My husband and I went for our first time to Disney for our honeymoon. I have a list of current days on which parks you should be in for low crowds. I must say, we stayed 9 days, and we got up at 11am Est time, (We live in Pacific so it was 8am for us) and stayed out until 2am everynight, and I am telling you, we did not even see half of it. I bought several Disney books and found that when we sat down and decided what each of us REALLY wanted to see, and then placed them in order of where we entered and the course to walk to get to the next thing, it really helped! My husband kept nit picking that I was planning too much, and that it would cause such stress. Do you know the number one thing he kept saying? "Honey, I am so glad you planned, this is my best vacation ever!" We saw and did A LOT. We are both in our 20s so we had the energy as well. I would say get a book, write down the things you want to see according to park, and then land, and then develop a plan. Do not worry if you stop to see something else instead, just keep moving on. It leaves more to be discovered next time. For us, we felt we needed to do each park twice because it was the only way to get things in. The only park we did not return to was Animal Kingdom.
You might consider not going to Universal just because of the amout of stuff they have their. I dont know if you can ever feel like it was worth it and I only say this because its your first time to Disneyworld. I know coming from Seattle and going to
Disneyland a ton of times, this is no comparison. In fact, there just isnt a comparison. We were so overwhelmed by the size of Disneyworld, that its just hard to explain. Think of the city of San Francisco, thats the size of WDW (got that out of my guide book). I dont think we ever left WDW except to go to the airport, its just that big.....I dont even see how people do half days at the parks. Maybe after we have gone a few times we can do half days. At any rate, if you want to email me you can. We did Cirque as well and loved it. The last showing was the best in my book. Allowed for a whole park day, back to the hotel to refresh, and then off to the show.
If you go to the HolyLand let me know what it is like.