Scrapbooks are wonderful mementos of your vacation. Because a trip to Walt Disney World is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many families, you will want your WDW vacation scrapbook to be perfect. Here are my tips and hints to help you create a scrapbook of a lifetime.
Before You Go
Keep at home all the papers you used to prepare for your trip. Pamphlets, information from travel agencies, etc. A good start for your book will be all the pre-trip activity. Also, you can find their nice pictures to cut and insert in your book.
Make a list of pictures you MUST take: the plane, all your group in front of the hotel, your room, your favorite attraction, etc. Check it when you’re at WDW to be sure you didn’t miss any. Be sure to have a picture of the departure to show all the excitement.
Write anything funny that happened during the trip. (My kids did all the week’s homework from the school during the flight, just to avoid having to do it t WDW)
At the end of each day write a few lines with the highlights of the day. What did you see, what happened, etc? Ask the rest of your group to add anything they consider important.
What You Will Need
Be sure to collect all of these items while you are on vacation (or planning your vacation). It will be hard to get them after you get back home.
- At least three good copies of each park map and other important flyers. The maps and pictures are great for the book, but you’ll need to cut them up. So two copies for cutting up (one for the front, the second for the back). Then an extra copy you can keep intact. (I added a pocket to keep the complete maps in.)
- The same thing goes for flyers, like the E-Ride Nights and Fantasia Fairways.
- Receipts from your favorite meals. They look great next to a picture of the restaurant, especially character meals! (They will also be interesting when your grandchildren look at the prices years from now.)
- At least a rough outline of your “adventures.” You won’t need extensive details (not like for a trip report), but a few notes about what meant the most to you will be helpful.
- Your character autographs. Try to get each one on a separate page, since you will be cutting them out for the book.
- Your WDW reservation letter and ticket receipts.
- Scrapbook and paper. You can find a wide variety of papers and books at Disney World. Some are also sold through eBay.
Photographs to Shoot
Use this checklist to be sure that you get good photographs of your entire Disney vacation. Suggestions that say “family posed” means to get a photo of several members in your party posed in front of a feature at that location.
- The Trip: Packing, driving to the airport or to Disney World, arrival gate at Orlando International Airport, the main gate at Walt Disney World.
- Your Resort Hotel: Main entrance, the family posed in the lobby, Mom or Dad at the check-in desk with the Cast Member, your room (take this shot as you first check-in, before the room gets “lived-in”), the family posed outside the room, anything special that you especially like about the resort, such as decor, flowers, swimming pool, restaurants.
- In The Parks: Family posed at the entrance and in front of the park landmarks (castle, Spaceship earth, Mickey’s sorcerer’s hat, Tree of Life), eating at restaurants, waiting in line (most queues have interesting decor), the family posed in front of your favorite attraction, kids and adults with the characters.
- Dining and Special Meals: Family posed in front of the restaurant, kids and adults with the characters, your dinner, and dessert plate (many meals have a very special presentation).
- Recreation: Snapshots at the resort swimming pool, shopping at Downtown Disney, attending special events such as Cirque du Soleil, golfing or miniature golf, and watercraft rental.
- Special Moments: Meeting with the characters (candid shots as well as posed), eating a Mickey ice cream bar or other favorite treats, trading pins.
- The Trip Home: Packing, taking your bags to your car or bus stop, checking in at the airport or driving home, stops that you make on the way home, and arriving back home.
You can find special Mickey papers and cutouts at your hobby shop where you get the other materials for your memory book.
I organized our book in this order:
- Getting Ready to Go
- On the Road
- Magic Kingdom
- Epcot (primarily World Showcase)
- Disney-MGM Studios
- Fantasia Gardens
- Universal Studios
- Fort Wilderness
- Heading Home
- Brochures and Booklets
Now, do you have any suggestions for a WDW memory book? What are some unusual places to take the family photograph? What other mementos would/do you put in your memory book? I am especially interested in new and different places to take pictures of the family in the parks.
More Photo Tips
Here are a few more tips:
- Share the camera: Let everyone take photos, not just Mom or Dad. Getting the kids’ perspective will be fun! And it helps ensure that you will have photos of the entire family. Read more about Disney PhotoPass.
- Use PhotoPass: Disney photographers are available throughout the parks to take your photo at no obligation. You can view and purchase photos at WDW and back home via a website, where you can also order more.
- Get close-ups: When shooting a picture in front of a building or landmark (like Cinderella’s castle), take the picture from a spot where the entire landmark is visible. Position your family about 10-12 feet in front of the camera. Their faces will be very visible, and you get the “big picture.”
- Save your photos to CD: If you are shooting with a digital camera and don’t have your computer to upload them (or cannot access the Internet to upload), have the pictures transferred to a CD at one of the park photo shops. This service costs less than $20 and is available at all four theme parks.
I just wanted to pass on a tip for scrapbooking with the park brochures and other memorabilia that is not archival quality or photo safe. They now have an inexpensive Archival Spray that you can use to make any piece of paper photo safe. This is especially useful when you’re layout includes your precious Disney photo memories being overlapped with Disney media like brochures, menus, receipts, and tickets. The spray will keep your photos safe from acid and prevent your other paper from yellowing. Happy Scrapbooking!!
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I wanted to share an idea I’ve been using for my own Disney scrapbook. Before each trip, I cut out squares of photo-safe construction paper in different colors and put them in a small notebook to use for an autograph book for the characters. I also take a large photo-safe pen with me. When I do my scrapbook, I just take out the signed pages and put them next to the picture of my daughter with the appropriate character. Not only is it photo safe, but it’s also more colorful because I don’t use white. The pictures and the autographs look great together. Colleen
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I thought you might be interested in what I do. I take the paper they give you for the scrapbooks and stamp on them with Disney stamps. Most rubber stamp ink is archival quality — I just have to wait for them to dry before I use the pages! This allows me to use both sides of the paper, and decorate them differently or however I want. Sometimes I will deliberately decorate around a picture, however, I usually just randomly stamp on the pages and let them dry before I even start trying to figure out what goes on each page.
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Several people suggested using gift wrap paper for page backgrounds, etc., instead of the special paper from craft/hobby shops. While that is an inexpensive idea, those papers should be used sparingly. The special craft paper is archival quality, which means it will last a long time without affecting photos and other papers. The gift wrap paper will not. Because the maps, brochures, etc., are certainly not on archival-quality paper, you want to be sure to provide the best “support” possible for them — that is, if you want the scrapbook to last a long time (which I’m sure we all do).