April Planning - FastPass+ Reservations

This 10K trip in April is starting to feel so real.   We were supposed to get out today and do another 30 minute run session, but we lazied it and stayed in due to the weather.  I know that we've been running inside at the community center, but it just felt like too much effort to leave the house today.  (Granted, I left later anyway to go to JoAnn Fabric's for the President's Day sale, but that's...different.  I did walk around the store for two hours, so I'm gonna count that as training...yeah...)

We found out we could make our FastPass+ reservation for our April trip today when I logged in and realized today was two months from our check-in date (holy cow)!  So we sat down and looked at our schedule for the April weekend and what we'd like to do.  The Nerd Husband and I have been cooking up plans for the 2016 year anyway considering we'll be celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary in May.  So for our anniversary gifts to ourselves we figured we'd do a Year of Disney.  The plan is currently to purchase annual passes when we go to do the race in April, and then we'll book a series of mini-trips during the year, as well as our usual annual winter trip next year in 2017.

All of this annual pass talk aside, NH and I sat down tonight to look at our FastPass+ choices, and we picked out a few things for each day that we'll be there.  Force only knows how our feet will feel after the 10K on Saturday morning, but I have a feeling we'll be okay.  (Our last trip to Disney was a week long and we totaled somewhere over 48 miles of walking.)  We really hate to uber-plan our days because we never know what we're going to get tied up in.  When it comes to FastPass+ selections, we just follow a couple of basic rules that work for us:

1. Make your selections for earlier in the day - usually first thing in the morning of early afternoon (after lunch time).  This allows us to go back and get another FastPass+ selection later if we choose to.

2. FastPass the things that make sense.  We debated on the Wishes Fireworks FastPass this time around as well as the Indiana Jones Stunt Show.  And then realized we've never had a problem seeing either of these things in the past.

3. Pick what you want now, but don't be afraid to change them later.  We realize that our plans are completely fluid and that we might get caught up in the Flower and Garden Festival at EPCOT (something we've never had a chance to experience and we're both super excited about because we have a garden at home).  If we can't follow our FastPass+ schedule, we don't freak out.  We just change it.  Easy as pie thanks to the MyDisneyExperience app!

For us, we made the following choices for the FastPass+ reservations:

• The Seas with Nemo & Friends (might not need FastPass)
• Disney & Pixar Short Film Festival (might not need FastPass)
• Test Track
• Jungle Cruise
• Seven Dwarfs Mine Ride
• Peter Pan's Flight
• Toy Story Midway Mania
• Star Tours (we have two FastPasses for this, even though the NH can't usually ride it due to motion issues)
• Kilimanjaro Safaris
• Festival of the Lion King
• Expedition Everest

We have only one Advanced Dining Reservation (ADR) made for this trip - mostly because we're planning on sampling so many things at the EPCOT festival that we might just end up there every day!  However, since this trip falls on the birthday weekend for the NH, then I asked him where he wanted to go to dinner.  So one night will be a nice dinner for us both at Be Our Guest restaurant (one of our favorites).  Other than that, the sky is the limit when it comes to food!

I just looked at the clock because I knew it was time to wrap this all up, and it said it was 11:38pm.  And I got a little excited because...you know...1138.  Star Wars.  Yep.  Nerd.  Yay!