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| Written By Jenn Schoemer, Project Manager at Rockton Software |
ADJECTIVE
1. reviewing past: looking back over things in the past
2. applying to past events: applying to things that have happened in the past as well as the present
Here at Rockton www.rocktonsoftware.com, retrospectives have become a normal part of our business and development process, so I only found it fitting to apply it to my recent travels to Walt Disney World.
For years I’ve been traveling solo, so I think I just slip into auto-pilot and go through motions. But when we had the opportunity to take my husband and two oldest children along with me to Disney World for the Rockton Retreat, I jumped at it. However, I have to say I was a little nervous it would throw me off my traveling game.
We did a little planning by asking friends and Disney veterans a ton of questions, and I don’t think we did too bad for our first run. The kids loved it so much. They were a little heartbroken that we didn’t bring their baby sister, who is two years old, so they are already busy planning our next trip.
I found it fitting to do a retrospective of our trip, so when the time comes to go to Disney World, again, our planning is not fogged by the years, and we are able to learn from our first trip.
At Rockton, to start our retrospectives, we make two lists—pluses and deltas. The pluses are everything we loved, would do again, and would recommend to others. The deltas are the things we would like to change or would not recommend to another person.
Pluses:
- Plan, plan and plan some more - We had a general plan of which park we would go to each day, and then each night we would list out which rides and attractions we were going to go to. We used the ‘PassPorter’s’ Disney travel book. They had a great itinerary for each park. One for if you were traveling with kids and another for just adults. We would use this as a guideline and make modifications based on what we wanted to make sure to see.
- Advice – Ask others. We got a lot of great information from friends and Disney veterans. We were lucky that our sources had kids who were similar in age to ours.
- PhotoPass
- Park Hopper passes
- Fastpasses – A must. If there are rides you know you will want to go on multiple times one idea is to get a fastpass for the ride, get in line, ride the ride, and then go back and ride it again.
- Stay on property – if you can swing it, stay on property. Here are a few benefits we found from staying on property:
- Magic hours – where the park is open early or later for guests staying on property. We benefitted from this a few times. One we were able to sign our son up for Jedi Training (Hollywood Studios), get fast passes to some of the very popular rides (rides which normally have 1 -3 hr. wait times,) and walked on to other rides because the park was closed to other guests.
- Disney Magic Express (DME) – LOVED this! This service picks you up at the airport and brings you to your hotel. We didn’t have to worry about getting our bags when we arrived in Orlando. Instead the DME picked up our bags and brought them to our room. When we headed home we were able to check our bags at the DME curbside check-in right at the hotel and didn’t have to worry about checking them ourselves at the airport. This was a HUGE help when traveling with kids.
- Your room card doubles as a credit card – We didn’t have to carry around extra cards because we always knew we would be able to charge purchases back to our room if we needed/wanted to.
- Parking – we didn’t have the added expense or worry about parking
- Groceries - We had groceries delivered right to the hotel via Garden Grocer. We ordered things like, yogurt, cheese, lunch meat, Peanut butter, jelly, crackers, bread, trail mix and water. All things which could be used for a meal or a snack.
- Snacks – We brought snacks and water into the parks. This doubled as a money and a time saver.
- Backpack/cooler/water bottles – We brought a soft-sided cooler and ice packs with us in our backpack.
- Phone Apps – Disney Magic or Disney Wait times worked great for us
- Daily allowance/Budget – We set a daily allowance for what each child could spend. This helped reduce them asking for everything under the sun and made them really think about what they wanted to buy. We also had an overall daily budget. I have to say bringing snacks and water into the park helped us spend less than half of what we budgeted.
- Disney apparel – Buying Disney apparel and even souvenirs where a ton cheaper online. We bought the kids shirts, pjs and a few other Disney items before we even left and brought them with us.
- Stroller rental
- Shows - We loved all the shows we were able to catch. Originally, we focused on hitting the nightly shows, which are must sees. My daughter and I took in a Beauty and the Beast show at Hollywood Studios that ended up being a great little break in our day and very entertaining.
- Jedi Training – If you have a Star Wars fan this is a must. Hollywood Studios offers training but you have to sign up. They offer a set number of show/training times. Here is one time where the Magic hours saved us. The park opened at 9:00am, Magic hours started at 8:00am, we were in line at 8:30ish and the soonest we could get our son in as the 2:00pm show. We also lucked out and got some great pictures of the training because of our pre-purchased PhotoPass.
- Epcot – Epcot was a great park to hit all the character spots for us. Given the ages of our children—six and four years old—we had a much smaller laundry list of attractions to hit at Epcot. So taking advantage of seeing the characters here was great!
Deltas:
- Stay longer – We only had 4 day, next time we will be going for no less than a week.
- Travel day - Do not try to squeeze in an entire park the first day or night you get there. Instead either go to the pool, Downtown Disney, or try hitting one of the evening shows at one of the parks.
- Dining Reservations – Make these at least 3 months in advance or more if you can. For us I’m going to find a few places we really want to go to, not necessarily every day or night, but at least the places we really want to make sure to go to.
- Multiple Days per Park – Make sure we have at least two days to go to the Magic Kingdom or the parks important to you.
- Sea World – Make sure there is time to go to Sea World.
- Be flexible – Have some flexibility to change your schedule or make adjustments for weather/crowd size and other situations that might pop-up.
- Go to Cinderella’s castle – Believe it or not, we admired the castle from a far, but we never went right up to it.
- Transportation – Plan extra time for transportation, it always takes longer than we planned for.
- Rain gear – Bring it!
- Break – My husband, and many others I talk to, said he or they would plan breaks mid-day to take naps and then head back to the park. I’m a wake up and don’t-stop-until- you-drop kind of girl, so I will still need to think implementing this one.
Doing a retrospective will tremendously help our next vacation there, so we don’t make the same mistakes twice. This is why we implemented it at Rockton; retrospectives help us, here at Rockton, keep on track with our daily work, as well as major projects.
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