If you tend to exhaust easy and you WILL be walking a lot and are going in the summer, alternate park/waterpark. It will give you a chance to rest. The Typhoon Lagoon’s Lazy river will rest your feet.

Each of the big parks really only have two big-ticket attractions that have big lines. Hold your Fast Pass for those. A fast pass is where you go to the ride and swipe your card and get a designated time to come back and not wait. Use this!

Magic Kingdom – Space Mountain (getting kinda dated) and Splash Mountain (mildly wet, with animated intro).
Hollywood – Rocking Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror
Epcot – Race Track and Soarin’
Animal Kingdom – Mount Everest (coaster) and the Kilamanjaro (sp) Safari… The Dinosaur ride is cool too.

Just be sure to try these two in each park as a minimum. Riding them during parades works as well, unless you like parades. Parades are better in the fall when it’s not too hot to stand outside.

Most of Disney rides incorporate some amount of being inside… so even if it’s horribly hot, you’ll get some relief.

Another thing I would recommend is not to over plan… just have a gross idea of what you wanna do and go with the flow. Too much detailed planning ruins the fun with it doesn’t happen according to plan (I’m an over planner).

So TL;DR… Eat at one nice restaurant per day, hit the high points, have rest days.

Been AFK for a bit and I also and a big Disney nerd, I would be willing to send you my personal Disney Spreadsheet of Doom (TM) if you are interested.
But based on what I read the proximinty to the Magic Kingdom that the Poly offers is your best bet. I have heard some nice things about the Animal Kingdom from my Brother but the downfall is it is jsut SO far away from erything else other than AK.

Personally I love Wilderness Lodge, being the Flag Family for the day is an awesome experience, but understand from your reason why it was nixed (make time to go see the lobby as it is just a short boat ride away from MK and you can take the boat back to the Contemp and Monorail it bac kto Poly from there.)

Enjoy your trip I look forward to feasting on Disney Trip Bearwall when you return!

-Skarlarth

Based on everything, we are planning on going with the Polynesian, IF we get the call asking for us to pick someplace as an alternative due to our existing booking not being ready. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, and I’ll admit, while I know Alex will be excited no matter what we do, the poor kid inside of me that never experienced WDW in any way other than ultra-economy trailer-trash mode is excited as HELL at riding the monorail.

If you decide not to do the Polynesian, we think the Contemporary would be a good place to stay for the simple idea that the monorail stops in there and it’s very central on the Walt Disney World grounds.

Keep all of us updated, I’m really curious where you guys end up. Either way, I’m pretty sure that no matter where you end up you guys are going to make some memories that you’ll never forget. I know we did, and even though Addison may not remember them, I wouldn’t trade them for the world. Enjoy your trip Bear!

As for having a vehicle available, unless you’re deadset for going off campus into Orlando, it’s pretty much unneeded IMO. Park transit is pretty phenomenal across the board and very timely; I don’t recall ever having to wait that long for either.

We continued going back to the Polynesian, until one year we thought we’d expand our experience. We stayed at the boardwalk for a couple of days then back to the Polynesian for the rest of the stay. Don’t get me wrong, the boardwalk was nice, but getting to the Polynesian, we all felt like we were coming home. It’s friendly, laid-back, and close without being too close.