The Perfect Idea for Your Disney Park Photos
Let me guess, you did something Disney. And you loved it. You did not want it to end, but now you are home and dealing with a massive Disney hangover.
If you’re like me then you’re grasping for any remaining traces of the magic. I admit, I don’t like even washing my hair for a couple days after I get home because I just don’t want to wash off the Disney.
Eventually reality settles in and you can’t deny the vacation is over and your family is starting to beg you to take a shower. So, what comes next? Thankfully, you have stashed some delightful Disney H20 bath products and once you’re refreshingly scrubbed, it is time. Time for what?
Well, I’m glad you asked. The obvious answer for most is to reach out to your trusty and beloved MickeyTravels Vacation planner and work on a new trip. Yeah, that’s a no brainer. But really, what I want to talk about is another answer. It is time to make that photo book.
You took pictures right? You bought your Disney PhotoPass Memory Maker (in advance so you could save $30, right?). You quickly downloaded all your pics and stayed up way too late looking at them all when you should have been sleeping.
Of course, you did. Your digital pile of pics and vids is so impressive that you might have to actually figure out the difference between a megabyte and a gigabyte.
Well, guess what. I’m here to tell you that you gotta put some of those pictures in a photobook. I am going to talk about some of the motivations I use to get going and actually get that book done. I know you might be thinking that someone else should do it for you, right?
Sure, you can just let some bot at Amazon auto-fill your photo book with random shots of your magical and o-so-memorable family vacation. Just let some algorithm pick the cover photo and insert generic captions every so often. Okay, honestly, even those books are better than no book and they are still pretty great. Even if that’s your style then I hope you keep reading as perhaps you’ll find some merit in the following points in defense of making your own photo book.
Image Credit: Disney
I’m about to pinpoint the two main motivations and two action points when getting ready to put together a photo book. I’ll start with the motivations. First, I love pictures from Disney trips. I really love the people in my Disney pictures and I love seeing them happy – because those are my people!
It’s obvious that we all come home from Disney with way too many pictures to put in one book. So, going through all the pictures and picking out the ones that make the final cut puts my eyes on every happy, funny, sweet memory again and again. Secondly, my family has been making these books since our first trip when our two kids were 3 and 6.
And now that we’ve done a handful of trips and my kids are older, they love looking at them. It’s so nice to see them enjoy the books and all the memories that spring back to life.
What I never predicted is how my kids have already picked which of the books they get to take with them when they go off to college. I guess they really like them. But they aren’t going off to college with them. I’m not crazy.
Photo: Disney
Now for some starter action points. I know I said two points. I’m going to try and stick to that. So, let’s fast forward to where you’ve already downloaded your pics from Memory Maker and your phone and all that and at least they are all in one digital place. For me it’s a laptop.
Now, step one: organize your pictures in a folder for each Disney location (park, hotel etc.) you visited. I’ve found out that no matter where you went, you’ll have group pics, character meetup pics, ride pics and then the extra pics (for me these are the pics I sometimes find on social media that capture something I missed). So, I put sub-folders for each of those categories in the Disney location folders.
Only the best pics that you’ve checked over for good smiles, open eyes and all the Disneyness will make the cut. Yes, some pictures will stay memorable but also stay behind. Only the best pics survive and you’ll be glad you screened out the spares.
Now, start dragging and dropping your chosen pics into the appropriate folders and leave the spares in the generic folder. That will take some work, but getting this chore done right off the bat will pay off as you put your book together.
Because now its time to make the book! You can go to Snapfish or Shutterfly, or whatever…there are so many websites that will make your book great! However, I’ve never seen a photo book website that doesn’t get even better when you’ve already got a plan for your pictures and you know what your best pictures are and where you can find them.
I usually just start with a park, then work at dropping in all the group shots, then character shots, ride pics for that location. Then repeat for each location we visited. I don’t worry too much about chronological order and I don’t worry too much if I have a group shot with a character in it…just go with it where you like it.
Check around on the site for free Disney templates for your book, talk about cheap wow factor. Also, I’ve never seen any of these websites not offer coupons, so go find one, refuse to pay full price! And these guys can get expensive, so have a budget in mind before you start. Finally, have fun, play some Disney music and brew up some Joffrey’s, this could still take a while!
Lisa Ismert
MickeyTravels, LLC
Authorized Disney Vacation Planner – Platinum Level
lismert@mickeytravels.com
817-946-3913
