The One Thing Rule: How We Saved Our Vacations
One simple travel rule has helped our family avoid vacation meltdowns, stop arguments before they start, and make sure everyone comes home with a favorite memory. It started during a disastrous first trip to Disney and became essential to every family vacation ever since.
When people ask me for Disney planning advice, they usually expect recommendations for rides, where to eat, our favorite Disney resort, and packing tips.
Believe it or not, those things mean nothing when you consider the biggest mistake I made on our first Disney vacation.
We nearly avoided total disaster thanks to my husband’s quick thinking and the simple rule that saved the rest of the trip.
That rule didn’t just change the way we do Disney, we’ve used it on every family vacation ever since.
My Biggest Disney Mistake
As a first-time Disney planner, I did what most planners do.
I researched EVERYTHING.
I studied touring plans, crowd calendars, ride rankings, rope drop strategies, restaurant recommendations, and learned how to use the Disney app before we even left the house.
Knowing we’d never see everything, I wanted to be sure we didn’t miss the best things because we were distracted with all the other options available.
We also needed a game plan for surviving Disney with a toddler.
I had the list of things to see, in which order, all figured out before we arrived at the gate.
I was convinced that if I planned well enough, we’d have the perfect Disney vacation.
Instead, we arrived at Magic Kingdom and immediately fell apart.
Our Disastrous First Day at Disney
As first-timers staying offsite, we didn’t realize it would end up taking an entire hour to leave our car and actually get on to the grounds because of:
- shuttle trains
- lines
- a monorail jump over the pond
We missed rope drop altogether.
Once we finally got inside the park, we RAN up Main Street rushing past all the amazing things in order to get to Dumbo, which my guidebook insisted we had to do first if we wanted to do it at all.
After hustling our kids through the park, we arrived at Dumbo only to discover a 30 minute wait already exists.
Panic set in.
We had already been “on the go” for 2.5 hours between getting ready at the hotel and transportation to the park.
We had ran past so many appealing looking attractions to get to Dumbo that both girls were crying from disappointment.
All that time and we still hadn’t done one single fun thing. And now we discovered we should wait in line for another 30 minutes??
I frantically looked at my list trying to figure out what the next thing was that we should try to do instead.
The Winnie the Pooh ride was right there but we needed to get Fast Passes in order to ride it if we didn’t want to wait 45 minutes.
My Disney Plan Had Failed
All that planning, all that hard work ahead of time, to prevent this exact scenario. Now I was nearly in tears, too.
Then my husband came to my rescue.
After a deep breath we decided he would run to get the Winnie the Pooh Fast Passes while I took the girls to wait for the teacups ride.
It gave us time to collect ourselves for a minute and then Tim invented the Single Most Brilliant Disney Planning Tip you will ever find.
The Rule That Saved Our Trip
When you are visiting Disney with 2 very young children (ages 5 and 2 at the time for us!) you absolutely must set your expectations to LOW. Lower that bar waaaay down if you want to save your sanity.
Tim’s magic rule is simple:
One Thing Per Day. That’s it.
Go into the park expecting to focus on just the most important One Single Thing.
Not ten things. Not a perfect itinerary. Just One Thing.
As a family discuss that one thing the night before so everyone is on board with what they feel is the single most important thing to do.
Once you’ve accomplished your agreed-upon One Thing you have your whole day ahead of you.
It’s like every single hour after that is a magic bonus hour because you’ve already done your One Thing!
I’m not even kidding how this simple mindset tweak changed our attitudes and outlook and absolutely saved our family vacation.
Our Rule In Action
As a family we agreed that our One Thing was to see Mickey Mouse in his dressing room off of Main Street and have our pictures taken with him.
With our plan in mind, we entered the waiting line for Mickey but the girls were Happy! They knew exactly what we were doing and why we had to wait. Because MICKEY!
After our meet and greet was over we enjoyed our time in the hat shop and bought the girls their very first mouse ears.
We strolled up Main Street at a much slower pace and I spent 20 minutes just taking pictures of the girls simply exploring with their new mouse ears.
Those pictures are some of the best from our entire trip.
Everything else we did that day felt like bonus magic.
We had a blast wandering around Tomorrow Land and rode the Buzz Lightyear ride TWICE. Because, why not??
We’d already done our One Thing!
The Most Common Misunderstanding
I’ve had readers comment in horror:
“We paid all this money to Disney only to see one thing?? Are you CRAZY?”
I am not suggesting you only DO one thing, I’m suggesting you only PLAN for one important thing. Let the rest of your vacation unfold more naturally.
This is a mindset solution that is crucial to family happiness at the Disney theme parks.
We spent the entire day at Magic Kingdom.
We didn’t see “just one thing,” we saw dozens and dozens of magical things during our time there and had an amazing time together as a family.
But we only let one main wish list item guide our schedule for each day.
Our Rule is Not Just for Disney
We used the One Thing Rule for every day of the remainder of the trip. It worked like such a charm, we used it again on our next Disney trip.
Then it followed us to beach trips, a road trip to Pigeon Forge, a visit to Atlanta and eventually a family vacation to London.
That’s when I realized the One Thing Rule wasn’t really a Disney strategy. It had become one of our core family travel rules.
We’ve used it on every single trip and it always means we have experiences we’d never have planned on our own.
Without the One Thing rule, we never would have done a daytrip from London to Paris if my husband hadn’t admitted that he has been dreaming of riding the chunnel since he was a little boy.
That train ride was one of the most memorable parts of our entire trip.
Why It Works
The true magic in the One Thing rule is how it connects your family and makes your travel easier:
- Everyone Gets One Thing: Every person on your trip gets one thing they’re genuinely excited about. It could be an experience, a restaurant, a goal, or a memory they want to create.
- Everyone Feels Trusted and Loved: Our family feels safe opening up about their dreams for vacation knowing their One Thing will be respected and incorporated into the trip.
- It Makes Compromise Easier: When the whole family is respectful of everyone else’s One Thing, you feel more like a team. Instead of being annoyed at time spent doing something you may not enjoy, you know you’re doing it because it’s a loved one’s One Thing.
- It Creates a Team Effort: Everyone works together to make sure all the One Things happen before the end of the trip. In some ways, the One Thing list becomes it’s own Travel Tag challenge.
- It Builds Excitement: I find that our family vacations go better when everyone has learned a little bit about where we’re going. You can’t pick One Thing if you don’t know what’s there! We take our personal picks seriously and this encourages some research into the options which definitely builds excitement as we learn more about where we’re going.
- It Creates Better Memories: Years later, people rarely remember everything they did on a trip but they will remember the One Thing moments that were the top priority.
How to Use the One Thing Rule
Applying the rule to every trip is really quite easy.
Everyone Picks One Thing
Ask every member of the family what is the MOST IMPORTANT thing they want to do, see, or eat while you’re on vacation.
Everyone gets to pick ONE thing to add to the Master List.
Add everyone’s One Thing to the Bucket List for your vacation.
At this point in the vacation planning, you should arrange your entire itinerary so that everyone has their wish (within reason and budget) scheduled on your trip before you add anything else.
Fill Out the Rest of the Itinerary
I always fluff up our itinerary with things I know will be very easy to add to our to-do list.
For a Disney trip, it might look like:
- Eat a Mickey Ice Cream Pop or one of our all-time favorite Disney treats
- See the Castle
- Get a New Pair of Mickey Ears
- Watch a Parade
- Listen to the Music on Main Street
- Trade Disney Pins at the Disney Stores
Remember, just because you’re sticking to just One Big Thing, doesn’t mean you won’t do a ton of fun things every day.
Put these easy items on your list and have fun checking them off as you go!
Check Off Your List
Every morning before you head out for the day, remind your family what the One Thing Goal is for the day.
It is easier for everyone to be more flexible with on the fly decisions that have to be made in order to make sure the One Thing happens that day:
“No, we can’t wait 25 minutes in this line, because we have to make sure to ride the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train today. Remember, it’s Dad’s One Thing. We’ll check back with this ride as soon as we check off his wish.”
Celebrate Your One Things
Somehow those dedicated One Things are always our most favorite activity of the day.
We choose them intentionally and enjoy the heck out of them in the moment.
Any missed opportunities were more easily smoothed over because: “HEY! Remember when we did the One Thing that was most important to us today?? How FUN was that??”
Now it is such a core part of how we travel, we make sure to take a picture of everyone enjoying their One Thing. Those pictures are often the best from the whole trip.
