By Laura Daily

Planning to visit Walt Disney World? Here are a few tips to help your trip go smoothly: 1. Plan in Advance - Make your vacation more magical by planning in advance, before you leave home. A laid-back, "we'll figure it out when we get there," approach will leave you frustrated and disappointed. 2. Arrive 30 to 45 minutes before official opening time which will translate into about two hours of relatively short waits before the masses start arriving. 3. Take a break of at least two or three hours in the middle of the day. Nap, take a swim, or explore other parts of the resort. It will help all of you to return to the park feeling refreshed and ready to go. 4. Don't skip meals. A simple breakfast in your room is a time and money-saver. Check out the Disney Dining Plan — you can save up to 30 percent on the cost of your food at Disney, but you need to make table-service reservations before you leave home. Character dining experiences are available for lunch and dinner, not just breakfast. 5. Book your Walt Disney World vacation package with AAA for exclusive benefits. Save on meals, merchandise, and recreation and enjoy extra Magic Hours. Get a discount on car rentals.

Even though the kids or grandkids are ready for that trip to Florida's Walt Disney World, you may be thinking that the Expedition Everest should be left to the Abominable Snowman, Mission Space to Astro-nuts and Tower of Terror to those with tough tummies. Does even the idea of riding Alice's spinning teacups make you dizzy?

Now the good news — the entire family can visit the happiest place on earth with more than It's A Small World on their "must-do" list. Here's a handy list designed just for fraidy-cats be they seven or seventy-something guaranteed to make your next visit as much fun as the screaming hoards are having.

Tried and True
When does a wildly popular ride spawn a movie whose insane popularity spawns an updated ride? When it's Pirates of the Caribbean, the quintessential "Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, a pirate's life for me" attraction with new technology and some new characters - like filmdom's Capt. Jack Sparrow and his nemesis Barbossa — for the DVD generation. Go for no other reason than to view the Johnny Depp animatronics, some so real that it appears someone simply dipped Depp in wax.

Other WDW standards that still deliver:

• Spaceship Earth, a time-travel adventure inside the iconic silvery dome at the entrance to Epcot. About half the 14-minute trip is backwards through darkened spaces but no plunges or dips, we promise.
• Living With the Land glides serenely through a rain forest, fish farms, hydroponic gardens and agricultural greenhouses to learn how food is grown.

• Jungle Cruise. Yes it's slow moving and the audio-animatronic animals - zebras, lions, and hippos — couldn't scare a mouse but it's laid-back fun. Even the boat skipper's goofy spiel will make you laugh (or groan).
• Haunted Mansion. It's spooky and kooky, but definitely not scary as you explore a poltergeist-ridden house and greet a ghost host.

Talk To Me
Real-time animation (one of those you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it things) is part of Turtle Talk With Crush inside The Seas with Nemo & Friends at Epcot. Crush, that 152-year-old sea turtle surfer dude from "Finding Nemo," has an unscripted, live conversation with the kids about ocean life. Definitely aimed at the mini-mouse-crowd, watch for Crush's reactions when some of the pint-sized dudes and dudettes pop some zinger questions.

Laugh Floor Comedy Club ratchets up the real-time animation experience as multiple characters from "Monsters Inc." including your host, the one-eyed Mike Wazowski, interact simultaneously with crowds. The premise: Monstropolis denizens have built a comedy club to harness laughter instead of screams to power the city. Two years in the making, the new attraction is so well tuned that audience members can even text message in a joke while waiting in line and might hear it in the show.

Don't Miss
Soarin' isn't scary or jarring but you are suspended as much as 40-feet-aloft while watching an 80-foot screen to recreate the sense of hang gliding across California. Anyone with vertigo should sit in the third row as seeing people's feet dangling from the row above seems to keep things in perspective. This is one of more than a dozen Disney rides with a height restriction so be sure your riders stand at least 40" tall before getting into line.

Mickey's Philharmagic, which mixes music, special effects, and animated antics of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other favorites, may come closest to Walt Disney's vision of experiencing the park with all your senses. You'll smell apple pie, feel your hair blow, and the 150-foot-wide screen will pop into action through your 3-D glasses.

Kilimanjaro Safari transports you without vertigo to the Africa-style savannah. This all-terrain truck drive across rivers and grasslands puts you nose to snout with okapi, cheetah, hippos, giraffes, and wildebeest, and you may even spot a vulture as it pulls on the tail of a sleeping rhino to see if its alive... or lunch.

If you only get to one live theatrical performance, make it Festival of the Lion King. There's singing, dancing, colorful costumes, stilt walkers, and the entire audience gets to test their terpsichorean skills on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Other notables all boasting air-conditioned splendor: Beauty and the Beast, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, and Finding Nemo: The Musical.

Maybe Not
A list of attractions best avoided either because of height restrictions (typically 40 to 44 inches) or because of the "fear factor:"

• Anything with the word "mountain" in it - i.e. Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Expedition Everest (you know there's a mountain in there somewhere).
• Anything advertised as "spinning wildly" - like the Mad Tea Party or Primeval Whirl.
• Tower of Terror - enough said.
• Honey I Shrunk the Audience - the 3-D effects are cool until snakes and mice pour off the screen "into" the audience. Same goes for It's Tough To Be A Bug! You can feel the "ick" factor.
• Mission Space - a "less intense" version of the original dizzying voyage to Mars, but with dozens of warning signs marking every footstep towards the entrance, maybe not...
• Test Track - it looks harmless enough, "wow this is fun testing anti-lock brakes in my zippy automobile," then comes the part where you careen around the edge at 65 miles per hour.

After All It's Small
It's A Small World gets an undeserved bad rap as out-dated. An oldie but goodie created for the 1964 New York Worlds Fair, the attraction sails past 289 dolls attired in costumes from around the world. It embraces the concept of multi-cultural friendship, though that ubiquitous ditty (sung in five languages) sticks in your head for days after. That may make it the scariest ride of all.