Planning a Walt Disney World trip means booking in the right order, on the right days, with prices that change by date. Miss a window and the restaurant or the ride you planned the day around is simply gone. This page gives you the windows and a filled sample budget, free. The bundle is the same planning with your dates, your party, and your prices in it.
Unofficial guide. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Disney. Names are used only to identify the place and products being planned for.
The windows, free
The dates that decide the trip
- Dining reservations open 60 days out. The hard to get tables go in the first mornings of that window, which is why the workbook counts down from your arrival date instead of leaving you to count backwards.
- Lightning Lane opens 7 days ahead for resort guests, 3 days for everyone else. That gap is one of the real perks of staying on site, and one of the inputs in the on site versus off site decision.
- Ticket, hotel, dining, and Lightning Lane prices are dynamic. They vary by date and park. Any fixed price anyone quotes you for your dates, including us, is an example. The bundle treats them that way everywhere: labeled examples and ranges in the guide, your own entries in the workbook.
The free worked example
What a filled budget looks like
The workbook ships with a filled sample plan so you can see the machinery working before you trust it with your trip. Its budget, for the sample party and dates:
- Tickets: $2,280
- Hotel: $1,710
- Dining: $1,050
- Lightning Lane: $324
- Transport: $250
- Total: $5,614, which is $1,403.50 per person.
Your trip will price differently, because your dates decide the prices. The workbook's job is to take the numbers the official app gives you for your dates and keep the total honest as you trade a hotel night against a park day against a dining plan.
Florida, beyond the parks. The sample plan in the bundle is five park days; most families we hear from wish they had planned the days around them too. Photo: Jonjon, via Pexels.
What is inside
The guide, the workbook, the cheat sheet
The guide, 27 pages. How a trip actually gets booked, in order. The full timeline with its booking windows. On site versus off site hotels and what the perks actually are. Base tickets versus Park Hopper versus Park Hopper Plus, with the days math. Four park quick guides, one per park (Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom), each with its Lightning Lane tier groups and rope drop logic. A full Lightning Lane chapter covering Multi Pass, Single Pass, and Premier Pass, including the limits. Dining reservations and how dining plans work. And a filled 5 day sample plan.
The workbook, 11 tabs, all formulas live. Cover. Budget Calculator. Trip Timeline, counting down from your arrival date. Hotel Decision. Ticket Decision. Four park day planners, one per park. Dining Planner. And the Sample 5-Day Plan, pre-filled.
The Lightning Lane cheat sheet, 1 page. The tier lists, both booking windows, and the order of attack on a single page, with space to write in your own dates' prices from the app.
From our shelf
Disney World Planning Bundle
$16.99 · 2026-27 planning edition
The windows above are the trip's skeleton. The bundle is the skeleton with your trip on it: the guide for the order and the reasoning, the workbook for your budget and your countdowns, and the cheat sheet for your pocket on the day.
Get the Disney World bundle, $16.99
Delivered as three files: the guide, the workbook, and the cheat sheet. Travel agents may use it as a planning handout for their own clients.
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The standard behind this page
This is a dated edition. Rules were verified on October 15, 2026 against official Walt Disney World pages, and rules change; verify in the official app before you book. There is no promise of perpetual or free future updates, here or in the product. Lightning Lane does not guarantee you skip every line, and the guide says so plainly: availability is limited, popular picks sell out, and standby remains an option for most rides.
An independent planner from Summit and Spur, a publication of Oasis Investing LLC. Unofficial: not affiliated with or endorsed by Disney. This page is our own first recommendation, not an independent review: the bundle it points to is ours, made by Summit and Spur and sold on Gumroad.