countries, so you can actually meet them
a lot easier there than if you're trying to meet them
in Magic Kingdom at the castle, and it's a little less
stressful because it's busy all the time
but not as many people venture out into Epcot as they would
Magic Kingdom, so it's a lot easier to meet them there.
The second part to that is do a character dining.
If you really wanna meet Mickey and Minnie and Goofy,
there are so many character dinings where you get lunch
or breakfast, maybe even dinner included,
and then you get to see all characters at once
while you're eating and then you're done,
you don't have to worry about trying to go seek out
those characters and get their autographs,
you're sitting there enjoying your meal, they come to you,
you take pictures, and then they go away, so it's very easy
to see everything at once doing it that way.
- Fantastic, well thank y'all both very much and thank you
for watching and I hope you got some good tips.