It’s been a little quiet here on the Neat & Pretty front.  My three kids ended their school year and we immediately left for Disney World for a family vacation.  We went with my mother in law to celebrate my father in law who passed away in July of 2013.   He asked us to take the children to Disney for him instead of a big funeral.  He wanted to take them and never had the chance.  It was an amazing trip with beautiful weather.  My husband and I had been once on a short trip to the Magic Kingdom but we had never taken our children before.  I was glad they were older, able to ride all the rides, able to walk and I didn’t need to carry around a diaper bag.  Boy did planning a trip to Disney take a lot of organization.  Thankfully I hired some friends over at Global Escapes Travel to help us out with our planning.  I felt like I was planning a wedding!  First you have to pick (very carefully) your dates for your trip.  Then you have to decide on your location (for your hotel).  All of this must be decided way before you plan to travel so that you get the best rates and have the most availability.  Then you get to plan your event…you plan what parks you want to go to, if you want to go to more than one park a day and will therefore need “park hopper” passes.  Then you decide on your food.  Here I am planning out food for 3 months from now when I barely know what I want to have for dinner!  You decide if you want to be on the dining plan or not and THEN you decide which dining plan you would like.  And then…you’re still not done.  You then get to plan out your fast passes….the tickets that let you skip the long line and go right ahead, feeling like royalty, to the front of the line.  You only get a few per day so you need to really pick wisely.  I was so grateful that I didn’t have to do it all along.  My travel agent guided me on picking the right resort, the right restaurants and the  right fast pass picks.  It truly was a magical trip….once we were there.  The planning was enough to make me run away before we ever left though.  Now that we have been, I definitely think planning another trip would be much simpler.  Ultimately the lesson I learned is that it pays to have someone holding your hand and helping you when you’re in unfamiliar territory.  Have you planned a big trip to Disney?  Are you a pro Disney trip planner or a scared newbie like I was?