The Joys of the Spare Key

I wanted to share a little trick that I learned the hard way…

On our first visit to WDW as a family, we had our 4 year old 21 month old daughters in tow. As you can imagine, the orchestrating the whole stroller, park bag, cooler extravaganza thing can be overwhelming. To make things a little bit easier, I designated the husband as “The Keeper of the Tickets”. Once we entered the parks we all promptly handed our tickets over and he filed them away in his wallet for safe keeping. Let’s face it – if they landed in one of the 42 pockets in my park bag they may never have been seen again!

One great perk we realized from having all of the tickets together is that we were able to optimize our FASTPASS plan. While I was doing potty runs, changing diapers, or standing in line for ice cream, my husband would take off to grab our next set of FASTPASSES. Genius! We were multitasking in a great way!

After lunch, little sister was in dire need of a nap. We thought it would be easiest for me to return to our resort 30 minutes ahead of my husband and big sister. We hoped that nap time would be a little easier with the least amount of commotion in the room as possible. Off I go with a tired toddler…

By now, I know you all have figured out what did not occur to me until I was standing in front on my hotel room door…Thanks to the handy dandy Key to the World card, my park tickets and my room key card were one and the same…and my card was safe and sound in my husband’s wallet in the Magic Kingdom. Oops!

I had to haul myself, the cranky tot and all of our stuff back to the front desk and wait for a nice cast member to become available to walk me back to my room and let me in. That was bad enough, but when the same thing happened a second time (my husband was in line for Soarin’ and I had to get out of the park STAT!) I realized that the Key to the World card had its draw backs! Instead of separating my ticket from my room key, I was able to get a “Spare Key” from the Front Desk. The Spare Key had no tickets or charging privileges attached - it was just a plain old room key. Problem solved!

The spare key also provided one extra benefit! One afternoon when I was getting ready to head back for naptime we realized that we would be able to get another FASTPASS in 30 minutes. There was no way I couldstick around that long with an irritable toddler, so we left along with the spare key. My husband wandered around for another 30 minutes, got our FASTPASSes and rejoined us at the resort. After nap, we headed back in the park and were ready to cash in our FASTPASS!

Now whenever we check in we plan ahead and ask for a “Spare Key” and tuck it into a designated pocket in the park bag…just in case!