1) Plastic baggies of various sizes. USED THEM! A lot. We had clothes that needed to be rinsed out when we were out and about, and a couple of times had a left-over cookie (about which I forgot and which then got pulverized in my bag) or other snacks. Every day, I had two each of the gallon, quart, and sandwich-sized bags, and I used many. Just replenished at night at the hotel. Oh, we also used them for disposing of wipes (which we use, because it's easier to get a kid clean with wet wipes than just TP) so as not to stink up the hotel room. Recommend.
2) Ponchos. DID NOT USE. It rained every single day on our trip, the majority of which were when we were in the park and running around. Many people put on ponchos, wore them for 20 minutes, and then either had to stow them or toss them. I'd gotten very inexpensive disposable ones, because I didn't want to have to deal with folding them up and trying to tote them after if we did use them, but we did not. We actually left them in the hotel room because we ran out of room in our luggage. I hope someone was able to use them rather than their just getting tossed. Unless you're going when all day rain or severe storms are expected, don't bother. What we DID find useful...
3) Compact traveling umbrellas. USED! We each had these umbrellas that come in what looks like a glasses case. These aren't huge, but they'll keep your head and shoulders dry, and they dry out very quickly after use. They were easier to access and utilize, then stow again, than the ponchos would have been. Plus, you always get wet when you take a poncho off, right? The umbrella would also have been good to keep the scorching sun off, if you're there and not pushing a stroller. Now, I have one in my purse and one in my car for unexpected weather events. Recommend!
4) Portable phone chargers. DID NOT USE. I know, I know. "Everyone" says that your phone battery WILL die when you're in the middle of a Disney day. Mine never did. James's sputtered after he'd put it into a waterproof bag during the rain, and I think it overheated. But in terms of use, we just didn't use our phones enough to kill the battery on any day. I only got below 50 percent the day our a/c went out and I was using the Messenger app and texting a whole lot. I DID use My Disney Experience, and opened it often to check or change or add plans. But I shut it down when I wasn't using it, so it wouldn't run in the background and drain the battery. I also had all apps closed, including Messenger, for the same reason. I wasn't posting to social media or taking pictures with my camera in the park, so pretty much used it as a clock and for planning. We never waited in lines long enough to utilize Play, and we didn't do Agent P's in Epcot, then we were never in the parks more than about 7 hours on any given day, so we just did not need to recharge until we were back at the resort. We both have our chargers now, which might prove useful in the future. But we just did not need them at all when traveling. I certainly can see how you might, if you have a good phone camera and use it, plus post to Instagram, plus just leave the MDE app open and habitually turn to your phone in down times, etc. So use your judgement on this one.
5) Quarters and pennies for pressed penny machines. Sadly, DID NOT USE. My first kid would have blown through all $20 in quarters that I'd brought, but this kid was not too into the whole thing. He chose maybe 2 or 3 the whole trip. And you know what? When you have rolls of change in your carry-on luggage, the TSA's equipment can't tell what it is, and you have to let them go through your bag. Then when you don't use the change so you still have it at the end of your trip, they check it again! My purse is really heavy now. I suppose I could go to the bank and get paper money, but I never have change for the carhop at Sonic, so I guess I'll hold on to it.
6) My Disney Experience. USED A WHOLE LOT. Guys, I get that some people aren't planners. But I can only imagine that it's very difficult to tour Disney with a small child without at least a little bit of a road map. We used it a lot in the parks, to help us find bathrooms and such, and also to make new FastPasses and to verify times when we'd set other stuff up. But I used it and the Disney website at length before the trip. We'd set our dining reservations the day we were able to (180 days in advance) and, though I changed several around at the last minute, we could not have gotten in to Be Our Guest if I hadn't. And Tusker House was full fairly far out. We also set the maximum number of FastPasses we were allotted 60 days in advance. Flight of Passage, Na'vi River Journey (which, to my surprise, was 115 minutes compared to FoP's 75 minute wait), and Slinky Dog Dash would have been impossible without the FastPasses, because I don't wait in lines for more than 20 minutes. Furthermore, we saw people on the elevators heading down to the pool who didn't realize our pool was under renovation until they got there. We talked to another family on the pool shuttle to the other side of the resort who said the same thing. I can't imagine not having that information before leaving, just to mentally prepare and have a plan. Disney gives you tools to help make your trip easier. I recommend using them!
Also, there were a lot of FastPasses we let lapse without using, because Mal wasn't up for it, or we didn't feel like whatever it was going to take to get there. One time, it panned out really well for us. I had made a FastPass for Goofy's Barnstormer, an exceptionally short kiddie coaster in Fantasyland, the night of the Halloween party. But we knew by then that Mal was not going to be ready for ANY coaster rides on this trip. Turns out they had to close it due to weather, and they gave us an "open" FastPass for anything from 5:30 PM until 9:00 PM that day or the next. I didn't see the free pass until much later, but we were able to use it to ride Test Track the next day, after having made our Tier 1 FastPass for Soarin' (you can only make advance passes for one of those two). So if you think, "I only need two at this park," just make one for the heck of it.
7) Another app I'd used before the trip, in conjunction with the website, was Lines by Touring Plans. My Touring Plans subscription really helped me decide when to go for sure, what days to hit which park, and to lay the foundation of how we'd make our way around the parks, by giving me an idea of how long it takes to walk from here to there, how long they expect the waits will be, and then how long the experience lasts. There's an app you can use to update plans in the park and to check actual wait times (which vary from posted wait times because Disney uses the wait times to direct traffic flow just as much as it does to kind of give you an idea how long you might have to wait). Well, after the second day, I deleted the Lines app from my phone. Once you had completed a step in your plan, you click "done" and it moves it off of the top, going on to the next item. OH MY GOSH, it takes forever to do that. Like 10 seconds or so. Which sounds like a petty grips, but when I'm trying to do it on the fly, and we've done 8 of the things... I really don't feel like waiting for my app to process everything. Definitely recommend the website and yearlong subscription. Maybe have the app for an outline of your plans, since MDE only has the FastPasses and meals? But I wouldn't plan on it helping too much in the parks, unless I was doing something wrong or had crappy hardware (it's a ZTE Axon, but other apps function fine on it).
8) Wipes. Yep, USED THEM. Ever since D was too old to need wet wipes for cleaning up after toileting so I didn't carry them anymore and then a pigeon pooped on D's dad's shoulder while we were waiting for the San Antonio River Walk boat to fill up so we could take off and a lady on-board with us had a wipe to give, I've thought that wipes are just a good idea to carry around, anyway. And with snacks like cotton candy and super melting Done Whips, wipes are a lot better than dry napkins. Recommend!
BONUS: I don't know whether this is on any lists, but we also utilized and loved the packing bags that act like vacuum bags, but you don't need a vacuum, you just press the air out with your weight. I suppose it helped us fit more into our small bags, but even if it didn't, I was able to organize clothes by days so unpacked several days at a time as we needed clothes and then pulled more out as we freed up hangers. Also, in case anyone had needed to go through our checked luggage, we wouldn't have had any cases of a pair of underwear falling out and getting left behind, or caught in the zipper, or anything. Maybe they did go through our bags. I have no idea. It was all tidy when we opened them.
BONUS THOUGHT ON THE DINING PLAN: As I mentioned, we got the dining plan for "free" ($300ish upgrade to make our park tickets Park Hoppers, which we never used) and, in that case, it was well worth it. There was a 25% discount on our room at the time, too, but financially, taking advantage of the free dining made more sense. Whether it makes sense to purchase the dining plan when it's not offered gratis (and rumors are that the gifting times are almost over) depends on several things. For instance, we had a table service meal for every night of our stay, or the equivalent as we skipped one day but ate at Jiko, which uses 2 table service credits as it's considered Signature Dining. In every case but the one I just mentioned, the tab for the three of us usually came to right at $140-150 before tip. The dining plan is roughly $75 per adult and $25 right now, and assuming the we ate other food throughout the day, it seems like, yeah, we'd easily spend $180 per day on food.
However, with the dining plan, you can get specialty drinks and, on table service meals, dessert. James might have splurged on a neat cider or something, but while I enjoyed the beverages I got, if we'd been paying out of pocket, I would have just ordered soda. Also, given how our child is about eating, there likely would have been several meal times when we would not have ordered him anything at all. And we were always full, so likely would only ever have eaten desserts as a snack, never to end a meal. So, on our own dime, we actually would not have spent quite so much on food. It was fun not to worry about how much a dish cost, and just go for it, though, so I can see the benefit of that. For our family, though, I would not purchase the dining plan. It was super fun stocking up on goodies to bring home at the end of the week when we hadn't used a bunch of credits, though!
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