Hello Paul!
Welcome to planDisney! I’m so glad you’ve stopped by with this question early in the planning. Hopefully, I have some good advice that will help your large group make the most of their vacation and help you to avoid any pitfalls.
With large groups like this, often the person who is organizing wants to go ahead and add everyone who will be traveling to their personal
My Disney Experience Account as Guests that they manage. I would highly recommend you
do NOT do this. If you use this method, then you will be managing everyone’s information for the entire trip. With a group this large, this is going to cause frustration for everyone, and especially for you.
Admittedly, getting everyone set up in advance is more work. However, once you have it set up where everyone has their accounts, the vacation itself will be way easier! Each person with their own My Disney Experience Account can make and change their own Disney Park Pass Reservations, decide to purchase Genie+ if they wish, make their Lightning Lane selections, their dining reservations, and more. If you control everyone only on your account, you would have to be responsible for doing that for everyone, every day. I think you’d spend more time on your mobile phone than you would enjoying your family reunion.
Each adult or family needs to create their own My Disney Experience Accounts. (You may have to nag them to get this done ASAP.) If you have already added people to your account as Guests you manage, and have not linked any tickets or entitlements to them, just go ahead and delete them now. Each adult, or at least one adult from each family should create their own account, with one adult from each family adding and managing any children. For example, I have an account and manage my four children. My husband has a separate account. My mother has an account but also manages my dad who just wants to go with the flow and not have his own. We are then all linked together and can see each other, add each other to plans, but also make our own selections.
The next step is for everyone to link to you using the
Family & Friends option. You’ll need to know the email they used to create their My Disney Experience Account. Once the adults accept your invitation to link, you should then be able to link to the children. I will mention that when linking a large number of folks, sometimes the system gets a little wonky and not everyone will link perfectly the first time. I’ve found that waiting 24 hours and resending the invitation often works. A few years ago I helped my son’s marching band take 130+ kids to Walt Disney World and we had several adults linked to 20+ kids. When we ran into a glitch or two, the helpful
Cast Members at Website Support were able to assist!
After everyone exits in My Disney Experience and you are linked to them, you can go ahead and purchase
theme park tickets. You will then be able to assign each ticket to someone on your Family & Friends list! As your trip approaches, you will still be able to make reservations and plans for your family, but they can also make them or change them on their own. It’s the ultimate in flexibility! And as long as you are all linked to each other, you can make an attempt as one group for any virtual queues such as the one for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.
I hope this helps to get you started, Paul! And I hope this is the first of many questions as you plan your epic family reunion!
- Kate