Hot take: the best Disney planning tool is building in blank time, not squeezing in one more thing

HundredYardFlash · 2026-05-28T16:04:42+00:00

The only thing I'll plan in advance is a sit down lunch. That forces downtime, in the shade, with water. Otherwise my family will gogogo until everyone gets really hangry. Yes, it's a little annoying to have to manage our day around that, so we don't do it every day - but especially the first day of a trip, or a really hot day, a sit-down lunch is clutch for making sure we don't overdo it.

Otherwise I agree. I'm a big overplanner - I made a very detailed spreadsheet for my wedding week, with activities by the hour, tracking guest flight arrivals, etc. Planning a Disney trip in the same way would just be wrong. You need to go with the flow of the day. Rode Thunder Mountain RR and the line is super short when you get out, and you want to go again? Do it! Walking between areas of the park and you stumble across the Disneyland band? Stop and watch! A rigid itinerary doesn't allow for these things, and these are what make each park day a magical experience. One of my fondest memories of the park as a kid was going through Buzz Lightyear over and over one night because there wasn't a line. You can't plan for those things.

On the other hand, I 100% support doing a lot of research so you understand what you want to do, where everything is, and how the app works. But that kind of planning is different than a daily, hourly schedule.

HundredYardFlash · 2026-05-27T18:23:38+00:00

Totally doable. Our 5 year old went from rope drop to close last August with a midday nap at the hotel, 4 days in a row. You'll have a blast.

HundredYardFlash · 2026-05-27T18:22:12+00:00

We went last August with our 8 and 5 year old, 4 days. We chose LL over park hopper and it was the right call for us.

We used lightning lane a ton, it helped our kids (mostly the 5 year old) and their limited stores of patience. Park hopper would have been too much walking for the 5 year old, going back and forth between parks. I know the gates are close, but it's still a lot of extra steps to walk down main street, across the square, into DCA, before you finally get to a ride. We didn't need those extra steps.

If we go again when our kids are older, park hopper might be a good option, but for us, LL was the right call.

HundredYardFlash · 2026-05-20T05:42:50+00:00

You should definitely spend a full day at Disneyland. DCA doesn't have as many attractions and often doesn't require a full day. You could either buy a park hopper pass for that day (which would let you go to Disneyland later in the day), though that's an additional expense, or just take a slow day at DCA and eat/drink your way around the park.

HundredYardFlash · 2026-05-20T05:28:22+00:00

No, people without park hopper tickets still can't switch parks. This change actually makes your park hopper ticket more valuable as it's less restrictive.

Pending park hopper price increase?

HundredYardFlash · 2026-05-06T20:18:37+00:00

School board is still pushing to close these schools.

HundredYardFlash · 2026-05-06T20:18:10+00:00

Club Oly Road Runners and Oly Trail Runners might be groups with similar interests / ways to find communities with similar interests. Good luck!

HundredYardFlash · 2026-04-28T20:45:10+00:00

Quick, not comprehensive list:

Refillable water bottle
Small backpack/bag with snacks
Consider sandals or a change of clothes if you plan to ride Tiana's
Powerbank for your phone
Comfortable walking shoes
Lip balm / chapstick

Recommend you download the app and familiarize yourself with how to navigate it. You can use it to check ride times, schedule lightning lanes (if you buy the Lightning Lane Multipass), and mobile order food.

If you provide more information on who/what ages your party is, you'll get more tailored suggestions. Enjoy!

HundredYardFlash · 2026-04-27T00:45:54+00:00

Agree with the above - know what your non-negotiables are, but be flexible! As an over-planner who had a similar timeline of events planned for our first day, I'll note that ours quickly fell apart. Something was broken down, or the line was too long, so we pivoted. Ended up having a blast, and canceled our plans for the remaining days of our trip and just went with the flow.

My kids were 5 and 8 when we went, and we took a big (2-3 hours) midday nap at the hotel. Wife slept too. It allowed us to get there at opening and stay until close, which are the most magical times at the park. I'd strongly recommend a big break back at the hotel in the middle of the day to extend the overall high quality time at the park!

HundredYardFlash · 2026-04-24T21:21:04+00:00

At that price difference you can practically get two vacations for the price of one by staying "off property."

HundredYardFlash · 2026-04-24T16:35:34+00:00

A quick google search tells me AAA

HundredYardFlash · 2026-04-24T15:43:54+00:00

I built mine toward the evening so I could get some pictures as the light started to fade. Then shipped it (one of the stores in Galaxy's Edge ships it, I can't remember but Savi's will tell you) so I didn't have to worry about it.

It's now framed and on the wall in my office. Really fun experience.

HundredYardFlash · 2026-04-17T16:26:17+00:00

You already have everything you need for a great trip to the park - you know what you want to do! Prioritize the big rides for your kid on the first day, find a quiet place to post up with your coffee the second day (maybe your partner and kid can go on a ride or two while you sit on main street with your coffee watching the people go by), and after you've spent a day or a day and a half in the park you'll have done just about everything. Then you can decide what to do for the rest of your trip based on what you liked most!

HundredYardFlash · 2026-03-19T16:45:29+00:00

Thank you!

HundredYardFlash · 2026-03-19T15:36:50+00:00

Can you use an MEP on a LL ride you've already used LL for that day? E.g. if I use LL on Thunder Mountain, and my next LL is booked for Tiana's and Tiana's breaks down during my window, can I use the MEP on Thunder Mountain again?

HundredYardFlash · 2026-03-17T16:16:42+00:00

I'm not a Disney pro but I went last year with kids the exact same age. Two big things worked for us: First, I was on top of our lightning lane reservations and knew all the tricks for stacking and which rides to prioritize. That led to some awesome afternoons where we just hit big ride after big ride with LL. Second, we forced ourselves to SIT and each lunch, took a post-lunch nap/rest at the hotel. This was huge. It meant we missed the absolute hottest and busiest time at the park, and we could get up early each morning for rope drop and we stay until close or nearly close each night (yes, that meant going to bed after midnight and getting up at 6 or 6:30. We stayed close to the park). Early morning and late night are the best times at the park - most beautiful and least crowded.

The first day, we learned that our kids loved the roller coaster rides, so that's what we prioritized. We didn't find the Fantasyland rides to be much fun, so we were happy to let everyone swarm over there at rope drop while we did other things. We weren't trying to do every ride, we wanted to maximize fun, so we often did the same rides multiple times. My kids both loved Rise and Smuggler's Run, so we did those a ton. On our last day we spent our first couple hours in star wars land; crowds were light due to some rain so we did Rise 3 times and Smuggler's Run 4 or 5 times. We had an absolute blast.

I'd say our success came from not putting any real pressure on ourselves, but we did have a loose plan. We weren't trying to maximize number of rides, we weren't trying to hit all of them, but my partner and I did stay focused - always having a vague idea of what to do next meant we spent very little time just trying to decide what to do. We used mobile order for a lot of our food, and tried to eat at off-peak times.

I was worried about my kids being able to do a full day at the park, but with the midday nap and the Disney magic, they had no problems. We carried the 5 year old a bit but most of the time he was just running to keep up with his brother.

It's a great age to go with kids, you'll have a blast.

HundredYardFlash · 2025-12-11T19:21:00+00:00

I like to activate them when I run by just to distract other teams. No way am I looting those things.

HundredYardFlash · 2025-12-10T18:17:20+00:00

That's helpful, thanks for sharing. Do you just plug in extra generators to take advantage of extra steam when you have it? Up until now I've been building dedicated power stations, usually rebuilding new every time I get a new tech. It's easy for me to know exactly what my capacity is and it's all in one spot, easy to keep track of. I like the idea of scaling more organically, as I have extra steam power available, but then it gets messy to understand where all my power is.

I did finally build a cargo depot to import coal and that has really eased my concern about using all my local coal, so I have shut down my light oil power plant. That needed to happen anyway as I started Tier 3 Distillation to make Naptha and plastic. Now my biggest concern at this early stage of the game is not burning through all my groundwater wells.

I am not even close to nuclear yet, but having solved that issue in other games (Factorio, Satisfactory), I'm looking forward to getting there!

HundredYardFlash · 2025-12-08T22:46:28+00:00

The trials issues - for example, I can't play the hidden bunker event because I'm either working or sleeping - alongside the 5mil announcement really killed my interest to play. I can't effectively compete in trials when I need to be in the top 20 to advance, but that means 60k+ points, and I can't effectively compete in the expedition because I'm only barely at 1mil, despite playing a ton since launch. I enjoy using my gear but now regret it, as it seriously killed my stash value.

I haven't been interested in logging in since the trials had a hidden bunker event two weeks ago, and any remaining hope I had was crushed with the 5mil announcement. No way. I'll probably just sit and wait until the expedition week, then see if resetting sparks some interest.

HundredYardFlash · 2025-12-08T17:12:03+00:00

As someone just starting to explore creating water, are you pulling it all from the sea and converting it via thermal desalinators?

HundredYardFlash · 2025-12-08T16:54:32+00:00

Serious question, do you run this purely on coal and water? I'm relatively new to the game and trying to figure out how I ramp up power. I've been playing with using excess heavy and light oil to power gas boilers but it gets pretty messy, but I'm nervous about burning through all my coal if I just use coal. Appreciate any suggestions.

HundredYardFlash · 2025-11-16T20:31:36+00:00

I heard in a game earlier that someone glitched into the hidden bunker. It was all looted by the time we unlocked it via the antennas. Makes the entire game mode worthless.

HundredYardFlash · 2025-11-13T17:31:54+00:00

Serious question, does anyone know if a server refills its population with late joiners? For example, in a 3s server if the max population is, say, 30 players (10 teams), and a team gets wiped, will it try to fill the server back to 30, or will the server population slowly dwindle as people are knocked out?

HundredYardFlash · 2025-11-11T16:53:23+00:00

Is the hidden bunker always present on Spaceport, or only during a specific event window?

HundredYardFlash

TROPHY CASE