907: Top Ten Things We’d Tell Our First-Time Selves

Main Street Magic - A Walt Disney World Podcast

Hosts Jeremy and Rhonda share ten essential pieces of advice for navigating Walt Disney World vacations, focusing on mindset over rigid logi

Key takeaways

• Avoid letting an uncompleted checklist determine the success of your vacation.
• Invest in high-quality walking shoes like Hokas to prevent foot pain during long park days.

Main topics

• Disney Vacation Planning
• Managing Expectations

Notable quotes

Don't determine the success of your vacation based on a checklist that you made ahead of time.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a guide for both novice and veteran Disney trave

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) On this episode, we're sharing the top 10 things we'd tell our first-time Disney selves, from pacing our park days to letting go of that impossible do-everything checklist. Today's September 25th, 2026. This is episode 907 of the Main Street Magic podcast. Speaker 3 (0:15) Jeremy and Rhonda are more than a little fond of Disney World, so they made this podcast to share it all with you. Reports and resorts, top ten lists of all sorts, Main Street Magic's bringing it home for you. Speaker 1 (0:32) Hello and welcome to another episode of Main Street Magic. I'm your host, Jeremy Stein, and as always, I'm joined by my lovely wife, Rhonda. Hey, guys. Don't forget to follow us on all your favorite social platforms at MainSTMagic. And be sure to sign up for our free email newsletter at MainSTMagic.com so you never miss the latest Disney news, podcast episodes, vacation tips, and more. Looking for your next favorite Disney shirt? Check out our newest designs and collections at MainStreetShirts.com. And if you're planning your next Disney vacation, Our friends at MEI Travel offer completely free vacation planning services so you can focus on making magical memories. Visit mainstmagic.com forward slash travel for a fee-free, no obligation quote today. If you need help snagging that hard-to-get dining reservation, Mouse Dining keeps watch and alerts you when your reservation becomes available. You can start for free at msmfriends.com. And if you want even more Main Street Magic, Join Wonderland Crew on Patreon for bonus episodes, exclusive content, live streams, discounts, and an amazing Disney community. Join today at wonderlandcrew.com. Now before we jump in, don't forget to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss a brand new episode every Tuesday and Friday. Speaker 2 (1:46) Hello everyone. How's everyone doing today? Speaker 1 (1:52) Jeremy Speaker 2 (1:52) includes you. Speaker 1 (1:53) Yeah. I didn't know you were including me. Speaker 2 (1:55) Thanks for giving everybody else a chance to say good. I wanted them Speaker 1 (1:57) to. I figure that everybody yells at their headphones or their radio or whatever. I would. You know, I'd be interested. I know that I can. I think I can look at. Speaker 1 (2:08) stats obviously that show you know obviously where people listen from like what app they listen from or you know most it'll tell you like if it's from the phone or computer but yeah i wonder how many people listen based on headphones or like over a speaker like in their vehicle you know like how many what percentage of people have headphones who are just in their head because I'm sorry. I Speaker 2 (2:30) still Speaker 1 (2:30) would say good or I might be like not very good today. I think it's a pretty high one. I mean, people, you know, it's a pretty high number of people are like exercising on their walk. I've had people say, you know, they exercise or like they do yard work, which we did this morning. And my arms are tired now. Mine too. I got Speaker 2 (2:47) to get my ab machine off of. Speaker 1 (2:49) My hands hurt from picking weeds. Oh my God. Speaker 2 (2:52) You can't see. Listen, there was a. statistic out. I don't know how to say that word. And we have to keep our muscles or by the time we're like 60, we're going to be Speaker 1 (3:05) like decrepit. Yeah, literally. Well then, but good. I'm glad I was out there weeding and all. Speaker 2 (3:10) And if you Speaker 1 (3:11) think your arms are tired now, they're really going to be tired tomorrow when you fly to Atlanta. Speaker 2 (3:16) I'm not flying like with my arms, weirdo. Speaker 1 (3:19) Yeah. Wasn't that the old joke? Speaker 2 (3:21) I Speaker 1 (3:21) just took a flight. Boy, are my arms tired. Yeah, it'd be like I just flew in from Jacksonville. Boy, are my arms tired. But yeah, we're going for a quick trip to Atlanta. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited. We're going to see Cameron Whitcomb, one of my favorite artists. He is. His genre is rock artist. Speaker 2 (3:39) Country. Canadian country. Alternative Speaker 1 (3:41) rock artist. You look him up. He just won a ton of awards for the Canadian. music awards there's no other c's in the title of the awards that he won i bet there is it's just the cmas it's not the ccmas it's the country only any kind of music award you Speaker 2 (3:57) look them up and that's what his genre is i love it Speaker 1 (4:00) yeah he was like artist of the year album of the year like production design of the year it's pretty darn good Speaker 2 (4:04) uh Speaker 1 (4:04) so yeah i love who he Speaker 2 (4:05) plays with a lot of people that Sing with him. I like. But Speaker 1 (4:10) you hadn't heard of either of the openers tomorrow night, correct? I don't think so. If you gave me $1 million right now to tell you who they were, I couldn't, even though I've looked at it a ton of times. I'd have to listen. Speaker 2 (4:19) We tried listening to the one guy, and I thought he was pretty good, and you... I Speaker 1 (4:24) didn't care for it. But to be fair, the last time I saw him, and then we'll talk about Disney, I swear. I'm sorry, guys. The last time I saw him, though, and you haven't gotten to see him yet, so I'm so excited for you to see him, see him at the Tabernacle, this small club in Atlanta. And he had... Taylor Holden, I believe, open form. Speaker 2 (4:40) He's Speaker 1 (4:40) good. Who is straight country, but his live show was so good. Really Speaker 2 (4:44) good. Speaker 1 (4:44) And it had much more of a rock feel to it when he, he performed it live. So I'm excited, but I am excited for today's episode. Um, we're going to kind of go back to the basics a little bit, and these are going to be top 10 things that we would tell our first time selves visiting Disney. Speaker 3 (5:02) And Speaker 1 (5:03) honestly, It doesn't even have to be our first time selves. There are going to be some things on here that we're going to go, oh, yeah, we should probably do that now. You know what I mean? So this isn't just an episode for rookies. This might be an episode for veterans, for anybody in between. And we don't want to focus on the normal top 10, which might be things like. You know, here's how you use lightning lane. Here's where you should eat. You know, here's what you should pack and like things that I think a lot of things cover. And we certainly have in the past. These are going to be a little bit more off of that path and things that I think people take for granted that we don't always think about. And what's great, I think, about this episode is this could apply. to most vacations that you're going to take, be it theme parks, honestly, cruises. This might, you know, some of these are going to apply if you're going to the beach. So we're going to dig right into it with our top 10. Rhonda, what is number one? And we do talk about this a lot. Speaker 2 (6:06) Yeah, and you can't do everything and you don't need to. Speaker 2 (6:12) You know, I mean, and I kind of take from Disneyland because it was our first time going there. First of all, we didn't get to do everything because some things were closed. Speaker 2 (6:29) Disneyland is smaller, so of course we were able to do more and almost everything that wasn't closed. So obviously, you know, in world, unless you're staying a very, very long time and hitting all of the parks and then you have lightning lane and stuff, you can't do everything. Not even close. I would probably like focus on, you know, maybe like a... specific park like magic kingdom and and just kind of try to do the things there um you know so what i love my friend Speaker 1 (7:11) our friend sean um with but mostly disney they i think they still do this with their adult kids is prior he basically asked everybody like what is the one thing you Speaker 2 (7:21) want Speaker 1 (7:22) to make sure we do yeah right yeah and you can put some focus on that and you can kind of you know plan some things around what each person in the family specifically wants to do one thing so you know that everybody's done That at least. And yeah, it goes back to, you know, like Rhonda saying, we can't, you can't do everything. I mean, now we've had plenty of time to do everything. Correct. Obviously, but we still haven't done everything. Right. That Disney World has to offer. So, you know, we say all the time, like, don't determine the success of your vacation based on a checklist that you made ahead of time. Speaker 2 (7:54) Oh, absolutely. You Speaker 1 (7:55) know, if you're like, these are the top 20 things we must do. And you come back and you crossed off 18 and all you focus on is the two you didn't Speaker 2 (8:04) do. That's sad. Like, yeah, Speaker 1 (8:05) you should remember more what you did do, not what you didn't do. Speaker 2 (8:08) Correct. And Speaker 1 (8:09) even when you make that list, right? Even when you go, all right, each person, what's the one thing you really want to do? And here's our plan and all. Inevitably, let's talk about our next one on the list. Speaker 2 (8:21) Yes, because when you plan your trip, you just expect everything to go wrong. And if like one or two things go wrong, but then everything else goes right. Great. But yeah, I mean, the first thing is, is, you know, definitely expect it to, you know, be down or closed or all the things. So, Speaker 1 (8:43) and you should plan. Oh, we're Speaker 2 (8:46) not Speaker 1 (8:46) telling you don't plan your trip because it's not going to go according to plan. You should have a plan. It might. Yeah. Everything could go off without a hitch. You could have perfect weather. You could have no ride breakdowns. You can have no distractions. You could have nobody in your family get tired after one day, full day in the parks, you know, and not want to get up the next morning. Like everything could go right, but it's probably not going to. So plan, but just be ready to pivot and ready to adjust, you know, know that. And, and here's where. Okay. I'll take a lesson from the Disney destiny and Dr. Facilier's parlor, right? Speaker 2 (9:20) Yeah. Speaker 1 (9:21) Let's go back to number one in Sean's, you know, a thing of asking each person in the family, what you want to do. You might want to work those ahead of your plan, knowing that if they don't go according to plan at the beginning, there's time to do it at the end. If you say we have to see happily ever