Planning your 2016 Walt Disney World trip can be intimidating for first-time visitors. This guide provides free tips & tricks to save money and time, avoid crowds, choose where to eat, which rides to do, and fully plan your Disney itinerary. If you’re being sucked into the rabbit hole of vacation planning, our 2016 Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide is here to help…or perhaps drag you deeper into the rabbit hole. Think of it as Disney 101, with all of the basics organized into the 10 most important aspects of Walt Disney World vacation planning. The information here is updated regularly (last update: March 27, 2016), so you can be sure that none of the information here is stale.

As complicated as planning might seem right now, the ultimate payoff is worth it. Many first-time visitors don’t realize Walt Disney World is such a complicated place until they arrive, and they are then overwhelmed. The commercials make it look like a carefree world where everyone skips around carefree, holding hands with Mickey Mouse, doing all of the best rides without any problems…but that’s definitely not the reality. You need to plan.

Even after dozens of trips to Walt Disney World, we still don’t know everything there is to know, but this post contains what we do know (most stuff…not the ultra-nerdy details like which drinking fountains are coldest). While we are fans, we don’t see the world through rose colored glasses, and we try to stay as objective as possible here, sharing the good and the bad of Walt Disney World, and all of the pros and cons. If that’s not for you, there are plenty of other planning sites that offer only positive or only negative spins on Disney.