Disney check-in days: a prep routine that doesn't eat your weekend

Disney check-in day prep used to eat my Saturdays. A typical check-in week meant 4-6 client trips arriving on Sunday, each one a list of online check-ins to verify, MDE setups to walk through, Lightning Lane purchases to schedule, and a final "have a great trip!" email to write. None of it is hard. All of it adds up.

Here's the routine I run now. It takes about 90 minutes total for a typical week of arriving clients, instead of the 4 hours it used to take.

The 7-day-out checklist

Disney opens online check-in 7 days before arrival. I run through this list the morning the window opens, batched for every client arriving that week.

For each trip:

1. Confirm the resort booking is still showing the right room category and dates. Yes — Disney occasionally moves people. Catching it 7 days out gives you time to fix it.
2. Walk the client through online check-in via My Disney Experience. I send a templated email with the steps; they do it themselves. About 80% complete it the day they get the email. The other 20% I follow up with on Day 5.
3. Confirm the Lightning Lane Multi Pass purchase plan if they're buying it. I add a calendar reminder for the morning the LL window opens (also 7 days out, but at 7 AM ET — a separate alarm from check-in).
4. Verify their MagicBand+ orders shipped to the resort if applicable.
5. Spot-check the ADR list — sometimes Disney auto-cancels reservations with timing conflicts. Better to find out now.

That's it. Five things, about 8-10 minutes per family if everything is in order.

The four templates that save me hours

I have these saved as snippets and edit details before sending. Saying it out loud, this seems obvious, but for years I was writing each one from scratch.

Welcome email (sent at booking). Confirms the trip details, sets expectations for the timeline, lists what I'll do for them and when. Keeps them from emailing me weekly to ask "is everything still on track?"

ADR follow-up (sent the day after the 60-day window). Confirms what we got, lists alternates I tried for what I missed, sets expectations for what we'll keep watching for cancellations. Two paragraphs, ~150 words.

7-day prep email (the one with online-check-in instructions). Numbered list of action items they need to take this week, plus the LL purchase plan if relevant. About 250 words.

Day-before send-off (sent 24 hours before check-in). Wishes them a good trip, reminds them I'm available by text during the trip if they need anything, asks them to send me a photo from the parks. The last part feels small but it generates referrals — when they post the photo with "shoutout to my travel agent Tyler at [contact]," that's organic marketing.

I keep all four in a notes app and edit names + dates. The whole batch takes 30-40 minutes for a week of arriving clients.

What I used to do wrong

Writing each email from scratch. The first version of every email I sent was probably 80% the same as the last one, but I was rewriting the whole thing every time. Once I had templates, I cut my prep time in half on day one.

Doing them one at a time. I used to handle each client's prep on their own day — Smith family on Tuesday because they arrive on Tuesday, Jones family on Wednesday. That meant context-switching 5 times in a week. Now I do all 5 in one Saturday-morning session, batched. Way faster.

Not using a checklist. For about a year I was prepping from memory, and I missed steps. Forgot to confirm a MagicBand+ order once and the family didn't have bands when they arrived. Embarrassing. The checklist eliminates that.

The Saturday-morning routine

Coffee, my client list pulled up, the four templates ready in a side window. I work through the list in the order they arrive. Each client gets:

• 8 minutes verifying their bookings + sending the prep email
• 1 minute adding their LL purchase to my calendar (separate alarm 7 days out at 7 AM ET)
• ~30 seconds copying the ADR list to a sticky note so I can spot-check at T-2 and T-1

Six clients × 10 minutes = an hour. Add 30-40 minutes for the email batch. I'm done before lunch on Saturday with the rest of my weekend free.

What I'd change if I were starting over

I'd build the templates first thing. I lost a year before I committed to them. Once they were in place, every single check-in week got faster.

I'd also resist the urge to personalize every email heavily. The first few times I used templates I felt guilty about it and went out of my way to add a unique paragraph for every family. Six months later I noticed the families who got templated emails were just as happy as the ones who got customized ones. Templates aren't lazy if the underlying service is excellent. They're efficient.

The honest summary

If you're a Disney travel agent spending more than 90 minutes per check-in week on routine prep, you're doing more than the work requires. Build the checklist, build the templates, batch the work. Save the energy for the parts where personalization actually matters — like the Day 2 text when their toddler had a meltdown at the park and you knew which character meet-and-greet to suggest as a recovery plan.