Planning for a WDW vacation is intense. There are 4 parks, they're all spread out, if you want to eat at a specific place and time...you should probably book reservations 6 months in advance.
Disneyland? It's a totally different animal. There are 2 parks, they're so close you could throw a football between the two of them, and there's really no great need to book reservations more than a few days in advance (if that!)
With that in mind, we really haven't done that much planning for our trip. As I mentioned in my last post, it's just not needed!
Yesterday my Mom stopped by for lunch, so I took advantage of that and made our dining reservations in case a time wasn't available. Turns out that wasn't needed. We had our pick of times! So we booked 3 things: Napa Rose for her birthday (Monday of our trip), a late lunch at Carthay Circle to take advantage of the World of Color package (Wednesday), and breakfast at Storyteller's before we caught the shuttle back to the airport. We're planning on checking out somewhere in Downtown Disney for dinner on the night we get in. If anyone reading has any suggestions, we're open to hear them!
The biggest thing now is trying to figure out our plan of attack for Cars Land. Since we're not staying on property, we won't have Early Entrance tickets to California Adventure. For this year, Disney is offering an extra hour in the mornings to Annual Pass holders (you need to sign up ahead of time) and hotel guests....every single morning it's one or the other. Which means the general public (us) is an hour behind every day. The good news is that we're early risers and have 4 days to figure it out!
The next thing we'll be watching for is park hours. They're released about 6 weeks ahead of time, so we should be seeing them soon!