Tips about Epcot, Food & Beverage, Magic Kingdom, Mousecellaneous and Travel By Car

I always prepare a "goody" bag for the drive for each kid. I start with a gallon zip lock bag & put their name on each one. Inside put in colored pencils (I do not use crayons as they melt in the hot sun on to your car seats) coloring book, stickers, a spiral notebook which they can use for coloring pictures & also as a "journal" for the trip recording each days events. I also add some mcdonalds happy meal toys with a Disney theme. - Anne Marie Cronin

I have found that having a EZ Pass on your car is very useful if you are traveling from the north. All toll roads bridges and tunnels south of Conn. accept EZ Pass and you just zip through only slowing down not stopping. They keep adding new roads bridges and tunnels, ie. Summner Tunnel and Ted Williams Tunnel and also the Tobin Bridge all in Boston. - Frank Groom

I have a road trip tip that we have used on several vacations - Books On Tape. We happened on to this a couple of years ago when someone loaned us a Harry Potter book on tape for our vacation. We have two boys 5 and 9. We have found that this is something the entire family enjoys. We actually look forward to getting back into the car! For this most recent trip I checked out several books on tape at our local library. It made the two day drive pass more quickly and it was absolutely free. If your library can't provide, check out the books on tape program at the Cracker Barrel Restaurants or visit your local Blockbuster. - M.Archer

My suggestion is to have each person bring a pillow to rest their head on and to get a little more comfortable during the ride. Teenagers, too, like to nap along the way! And we always make sure the digital camera is nearby. We've recorded many funny moments in the car and it's always enjoyable recalling them once we're back home! - Dolly King

We have driven to WDW 7 times from Indiana, a little over 950 miles. The most recent trip our son was 2 and to keep him occupied I purchased sticker books and coloring books that he received as "presents" throughout the drive. For the adults (there were 5 adults) I made travel Bingo games, license plate games, and make/model of the car games. We also played Disney trivia, name that Disney song, and where at WDW would you find...(restaurant, shop, attraction). This made the ride more fun and it seemed to go quicker. - Angie Grimes

For all those heading up or down the I-95 corridor. Georgia closes their Welcome Center and rest stops on Christmas. We learned the hard way--no rest areas, no open gas stations or restaurants (not even fast food) in the entire state! So if your are traveling Christmas Day, stop BEFORE you enter the state. - Linda Clark from Virginia

For the car cooler, I fill up 2 Tropicana 96 ounce plastic orange juice bottles with water and freeze them before the trip. This way, they serve as ice blocks, they don't melt in the cooler, and we pour the cold water out of the bottles on the way down to Florida to use as drinking water. - Jane Vander Loop

For the car cooler, I freeze bottles of drinking water & juice boxes and use these in my cooler in place of ice. You have your drinking water and no ice mess to contend with and more space in your cooler. - Charlotte from Ohio

The small Disney shopping bag is perfect for holding a raincoat. It packs easily into backpacks and can also even be threaded through a belt. Like others, I always save every shopping bag until we go home just in case we need it for something, but when we have to purchase a new raincoat, I'm always glad there is a little one stored in our room. - Lori Wedeking

I use the Disney shopping bags as gift wrap. If the item does not fit in the bag I cut the bag at the seam. I have even taped several bags together for a large box. Teamed with curly ribbon, kids love the Mickeys all over a package. - Patricia Towsley

I also have another idea for the Disney bags that you get when you buy something in the "world." I bring home all the bags and when I put my photo album together I use one of the bags for the cover of the album. That way I know exactly which album I'm looking for. - CapeGoofy5

Recently on a vacation to Walt Disney World, we noticed several refillable mugs left unattended and presumably left behind by mistake. Oftentimes cast members just tossed them in the trash. We brought address labels and added our cell phone numbers to the labels. We attached the labels not only to our refillable mugs, but also our camera and other valuable items just in case something got left behind. - Becky from Oshkosh

I am an 11-year-old girl who has visited WDW at least 35 times, and I found the best Disney World product for us Disney nuts. It is the Walt Disney World Resort Scavenger Hunt. It is only $4.00 in the Magic Kingdom Emporium on Main Street. It has questions like: What is the name of the mill on Tom Sawyer Island? What are they auctioning in Frontierland? If you WANT to know everything about Disney, or think you DO know everything, then this is for you. My family and I thought that we knew Disney, but we were so wrong! I thought you would like to know about this awesome product. - Chris B.

Did you ever go for breakfast or dinner and find out your Priority Seating cannot be found, and you don't have the PS number with you? Well, this happened to me a couple of times. The cast members were very nice, but also sorry because the wait for dinner at Cinderella Castle would be at least one hour and Chef Mickey had no openings at all. So this past May I made a printout of our restaurants, times and Priority Seatings, shrank it to the size of a credit card, had it laminated and put it in my wallet next to my credit card. It worked wonders because for dinner at San Angel in Mexico they could not find our seating -- I gave them my PS card and within seconds it came up on the computer. By the way, dinner at San Angel was just too delicious, you must give it a try! - Fran Giambalvo

By all means make sure you have that house key when you head out from home! We DID lock ourselves out of the house on one WDW vacation. We, like a lot of folks, have an automatic garage door opener and use that as our main means of entry into the house. We don't normally lock the inner garage door leading into the house. Well, because we were going to be gone, we decided to lock things up extra securely, so we locked the inner door and hard locked the garage door. As soon as that lock went "clunk" I realized that I don't even carry a house key! I asked my hubby and he had paired down his keys to the bare minimum, and guess what? He took the house key off! We growled at each other for a couple of minutes, then decided there was nothing we could do about it at themoment and went on our trip. When we got back, we broke a window in our back door, and had it replaced the next day. That was an extra $50 we sure didn't need to spend! - Carol Kelley