A GoPro Walt Disney World in Review

Y’all, we’ve never had any sort of good recording device for family memories outside of our iphones.  It’s just sad!  Sure, we have tons of still pictures but I often lament the fact that we don’t have baby steps, birthday parties and Christmas mornings on a video reel.

So, after weighing many options, we got a GoPro.  I am really a novice at the whole thing and am not sure that I could offer anything in a review that a gazillion other sites haven’t covered.  (I know this because I have read all of them.)

We used it for the first time on our Disney trip last month.  Over the course of eight days, we had over 200 little video clips.  A laughable amount were of the ground or back of our hands.  We went with the trial by fire method and opted against reading directions (Honey….).

It took me about two weeks and an ungodly amount of hours to sort through all of the videos and figure out how to edit them together.  I am NO professional, but we will ALWAYS cherish these memories and the little personalities that were sometimes lost in print.

If you made it to the bitter end, THANK YOU for sticking around.  It’s 8 minutes of your life that you just spent right there :-)  We have watched it SO many times ourselves, which makes me so darn happy that we finally did it!

I don’t have a review or how to, but am happy to answer any questions you have.  In the mean time, here are a few things you might want to know:

  • We used the GoPro Silver Hero 4.  We chose this one because of the LCD back and touch screen.
  • We also have the Dual Battery Charger with Extra Battery.  This is a MUST!  I charged both batteries each night and kept a spare in our bag.  The one time I didn’t do this, it was dead.  That was our Animal Kingdom day, hence the fact that there are only still images.
  • We did not buy any of the strap it to your body accessories yet, and might not.  We took a wrist strap off of an old camera and attached it to the hard clear outer gopro case.  We just held it in our hand with the strap tightened around our wrist the whole time.
  • I edited all of the clips, pictures and music together in Windows Movie Maker.  I tried the GoPro Studio for a couple of days and lost a ton of work both times.  Movie Maker was intuitive and worked great.  Keep in mind that this was my first time ever doing something like this.
  • Next time I will be more purposeful about getting a good, solid 1-2 minute clip of highlights of our trip.  This time was very willy nilly.  I had 4 second videos of random things and then 6 minutes clips of things that were a total bore.  I only used a very small fraction of everything I had!  And, I didn’t want it to be two hours long, so I think starting with short clips of GOOD stuff would have been easier.

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I cannot wait to use this more!!!  I’ve gotten a few good videos of Whit’s baseball games and can’t wait to edit those together at the end of his season.  Also, if you have any tips or pointers for me, I’d love to hear them!

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GoPro Silver Hero 4  |  Dual Battery Charger with Extra Battery
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25 thoughts on “A GoPro Walt Disney World in Review

  1. This is awesome Amanda! It’s so true! We have so many photos and no video of anything!

    How were you able to hold the camera without a selfie stick? How did you get those shots of all four of you on the rides?

    Such a wonderful vacation keepsake.

    Marie

    1. No selfie sticks allowed! I just held it out in front of us in my hand. It has a very wide lens on it. :-)

  2. I love this! I’m headed to Disney the first week of December and am so excited. Talk to me about pin trading. Would my 4 year old be interested or should I wait until he’s older?

    1. Kelley, my girls love pin trading, but we waited until they were a bit older than 4. Maybe closer to 7. IF this is your first trip I think he’ll be enthralled with the “Magic” and you won’t need to worry about something else. Once you start trading, watch the backs of the pins. I feel like the backs fall off all of the time and then the pins get lost. A lot of time I keep the lanyards in my park bag and bring them out when they want to trade. The gift shops do sell fancy pinbacks, but we haven’t invested in those for our trading pins. Have a wonderful trip!

    2. I would probably wait a few years. We did it for the first time at 6 and 9. Both were REALLY in to it! There will be plenty of magic already at age 4. Save penny pressing and pin trading to introduce as they get older :-)

  3. That was A W E S O M E! I think you did a great job editing everything together, it’s hard to believe that you are new to it! My brother in-law put a huge amount of time into editing and putting together a dvd of the surprise birthday party he had for my sister last summer, so I know how time consuming it can be! He presented each family member a copy, which I will enjoy for years to come :-)

  4. Love love love this!!!! We actually said when we were on thunder mountain and the mine train, etc. how it would have been awesome to have a gopro capture Andrew’s face!!! Love that you did this.

  5. You did an amazing job editing all those clips and pictures! You really captured your trip in such a sweet and memorable way! We rented a GoPro camera last time we skied in Vermont and my 11 year old held it the whole time. First of all, I was terrified watching it because I realized how fast he was going and second, I was very impressed with the quality of video as I was with yours. We were talking about buying one and then we will be able to mount it to his ski helmet – so I can really freak out watching it! Anyway, loved watching your video! Now I really want to take the kids back to Disney!
    Shelley

  6. I love this!!! You did such a fantastic job. I want a Go Pro now just so I can capture some of my boys personalities. You’re right about losing that in photos. I’m taking my nice camera with me (my first time taking my DSLR). Did a cast member take that photo of your family, the where you’re all wearing ears? I love that so much.

  7. I love the video! We usually go in May and this made me wish I was there right now. I’m assuming you saw the news today about the customizable magic bands that you can get now?They look cool! And you can monogram them :)

    Thanks for the fun video!

  8. Thanks for sharing these special moments with your beautiful family! What a fun and wonderful trip! These 8 minutes have made me very happy and longing to visit Disney real soon :)

  9. I’m playing catch up on your blog posts. The video is fantastic!!! I watched till the end and it was worth it. Loved all of it! Hope you bring the GoPro from now on. My favorite was the sweet family photos at the end. So sweet! Thanks for taking us all to Disney with you!

  10. Thanks so much for sharing! I have received so much inspiration from you. This inspired me to take the hours of footage off ours from our trip to the beach this summer. I was also prompted by you to contact Jessica for pictures in the park when our family visited WDW last year. (Thank you!) I love the photos of y’all at the resort from this trip. Who took those?
    ZLAM, Amy

  11. Amanda, THANK YOU for sharing this post!!! That video made me weepy with happiness thinking about having that for my own family. I am going to order this for my husband for Christmas!

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