Everything you've ever wanted to know about visiting Disney…

My first suggestion is that you really need to buy one of those "behind the scenes" books before you go. They are incredibly helpful.  I read three different ones before going and I believe our great trip was due to those books.  I was able to plan our days easily and made sure we didn't wait in too long of lines. I think the longest wait was maybe 20 mins for the Dumbo ride.

You can read up on the specific parks by visiting the child pages.

Character sightings… I think it used to be that when Mickey or Goofy appeared, they would get over taken by kids and people wanting their photos with them. Now, they appear at scheduled times and there are lines.  And sometimes, they don't stick around very long.  But if you're lucky, you'll happen upon one of the "Character" places where they are just standing around waiting for people to show up.  This happened two or three times and because of that, Petunia got her photo with just about every character she wanted.  That's a long list….  Even cooler is that they give you a photo pass.  You carry this with you and it has a barcode on it.  They take a photo and then scan that barcode and in about 12 hours or so, it shows up online for you to see, share, and, of course in good Disney fashion, purchase.  They aren't cheap but sometimes they are better than what you can get with your own camera. And in our case, we had a full family one done and its awesome and we had no one to take one for us – so of course I'll be ordering it.  I think the technology behind that is way cool.