As a blogger, I may be compensated in some way (either pay, product, or experience) for sharing the post below All opinions are my own. ~Heidi
Welcome to those of you joining me from
Capturing Magical Memories and those of you just hopping aboard.
I am the 4th stop on our Magical Blogorail.
I’m honored for the opportunity to join my friends on
Magical Blogorail TEAL this month.
We’re talking about Planning Our Disney Park Adventures . . .
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I am a confessed Disney Planning Freak, and I’ve said it a million times on my blog. I’m always planning a Disney trip – I start when we return home from one, planning for the next one. I plan which parks to visit on which days, what we want to see and do in each park, etc. On this last trip, we took advantage of the Disney Dining Plan for the first time, so it was fun to be able to plan a full week’s worth of meals, rather than just one or two. I even planned what snacks we wanted to try. I often go armed with lists of pictures I want to remember to take as well. My daughter Gracie went with a Hidden Mickey plan (which I posted about in a previous Magical Blogorail loop).
But today, I want to talk about something different — planning our Disney wardrobe! That may sound silly to some of you; but, yes, I’m that crazy!
One of the first things we do when we’re planning our next trip, is to look at park hours and estimated crowds to determine which parks would be best to visit on which days. If you’re staying on Disney property and you do this, another thing to take into consideration is Extra Magic Hours – some want to go on those days, some want to avoid them due to crowds – it’s a personal choice!
Once I determined which parks we’d be visiting, I decided to plan (and create) a different shirt for us to wear each day. I’d like to tell you a bit about the inspiration behind our wardrobe, and how I planned and executed it . . .
Day 1 – Epcot
I wanted to create something for us that would reflect the diversity of World Showcase (and our family). So, I got the idea to create t-shirts using material containing flags of the world. The search for said material was not an easy one, but I finally found exactly what I was looking for on e-bay. (Unfortunately, it seems this is a discontinued material, so these shirts may very well be 5 of a kind!)
I made templates of Mickey heads using basic household objects (think bowls and cups) in various sizes. I used adhesive backing to iron the designs onto the shirts, then sewed around them using a zig-zag stitch.
We got tons of compliments on these shirts, and lots of people asked where they could buy them. Disney needs to steal my idea and market these – just sayin’. . .
Day 2 – Hollywood Studios
For years, I’d been seeing the tie-dye Mickey shirts and finally got up the nerve to try them.
These take a lot of work and I was not entirely thrilled with this first attempt. I thought I made the Mickey heads too large.
Day 3 – this was our “Free Day” where we went our separate ways, so we did not dress alike that day.
Day 4 – Magic Kingdom
I confess, I didn’t make our shirts for this day, but we did dress alike. I had won 3 t-shirts from my friend Jodi at Magical Mouse Schoolhouse, and she sweetly blessed us with 2 more!
We decided on tie-dye for us girls, while the boys had solid red. These shirts also generated us lots of compliments – and some questions too (which was fun!)
Day 5 – Animal Kingdom
These shirts were inspired by some that I found on Etsy. I had one of those “I could do that!” moments. Not only is it a lot cheaper to create your own; but there’s something about the sense of accomplishment you feel when you do it yourself. The compliments help too!
These shirts started out as basic black tees. We did the Mickey heads (just like on our Epcot shirts above) with an animal print material we found at Walmart. Then, we put another layer on it – in a tan print – with our first initials.
The only problem with these shirts was that people would try to “read” our shirts, thinking that it spelled something out. LOL I really liked how they turned out though!
Day 6
This was a park-hopping day, so we planned to wear our 2nd tie-dye shirts. We ended up spending the majority of our time at Epcot, with a brief visit to Magic Kingdom.
I liked the end result of these much better. Doing the Mickey head smaller – and in black – really seemed to set it off more. And, I liked the 3 colors, as opposed to the 2 we used on the other shirts.
While browsing a shop in World Showcase, though, we ran into another family dressed eerily similar to us. It was funny! I wish I would have thought to get a picture!
Day 7
This was to be another day of park-hopping, but we ended up deciding that we were simply too tired to brave the parks again and wanted a more relaxing day instead. So we did some resort-hopping. We ended our day with dinner at ‘Ohana at the Polynesian. A sweet CM offered to take our picture.
These t-shirts were a twist on the swirly head Mickey shirts we’ve done in the past. We started with red tees. I used Elmer’s Glue to put on the swirly head pattern. I put our leftover black dye in a spray bottle. After the glue was dried, I sprayed the black dye all around the design and waited a few days for that to dry. A trip through the washing machine gets rid of the glue – and this is the effect you’re left with. Pretty fun!
Will we do this again? You bet! Here’s why:
- Planning ahead with what we were going to wear each day made packing a breeze (in fact, most of our shirts were packed months in advance!)
- It also made getting ready each day a much quicker process. There was no deciding “what should I wear today?” and we even laid out our clothes the night before – so it really cut down on our morning routine.
- While I hadn’t really thought of this ahead of time, it made finding each other so much simpler! So, if we decided to split up and meet again at a later time, we could spot each other easily. And, it was a safety feature – especially for Ian who’s somewhat of a whirlwind at times.
- It made for some great photo ops! I’m sure at least one of these family photos will be making an appearance on our Christmas cards this year. And many more of them will go in our album and picture frames.
- It was a fun thing to work on together as a family.
- And, it generated lots of attention – both from Cast Members and from other guests. It sparked lots of great conversations, and lasting memories!
Do you plan your Disney wardrobe? If so, I’d love to hear about it!
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Thank you for joining me today.
Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail Loop is YourFirstVisit.Net.
Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail should you happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to reboard:
1st Stop ~ The DisneyFAITHful
2nd Stop ~ The Many Adventures of a Disney-Lovin’ Spectrum Mom
3rd Stop ~ Capturing Magical Memories
4th Stop ~ Heidi’s Head (* you are here!)
Final Stop ~ YourFirstVisit.Net
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