1 – Photopass Plus. This is a program that is through Disneyland itself. Around the park there are specific photo points with professional photographers and cameras. Now normally after the photo/s is taken the photographer gives you a card and you later go to the photo shop or on line and purchase that photo/s if you want it. The Photopass Plus program basically gives you ALL the photos you get taken on a CD with rights to print them off.. I am mean ALL of them.. Any professional photo you see they scan to your card and when we got home I went through all the photos deleted the ones I didn’t like.. added a boarder/s to the ones I like and got a CD sent to us. Also included in the package is all the photos from rides that have the cameras on them.. so for us it was worth it cause we got some amazing photos of us and the girls over the trip. Parents and Grandparents were happy with the pics we got… and we even got Tinkerbell shots with the girls (Magic Photos).. so worth the money consider the great shots we got.. https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/guest-services/photo-pass-service/
2 – Buying food for the room. As mentioned in my previous post we went to Walmart the first day we were there and purchases food for the room. I packed in my suitcase 4 tupperware bowls and plastic spoons and a sharp knife (properly covered). We got cereal, milk, carrots, bananas, crackers and sandwich supplies. Most hotel rooms around Disney had fridges but when I booked I made sure ours would. This made it so much easier in the morning as the girls had a proper breakfast and were not bugging us for food when we arrived at the park. The first day we packed our lunches and only bought snacks.. the second day we bought two lunches instead of four and shared them and supplemented them with the snacks we bought.. third day’s lunch was of course Ariel’s Grotto. Dinner every night was at IHOP across the road. I think we saved a pretty good chunk of money by eating breakfast at the hotel and having snacks for us..
3 – Phone charger. The BF for my birthday bought me a portable phone charger. I have to say this is the greatest invention of all time. As we still have roaming on our phones incase mum/stepdad or Dad called for the girls or if me and BF got separated and taking many pictures and checking the ride time app (more on that soon) my battery ran out pretty fast. But by having the charger in my bag I wasn’t worried about the battery going. I always saw so many people huddled in the bathroom’s outlets trying to get some juice in their phones..
4 – Ride Time App.. Download it.. it’s so handy.. they one we had was pretty accurate and was great in planning out rides to go and check out or ones to avoid until later.
5 – Snacks.. bring them.. it’s amazing the price of food at the park and for those people travelling with kids (or even if you need to snack yourself) bringing snacks can help so much when all of a sudden little tummys start rumbling and you are in line for a ride… we of course but the one or two snacks for us and the girls as I really wanted a mickey shaped icecream BUT it wasn’t such a great financial burden on us. Snacks also was great for waiting for the parade to start as well.
6 – By your toys at home or at Walmart.. As I mentioned in my previous post the girls got a special gift which came from either tinkerbell or a princess if they were good the day before. Most of the gift I got from the dollar store or on special from the Disney store before we left and just packed those.. it was super simple and the girls didn’t care.. they got gifts…
7 - Be Picky about what you buy.. we were very picky about the souvenirs we purchased.. There is SO much stuff at Disneyland to purchase and most of it would have been useless junk that would have sat on our shelves.. I understand people out there are very Disney and what not but we kept our souvenir purchases to a minimum. We told the girls the amount they could buy and where quite good at picking out what they wanted.. being twins they pretty much wanted the same thing and being kids it was all about clothes.. also to we didn’t have to lug so much crap home
8 – research, research, research.. I can’t say this enough.. there is SO much information out there about the parks, the best places to eat (and the cheapest), best time to go, best photo spots, secret things to do, how to keep the kids entertained, fastpasses etc etc.. do your research before you go.. the BF and I have a folder of stuff we found out and would read them at night when the girls went to bed so we could create the most magically holiday for those two girls as we possibly could.. and I think we pulled that off quite well… *pats on the back*
9 – have fun.. this is most important. No matter what went sideways, what we realized after the fact or what we did we always made the most fun of it which in turn the girls did.. being angry at stupid things was pointless in the happiest place on earth
Over all I think we did a great job giving the girls a trip of a life time and we had fun as well. I would so go back to Disneyland and use these same things again.. in fact I want to go back now..