You Can Visit Disney More Often If You Stop Planning Big

Short Disney trips are my favorite way to visit Walt Disney World more often without spending a fortune or coming home exhausted. I break down how to keep a long weekend flexible, efficient, and fun by focusing on time control, smart transportation, and the right park strategy.

• saving money with four days and three nights
• traveling with fewer people to reduce friction
• skipping most dining reservations to protect park time
• maximizing arrival and departure days with flight timing
• renting a car to avoid losing hours to transportation
• using Lightning Lane Multi Pass and single passes when rides are the goal
• choosing resorts that simplify getting to the parks with monorail, Skyliner, or walkability
• picking the right parks for each day, including Animal Kingdom for departure day
• considering park hopper to fit more parks into a short trip
• using Disney “bounce back” offers to plan the next return sooner

If you are enjoying the podcast, I would love if you would leave me a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcast. Make sure you come back next Monday to hear all about that. If you want to take your own little Disney short trip, I would love to help you plan that.

CLICK HERE for links to my quote forms so we can start planning your next short Disney trip!

Transcript

Welcome And The Short Trip Idea

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Hello, you are listening to Disney Travel Tales with me, Jenny, your host. Here we talk all things Disney destination, be it the parks or cruises. And if you love traveling to Disney or just dream about it, then you found the podcast for you. Today's episode is number 136, and I am going to talk to you all about taking short trips to Disney and why I think this might be a great option for you. I get asked fairly often in my everyday life how I go to Disney so often. And the key is short trips. That is really the reason I get to visit Disney three times a year. I typically go three to four times a year, and it's because I take short trips. Not every trip to Disney has to be this massive, you know, undertaking. It doesn't have to be your entire family with your extended family. It doesn't have to be a week long visiting the parks multiple times. It literally can be a weekend away with just one or two of your favorite people. So I'm just going to kind of go over all of that in this episode to kind of help you out. And who knows, maybe a short weekend trip to Disney is on your horizon. But before we get to that, thank you so much for listening today. If you are enjoying the podcast, I would love if you would leave me a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcast. This just helps share the show, get the show out there for more people to listen. It's the easiest and best way to support the show, and it is free. That's the best part. All right, so let's just get right into it. Taking a short trip to Disney is pretty fantastic for lots of reasons. One of them is it costs less money. When you are just going for like three or four nights, four nights is a little bit long. I'm more talking like four days, three nights. Overall, your trip's just going to cost less. You're going to pay less for your hotel, you're going to pay less for your park tickets, and you're going to pay less while you're there eating, drinking, all the things, it's going to cost less because you're going to be there a less amount of time. This is like the key to me on why I do get to visit Disney more often, is because I'm not spending too much money per trip. I'm really saving money when I go on these trips in order to be able to take more trips. Another key to keep down the cost is don't bring your whole family. I know that that might be controversial, but this is a perfect opportunity for you to take like one-on-one trips with your kids, go on a girl's trip, go with your best friends, go with your husband, maybe take your sister and your sister-in-law, or just bringing less people in general in order for everyone to actually get to do what they want. Now, that is one of the downsides to taking a short trip is you're going to do a lot less than maybe you're used to doing when you go to Disney. I mean, it's basically you're not going to have as much time. So the less people that are on your trip, the less like opinions you're going to get, and the less people that you're going to need to please with just like two people, you can easily take a long weekend to Disney and get done what you want to get done. Another really important part of taking a short trip is not doing reservations, not doing dining reservations, not doing tours, just really keeping your schedule open for the park day that you're going to be there. You know, being a travel agent, I get clients and they want those Disney reservations and those dining reservations. And trust me, I get it. Especially with the rise of you know Disney influencers on social media, they make it seem like these things are so important that you have to do them to have a successful Disney trip. But the truth is you really don't have to do them. And if you are going to go multiple times a year, you kind of just don't need to. You can choose depending on who you're traveling with. Like if you're going on an adult's trip, yeah, do a dining, a dinner reservation because y'all aren't going to be all about the rides and shows. You're going to want to have that time to sit down and relax. So you really have to just tailor the trip to the people that you're going with. And for the most part, when I'm taking a short trip, I'm not doing a bunch of dining reservations. I'm mostly utilizing snacks and quick services so we can just get around the park a little bit easier. Something people who don't go to Disney a lot don't always realize is a simple dining reservation can take an hour or more out of your day. I've easily gone to check into a reservation and had to wait 20 minutes before you even sit down. In that 20 minutes, you could have mobile ordered food at a quick service and got your food and be like sitting and eating. So you really just have to weigh the pros and cons for that. But for the most part, I say don't plan the dining reservations. Leave your schedule open because if you're at the parks and you want to go and sit, you know, find somewhere to sit down, for the most part, you're going to be able to find a dining reservation that opens up, or you can just walk up to the restaurant and see if they have any availability. If there is a very specific thing you want to do, of course, you're going to have to schedule that ahead of time if that's one of the main components of the trip. But since you're not going to be there overall for very long, I just don't think scheduling dining reservations and tours is a good idea to maximize your time because that's really the key to these shorter trips is maximizing your time while you were there. So now that we've kind of talked about that, let's move more into even just arriving and departing. So typically, if I'm going to do a shorter trip, I will either fly in the night before, like very, very late the night before, so it doesn't disrupt like my kids' school day or my work day. And then just start bright and early the next morning, or I go ahead and fly in early on our first park day. Luckily, where we live, we have very early flights, and so I can be in Orlando by 9 a.m., which is typically close to when park opens for the most part. And then we can just drop our bags off at a resort and go straight to the park that we're wanting to go to and be there for an entire day. You really do need to maximize your arrival and departure days. So for our departure days, I will typically book a late flight, either an evening flight or even sometimes the last flight of the day, which again for us doesn't leave until 10 p.m. So ultimately that's giving us an entire park day on the day we're leaving. Now, this is where park strategy and deciding which parks you're going to visit on which days of your trip kind of becomes really important. Because if you're wanting to spend a whole day at Magic Kingdom and see the fireworks, you're not going to want to do that on your departure day. You're going to want to pick a different park to visit that day. Maybe a park that you prefer not to spend the evenings at, or maybe a park that you and the people you're traveling with can finish a little bit quicker, giving you a little bit more flexibility and time in your day so that you get to the airport on time because the worst thing that can happen is missing your flight on your departure day. So you definitely don't want to make that happen. Another key piece of advice that I like to personally utilize myself is when I'm taking a short trip, I typically rent a car, and that's just because it allows me more flexibility. So let's talk about your departure day. You can wake up that morning, pack your car, pack your stuff, put your suitcases in your car. You can either drive to the park that you're visiting, or depending on where you're staying, use a different mode of transportation to that park. But typically I would drive to the park I'm going to visit that day. And then I can just leave straight from that park to go straight to the airport. I don't have to go back to my hotel, which if I was using Lyft or a private transportation or even Mears Connect, I would have to allot time to leave the park, go back to my resort, get my bags from Bell Services, which is not an instant situation. That all takes time. And then, you know, arrange for that other transportation to come and get me. That could add an hour onto your day, like take an hour away from your park time in order for you to get to the airport on time. So renting a car to me personally is really just the most efficient way to maximize your time on a short trip. Let's do a little example of what it might look like arriving on, let's say, a Thursday morning and leaving on a Sunday. Because that to me is a nice time frame for a trip that you can get plenty of things done and for it not to break the bank. So let's say you're arriving at around 9 a.m. on a Thursday morning. What I would typically do, I only pack and carry-on, so I don't have to wait for my baggage. I would then grab my bags, go down to where the rent cars are. Because we use a we use Enterprise and we're members because I've signed up online. I can just walk straight into the garage to pick my car. I don't have to go to the desk or anything like that. So I do recommend if you are going to rent a car, go ahead and become a member and do everything on an app so you don't have to deal with anyone at the desk. So I would just go pick up my pick out my car, pack up my car, and head straight to the park that we are visiting. I wouldn't go to the resort. The only caveat is if we are visiting Magic Kingdom. Magic Kingdom is a little bit trickier with parking, but let's say we're going to visit Hollywood Studios. I would just drive straight to Hollywood Studios, and there we are at the park. Spend our day at the park, get back in our car later in that day, the evening, and drive over to the resort and check in. Then I would do my following park days, however, I had decided it. And let's say on my departure day, I'm going to visit Animal Kingdom because Animal Kingdom is a great park to visit on your departure day because you're not going to get overwhelmed with too many things to do. You typically can do the entire park in three-fourths of a day, literally everything in the park in about three-fourths of a day. So you're not going to feel that crunch for time. So I would wake up on my departure day, pack up my car, drive over to Animal Kingdom, spend the day there, and then leave straight from Animal Kingdom to the airport. This strategy alone will save hours. I promise. Relying on Disney transportation can add hours to your trip. Not just a day, just to your entire trip. And so the best way to defeat this is to just maximize your time. Now, some people might think, well, why don't I just take my suitcases to the park and, you know, lift straight from the park? But you can't. Taking your suitcase to the park is not going to be an easy situation because I'm pretty sure there is nowhere you can leave your suitcase. They're going to be like, why are you bringing your suitcase to the park? So you do need to leave your suitcase at your resort if you decide not to rent a car. I will say on my past like four or five trips, I've always rented cars, and driving in Florida is very easy. Getting from the airport to Disney, very, very easy. There is even an alternate way where you don't even have to get on the interstates and pay the tolls, which I personally prefer because it's just a little bit calmer and nicer. And it only takes like five minutes longer, if I remember correctly. So I do recommend that, especially if you're on a short trip, because you just want to be in control of your time. That's the key. On these trips, being in control of your time is the most important thing. Another must-do for these type of trips is purchasing lightning lights. You are going to have to purchase the lightning lane multipass and single pass. Now, if your goal for the trip is not rides, it's more just hanging out and enjoying things and maybe riding a couple of rides. You're fine, you don't need it. But if you're going and you want to ride rides, you're just going to have to purchase it. But here's the good thing: when you're traveling with two people, it's really not that expensive and it's easy to budget for. By having it, it's going to at least make the time in the park not feel so rushed and stressful. If you're going to the park and you know you have a limited time and you're like, this is my only day at Epcot. I only have, you know, so much amount of time. I have to get these things done. And you don't have a multipass or single pass, you're going to feel stressed. And guess what? Your vacation is not going to be very much fun because you're going to be running around watching wait times, trying to get from one thing to the next. And it's just much easier to already have things planned, already have a schedule. So at least you know you're going to hit some high points of the day. Now, Epcot is kind of a bad example because it can be hard to get multiple rides on multipass, but at least you know you have the favorite rides that you and the people that you're traveling with want to do. Just take some of the stress away so you can enjoy the park, so you can walk around the world showcase and not have to run back to the front of the park because you see a line has gone, you know, the wait time is shorter than it was earlier in the day. Or even just being at Magic Kingdom, Magic Kingdom has a ton of rides. And yeah, you can go do go to that park without getting multi-pass, but you're going to be running around like back and forth from side, all different sides. You're not going to be able to have a streamline adventure through Magic Kingdom because you're going to be watching wait times and oh, Dumbo's 10 minutes, let's run over there. Wait, Pirates is 20 minutes. Let's run over there before it gets up. Those are completely across the park. Like that's not an ideal day. And when you know you only have one day to spend at the park, invest in the lightning lanes. I promise you will not regret it. I have never ever met someone who said, man, I really regret buying those lightning lanes. I could have done it without it. Now, here's one of the big, a big deciding factor when I'm traveling on a shorter trip that I do like to keep in mind. It's where I'm going to stay, the resort factor in this whole situation. So it is tempting to go ahead and book a deluxe because guess what? You're staying less nice. If you're staying on a three-night trip, a deluxe is very doable because it's ultimately not going to cost a ton of money. I do actually prefer staying deluxe only for the reason that typically deluxe resorts are closer to the parks. So the getting to the parks is easier. So staying on a monorail resort is going to give you, you know, two options to get to Epcot and Magic Kingdom. That's fantastic. Then you only have to rely on the bus for Hollywood or Animal Kingdom. And if you have your car, you can just take that. But if you're staying at one of the value resorts, you're going to have to rely on bus service for the whole time. Yes, you can take your car and park at the resorts, but every day of your trip, that might get a little bit exhausting. So by staying at a resort that is has multiple options to get to the parks, I think is the best option. And it's not even multiple options to get to the parks. I like to stay at a resort where I can at least walk to one park. Now, when you stay at the resorts on Crescent Lake, like Beach Club, Yacht Club, Swan and Dolphin, or Boardwalk, you can walk to two parks. You can walk to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. The walk to Hollywood Studios is actually really, really nice. But then you're only relying on bus transportation to Magic Kingdom, and then you can drive to Animal Kingdom on your departure day. So again, saving you time, maximizing your time in the parks, or even just maximizing time at your resort if you want to hang out at your resort a little bit. This also opens up the option for midday breaks. If you're in walking distance to your resort, you can just hop over there in the middle of the day, maybe go swim for a little bit, rest a little bit, eat something at your resort just to get out of the park, and then head back to the park in the evening. Now, if you really are taking a short trip for budget reasons only, like I want to go, I'm gonna take one of my kids, and we are on a tight, tight budget, then I would say try to stay at least pop century because pop century will give you the option to be able to ride the Skyliner to two resorts instead of only having to rely on bus transportation. But transportation from your resort is actually going to be pretty important and definitely something you need to keep in mind. The last main thing I would like to go over is just the parks that you want to visit. I would definitely recommend talking with your travel buddies before you go on this trip to kind of see which parks they're most interested in visiting and which parks they want to spend the most time at. I do recommend on shorter trips to get a park hopper just because it gives you more options if you want to visit more parks. So if you're going on maybe just a three-day trip, it will give you an option to visit all four parks instead of just having to choose three parks. And if you really look at the numbers, adding a parkopper to your ticket is not that much more expensive. I will say, depending on what your travel party wants to do, to allocate an entire day for Magic Kingdom. It has the most things to do, the most rides. The firework show is fantastic to see. So Magic Kingdom for me is a good arrival day park or just a middle of the trip park. And then, like I kind of mentioned before, I would save Animal Kingdom for your departure day, or even for us, we sometimes choose to do Hollywood Studios on our departure day because we are not, we don't 100% have to stay at Hollywood Studios in the evening. And so the parks that we less like in the evening, I like to save for our departure day since I know we won't be there at night. And then Epcot's just kind of up for grabs. Some people love Epcot. We personally love Epcot. We love spending a whole day there, especially during a festival, to just take it all in. Some people don't like Epcot. So you could even do on your Epcot day, do Half Day Epcot, Half Day Hollywood Studios, and use a skyliner to get back and forth. So that's also a really good option as well. So on a three-day trip, you could do Magic Kingdom, Epcot Hollywood Studios, and then Animal Kingdom. And hey, that's a pretty fantastic trip. Ultimately, I love short trips. I love them because they cost less. I love them because they allow me to go to Disney more often during the year, which I actually prefer. I would much rather go for a long weekend than go for a week or a week and a half at a time. It also kind of when I go on these trips, I leave feeling fantastic. I'm not too tired because ultimately I haven't been there long enough to get too tired. And I don't feel sad about leaving either because in my mind, I know I have just a short little trip. So I'm just gonna make the most of it while I can. And I really enjoy that whole aspect of it. So usually when we go, we're so excited, we can't, we're so happy to be there. And then when we leave, we're like, okay, yay, we're leaving. It's totally fine because I know we're coming back. I think the part of the Disney blues that people get is because they don't know when they're going back. But if you're taking a shorter trip, you're spending less money on the trips. When you check out, you have seven days to book a bounce back offer, which is here's a little tip pretty much the best offer you're gonna be able to ever get. I always recommend clients. Just go ahead, book it, put that$200 deposit down. You can always cancel it if it doesn't work out. But that is going to be the best deal you are going to get on a Disney resort room. It is just fantastic. And so go ahead and book that because it's in the budget, right? You've saved money. You still have money left to spend. And then you'll get to visit another time of year instead of just pigeonholing yourself into this one time of year, this really gigantic trip that was exhausting that everyone's tired after. It will just be so refreshing. I promise. Trust me, you will feel refreshed. If you can even imagine going on a Disney vacation and feeling refreshed, this is a vacation for you. I am actually taking my own little short trip to Disney. We are going later in March, and next week's episode is going to be my tree, my pre trip report. My pre trip report. Yes, I think that I don't know why that sounds weird, but that's what the episode is going to be about. I have some plans for us. I don't over plan, like I kind of mentioned, but I Do you have some rough plans of things that we're going to do? By the time I record, I will have our lightning lane situation all worked out. So that'll be exciting. I'll be able to tell y'all what I have booked for us. This is going to be a little bit of a different type of trip for us. We are just going to be going a Wednesday night to a Saturday. So it's pretty dang short, I will say that, because we are not arriving till very late. But make sure you come back next Monday to hear all about that. And I would also love, if you want to send me a message, just go into the show notes and let me know what you want me to try while we're there. We're going to be eating only quick service for the most part. So let me know if there's something you want to hear about. Is there some new quick service restaurant or even an old quick service restaurant that you've never heard about that you've kind of been curious about? Hey, I'll try it. I'll take one for the team and we'll get this figured out. If you want to take your own little Disney short trip, I would love to help you plan that. My quote form links are in the show notes. If you would like to get on my newsletter, I send a newsletter. Well, I am going to start sending a newsletter out bi-monthly. So if you want to get on that list, that link's in the show notes. I think that might be all for now. I would love to hear any feedback on the show, the new format ish of the show, and what you're thinking about it. I'd love to connect. So for now, this is Jenny, and may all your Disney travel dreams become a reality.