What is your ideal length of stay?

[FirstTimertoDiz]

Dh and I are taking ds on his first trip next June. He will be going on 3 for the trip. What would be your ideal length of stay? Vacation time is not a problem, since DH and I both work at high schools, and it is our summer vacation. Money could be an issue for an extended stay, but we were planning on a mod or deluxe, and we have no problems dropping to a value for an extra couple of days with the Mouse!

How many days would you go for? :confused3

Lisa

[Sally]

We usually stay for 7 days, the seventh day is fly home day and we really just wake up and leave for MCO. Depending on crowd levels you could do everything you want in 5 days or if its crowded it could take 7 days... it is really a crowd level thing.
We went last year end of April and there were few lines, this year we leave in 15 days and crowd estimates are high so we may not get in as much as we planned to do.

[Nora94]

We took our dd5 and dd2.5 from April 22 - May 1 and felt that we really needed 2 more days. So, I would say 12 days. There is a thread up a little that asks if 10 days is enough, you might want to read that.

Nora

[cbrfan]

Forever! :cloud9:

[Bratmania]

2 weeks

[LauraAnn630]

Last year we stayed 8 days. We didnt have time to sleep or relax!

This year we are staying 13 days. We hope to have some late nights and a few days to sleep in.

We are renting a car on the 4th and 8th day. These are our break days. We will sleep in and goto the store later in the day. The kids like to hang out at the pool too!

We might drive to Daytona to check out the beach one day.

I wish now I would of made it 14 days!

[rt2dz]

This is what we do--and it works perfectly for us. We go once a year and then take another vacation each year. Our Disney vacation always calls for us leaving sometime in the afternoon/evening on Friday. We get in late Friday night to early Saturday morning. If we get in on Friday, we stay at a cheap place Friday night and get over to the Disney resort (we stay onsite) early Saturday morning so we don't "lose" the day. We then stay all that week and leave the next Sunday evening. We end up with 9 days AT Disney.

[cheerdancer11]

Forever!

I agree! Realistically I'd say 2 weeks would be awesome. Or an entire summer ;)

[ambersmom]

well as we fly from europe, i feel we need at least 2 weeks, (thats what i say to hubby anyway) we normally split it up and have a few days in keys or miaimi then drive up to orlando and have about 12-14 days, then drive back down to miami, sometimes we have about 8 days in orlando then head off somewhere else, weve visted more places in florida than we have here in spain, and weve lived here almost 20 years, our daughter always comes homes with a slight us accent, do you think shes trying to tell us something

ambersmom :flower:

[ambersmom]

well as we fly from europe, i feel we need at least 2 weeks, (thats what i say to hubby anyway) we normally split it up and have a few days in keys or miaimi then drive up to orlando and have about 12-14 days, then drive back down to miami, sometimes we have about 8 days in orlando then head off somewhere else, weve visted more places in florida than we have here in spain, and weve lived here almost 20 years, our daughter always comes homes with a slight u.s accent, do you think shes trying to tell us something.

ambersmom :flower:

[disneysteve]

Forever! :cloud9:
Count me in.

Here's my 2-cents. With a 3-year-old going during the summer, I would want as much time as possible. I'd want to be able to get in the parks early and hit the main attractions before it gets too hot or too crowded. Then leave the park by 12 or 1 o'clock. Head back to the hotel for a break, lunch, swim, nap, whatever. Or head to non-park attractions like hotel-hopping, downtown Disney or off-site stuff. With a little one, make sure to get over to Fort Wilderness and walk the trail, check out the petting zoo. Or rent a boat and take a little spin around the lake. Then, around dinner time you could re-enter a park for a couple of hours until bedtime.

All of that said, I think a week or so is plenty.

[patrenoe]

We like to take our time and never feel rushed. For us its usually a 10 day minimum. A lot of the times we only go to a park every other day so we can enjoy all the resort has to offer. Dh plays at least one round of golf every trip. :flower:

[newholidayx2]

This Aug DS13 & I are taking our first ever two week vacation!
Most days we're planning on parks either at their openings (once each) or not till late afternoon/night
The rest of the time will be spent at WDW pools

[SnowWhite]

Forever! :cloud9:


Ditto!!!

[all4fun]

Forever! :cloud9:

Ahhh that's how we feel too!

10 days is technically "enough" but more is better. :)

[orlosipher]

My last two trips to WDW were both one week, Saturday to Saturday trips.

On my honeymoon trip in 1999, this was technically enough time; we did everything we wanted to in each of the four parks, took one day for water parks (TL and River Country), and took one day off because my husband had to see the Star Wars movie that had just been released ( :sad2: ). I would have liked another day or two though!

On our trip in February 2004 with our almost 3 years old DS and other family members, a week was not long enough. We needed two full days at MK (and still didn't see everything) and only managed to have a rest day on our last day there. With a young one, we definitely could have used at least two rest days and multiple days to visit a couple of the parks. I don't know what we would have done if it had been warm enough to visit the water parks!

I guess that my ideal length of stay with a child (if I want to see as much of everything as possible without exhausting everyone) would be a week and a half. Anything longer than that and I'd be afraid that my DH would experience Disney burnout!

[cristbaby]

I think 10 days is good. That gives us time to do all 4 parks and a water park and probably sit around the pool for 1 full day. :sunny:

[vascubaguy]

I think it would mostly depend on what you wanted to do while you were there. You may want to take a look at the Disney planner and make a list of things that you'd like to see while you are there and then plan accordingly. My mom took my nephew when he was 3 and he didn't really enjoy the parks and got burnt out pretty quick and preferred spending time at the pool and water parks.

For my upcoming trip, I got the 7 day hopper and will be there 9 days. I added 2 days for travel and relax time... and 7 days at the parks. Then I am taking an extra day when I get home to "recover" before coming back to work.

[happynewyorker]

7 days is normal, but if your from overseas it's a month for some. We will be in Florida in June 2005 and we original wanted to stay at a hotel that has a kitchen and stove, we found the prices high. We found a house for less the cost of the hotel and it has it's own pool. Great idea about renting in Florida.

Have a great time! :cool1:

[plamp]

I think the answer also depends upon how frequently you vacation at WDW. We were there for 8 days late April and got AP's for our trip to use next year in mid-April.
We had not been in sometime so there was a lot of new attractions to see. With three kids (6, 9 and 14), we kept a somewhat relaxed pace (parks in the mornings, resort/pool in the afternoons and some park evenings after dinner) and still managed to cover the 4 main parks pretty thoroughly. We plan to be returning for vacations at WDW more often now, so I wasn't too worried about missing something this trip.
I really enjoy being at WDW, but we love our home more. After about a week, we were all a little homesick.

[Mom to Will and Finn]

Last time we stayed for 8 days and it wasn't enough. This time we'll be staying for 10 days and it doesn't seem like it will be enough. I'd say ideally I'd like to stay between 14 and 18 days.

[Merriwind]

Sad to say, it's always too short! But, we get home and start planning our next visit!

[DW2006]

is to stay 7 days. We stayed that long on our honeymoon too. Now you could stay longer no doubt, because they didn't even have AK when we were there in '96. But based on our kids ages (7, 5, 3 and 6 months at the time of the trip) we are going to focus on MK and AK with one day at Epcot. But we plan to take it easy, with loose planning and still observing a mid day ''chill'' time for the kids so that they aren't over taxed and tired by the end of the day.

[goodferry]

Each trip is not long enough, we haven't figured it out yet either. This is our fourth trip and we are going for 10 days, so we will see how that works out. We keep having kids, so it seems like we have a young one along for each trip, lol. This trip dd will be two and I anticipate it will be more difficult than when she was one. At one, she slept in the stroller and was very laid back, I expect that will change now that she has ideas and opinions and a will, so I think everything will take a little longer! I would love to stay two weeks, but we have our own business and just can't leave for that long.

[MamaLema]

We drive from Canada so for us 2 weeks in the min. :sunny:

[wvjules]

We've never stayed more than a week and felt like that was plenty of time, but we don't do the water parks or take a day off, actually we don't do WS either. This year we'll be there for 5 1/2 park days. We might to EMH, we might not, depends on how much we want to see and do. I'm sure we'll miss some things, but we will be back eventually.

[summersfam4]

After last year, it will be 10 days for us or more. Last year was the first year that we didn't take our 3 extra days at the beach (due to hurricanes at the last min.) After staying for 10 days in the same resort with our DD's (ages 5 & 1 at the time) we decided that nothing could be more relaxing. We filled most all of our days with a park/waterpark, and did MK 2 times, Epcot once (we wished we had more time for this), and AK/MGM in one day with hopping. It was perfect but could always be longer! Good Luck deciding!

Kelly :wizard:

[jennf]

we went in Dec 04 for 11 days/10 nights.... we have booked our next trip for Aug 05 for the same amount of time...with the 1st and last day basically travel days..that leaves us with 9 full days. This way we can take our time at the parks..

[pbharris4]

My ideal length of stay would be 14 days (if it were the summer). 1 week at WDW and 1 on the DCL or VB after the parks. When my youngest is a few years older we'll do it. Ahhh...2 whole weeks! I wish we could do it this year, but DH switched jobs a year ago and needs to bank up some time. After this vacation, he'll only have 2-3 days left so he'll have to volunteer so he can get comp time as well.

[funcinderella]

5 nights is definitely not enough (did that once.) Then did 9 nights; getting better, but still not enough. If time isn't an issue, I'd say 2 weeks. The tickets to add on those extra days are so cheap, it's just your hotel and food that you'd be paying for. Sign up for the Mousesavers newsletters for links to unadvertised tickets too, that are for longer than 10 days at an awesome price!!

[mill4023]

We just got back from our first trip. 10 days and it wasn't enough time.
But we did spend a day at Universal and a day at Sea World.
We definitely could have used some extra rest days.
Maybe it's different since it was our first time, but I didn't feel like we had enough time at any of the parks. We spent a day and a half at MK, a full day at MGM, a full day at Epcot, and a full day at AK.
Ideally, I'd like to make our next trip a full 2 weeks. That would give us enough time at the parks and enough rest days to just hang out around the resort.

[MAKMOM41]

I say 12 days also if you can do it. :flower:

[dtsaos]

2 weeks


Sorry to interupt this thread, but where is that beautiful picture from? Looks like Vermont...

:flower2:

[shellynn24]

I would say that you need at least a week if you are going with kids. That's what we did the last 2 times we went. We are lucky because we usually fly into FL a week before our WDW vacation to visit my parents(Tampa). Then we drive early to WDW on our check-in day. It's like having another full day there! :banana: This time we are going for 10 nights, I think that'll be 10 full days at WDW. The last day is just travel. DH will be leaving very early to go back to Iraq :sad1: so it won't be a very magical day for me, DS, or DD. But the 10 days before that we'll get to see all the parks, the Water Parks for a little while and have some glorious pool/rest time at POFQ! I'm really looking forward to having more time there. :cheer2:

[MKFan-PR]

For us it would be 2 weeks. That's ideal. We usually do 9 or 10 days because my ideal vacation is not necessarily my wallet's ideal vaction! :earboy2:

[youngdizluva18]

Our family stays anywhere from 3-10 days. I have found that 9 days is just enough to see about everything. This Xmas, we are staying for 16 days and we'll see how that is. It may give more time to relax and shop, but of course, we're also running the marathon, so that isn''t that relaxing!

[LegoMom3]

Five days if we're just doing theme parks; a good 7 or 8 days if we want water parks and some "leisure" time built in!

[Ladybugsy]

If you are factoring in what season you are at Disney, would that make a difference to you? My family will be going at just about the slowest time of year...mid September. We don't plan on doing any water parks, just the 4 main parks. We're arriving the afternoon of the 14th, and leaving the morning of the 22nd. So, 7 full days, plus the half day on arrival. Can we "see it all"?

[Laurajean1014]

I would love to go for two weeks each time we visit, but DH owns his own business and cannot be away for more than 10 days, so we live with that.

[Cindy & Mickey]

Ideally, I'd love to stay 9 nights. That would allow for enough time to enjoy the parks, all my favorite restaurants, the water parks, the hotel amenities, and the hotel pool.

I can never seem to get away for more than 4 nights, so we travel there more frequently. The longest I've stayed has been 7 nights, and still I didn't cover it all.