Mousefest Tools

When the calendar says it’s less than a month before Mousefest that tells me it’s time to really get a handle as to what I’m actually doing during the land portion of Mousefest.

Many, many, many years ago when I took my young family to Walt Disney World I used to put together a semi-commando touring plan for week one of our trip (we’d go for two weeks) to make sure we covered all the spots I wanted to cover and then week two was sort of a lazy-butt touring approach.

I can’t do that with the land portion of Mousefest. Although I am wise enough to realize not to book every minute of every day I still tend to hit the 75-80% threshold.

I also realize that because of the excitement of Mousefest and the fact that I can easily get caught up in everything that I sometimes lose track of time and exactly where I’m supposed to be on a certain day at a certain time.

So I use two basic tools to help me get through the land portion of Mousefest. One is made for me and the other I make myself.

Mousefest Pocket Guide

If you have registered for Mousefest 2007 then you may have already received your 2007 yellow covered Mousefest Pocket guide.

It is in my opinion the best Mousefest Pocket Guide ever produced and it may serve as the model to go with from this point on.

Jennifer and Dave Marx and the Passporter Press folks have done an outstanding job over the years designing and putting this little guide together.

They’ve managed to keep the guide small and thin enough so that it’s not a big deal to carry it with you in the parks. It works for people and mice.

Mousefest Pocket Guide and Mickey

Also, they had the foresight to realize that there needed to be two main sections of this book.

The first section is just a few pages of a table that lists the day and time of every Mousefest Meet. I’m talking both the cruise and the land portion of Mousefest.

It’s sort of a Quick Reference Section of the guide and is great if you want to double check as to what time a certain meet is.

The second part of the guide involves the deep dive discussion of each meets. That is, besides the day and time of the meet other information like an abstract of just what the meet is and who is hosting it and other information that will help you answer any questions you may have about that meet and even help you decide if it’s a meet you would like to attend.

This guidebook is a Mousefest bible and every ‘fester should have it on their person at all times.

Kudos to the Passporter folks for once again compiling and arranging all the Mousefest meets data into a very practical package.

Mike’s Mousefest Grid

As much as I think the Mousefest Pocket Guide is a great tool for ‘festers to carry with them during Mousefest, there are obviously events that are not captured within that book.

What are these events?

Well, although there are quite a few official Mousefest events for all of the ‘festers to attend there are also the following:

Community Events

A community event may be a special meet that has been set up by one of the many communities attending Mousefest. This event is not an official Mousefest event yet it is a special event for that community. For instance, a community may elect to have a gift exchange/swap event for its members. Obviously a private event like that would not be part of the official Mousefest schedule.

Travel Partner Events

Mousefest has a number of official travel partners and these agencies will usually offer to their clients an opportunity to attend a special event. Since these events are offered only to their clients and not any festers outside their circle of clients the events would not be listed in the pocket guide.

Dining Dates

Dining dates are simply those times which you have set up Advanced Dining Reservations for yourself and friends. Obviously these are private events and not sure all of Mike Scopa’s ADRs should be listed in the official pocket guide.

Private Meets

Actually by private meets I mean things you may want to do on your own or with some friends like you may want to take in a Candlelight Procession, or take a sleigh Ride (if offered) at Fort Wilderness, or do a Segway Tour, or just chill out one night along the beach at the Polynesian to watch the Water Pageant Parade.

SO when you take everything into consideration you may find yourself doing quite a lot at Mousefest.

The first two Mousefests were easy for me. I could pretty much hold everything in my brain and not miss a beat.

The last two years however , have seen a Mousefest explosion and in 2005 a week before leaving for Mousefest I realized I needed “help” so I started putting together a little grid that I could print out and carry around with me to remind me of everything I needed to do for my Mousefest.

The grid is simple.

Across the top you would have your days. Along the left you would list times.

You then plug into each cell what your schedule calls for at that time on that day.

Then you print it out and carry it around with you, maybe even use it as a bookmarker for your Mousefest pocket guide.

Here is a screen capture of a portion of my current grid.

Mike's MouseFest Events Grid

There are some general entries like “MK” or “lunch” or “dinner” or even “?” which I will adjust as I get closer to MF.

I will continue to update this grid until the day before I leave for FLA. I know that things will constantly change but I’ll be confident that I’ll have about 99% of the information I need on that grid so that I’ll be ready for the most exciting five days of the year: Mousefest 2007.

So…will these work for you?

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