An Anniversary Trip Full of Favorites-May 2012 PTR!*TR Link 5/14 & Question 5/15 p32*

[wakica]

We plan according to what parks will have lower crowds that day so I go by what parks Tourguide Mike reccomends but other sites seem to be pretty good suggesting which parks as well so I would definitely join one of them. I think Touring plans is a good one if that's the one that actually rates out of 10 how busy the park will be on certain days. I found it to be quite accurate this past trip.

We avoid EMH's like the plague b/c majority of resort people will be at that park on that day. As someone else mentioned this may work if you like waking up VERY early or staying out VERY late but a park hopper would be ideal to enjoy another park during the busiest portion of the day. So I'd take advantage of the EMH for that park and find a quieter one for the other portion of the day. We don't do hoppers though so we just avoid EMH's totally.

We choose a quiet park for each day and get there about 30 - 40 min before opening time. We head for the most popular rides first to get them out of the way as walk on. This usually takes up our first hour to 2 of our day and then we slow down and enjoy the not so popular attractions that don't get so lined up but we still get Fast Passes for the popular ones that we want to ride again and again

We leave the park usually mid day so between 2 or 3 and 5 or 6. This helps us to get out of the sun to cool down - we take a nap or enjoy the pool and are refreshed and ready to go back for the evening entertainment.

Evenings are for quieter attractions, shows, and just soaking it all in oh and shops too!!! We may get a fast pass or two for a more popular attraction but that's not really the focus of our evenings.

As for ressies - we only do a few b/c we don't like working our touring plans around them. We usually bring in some snacks or grab a bit to eat at counter service for lunch and we eat at our condo for supper before heading back into the park. If you want to do a ressie each day it would probably work well to do a supper one so it's during your more relaxed park pace time and chances are better that touring won't interfere with the meal time.

If we have a down day which we always plan for every few days we might throw in a ressie at DTD or at a resort. OR if you plan to pop to a park to repeat it but it's going to be a slower day then a ressie would work good on that day too.


Well, I think I've gone on enough. LOL> good luck in chaning up your park touring habits We have found that the way we do it keeps us all happy every time. Nobody gets too worn out or over heated b/c of the break during the craziest and hottest portion of the day.

I can't wait to read your tr!! Right now I have laundry to do but hope to be catching up on all I've missed while away in the next week so I'll be back soon.

 

[SOUTHERNtinkerBELLE]

Hi Jen! I know I'm about a week late, but I just wanted to say welcome home! I'm so glad you had a great trip, minus the overheating in Epcot - how scary!

I'm about to head over to your TR, but I wanted to put in my two cents about how we plan out our days. We don't really pay too much attention to park hours or EMH, but instead we pretty much follow a standard framework for our trips, which is pretty much always MK on day 1, Epcot on day 2, and then AK or DHS on days 3 and 4, back to either MK or Epcot on day 5 and we finish it off with either MK or Epcot on our last full day before we head home (whichever one we didn't do on day 5). I should say, that's how we typically plan our mornings. For the evenings, I'll focus more on evening EMH (sometimes). For our upcoming October trip though, I'm looking at a crowd calendar for the first time. Got to shake up my planning a bit! I still must do MK first and Epcot second though, so who knows how much it will actually help me!

 

[PlutosRHM55]

I generally plan my trips around EMHs as well as personal preference. First, I will usually pick the parks for each day and with park hoppers, that is generally two and my first day always contains Magic Kingdom because I'd like to start off my trip seeing Cindy's castle. Then I try to fit in as much EMHs as I can, preferably morning ones than plan around that. Once I have that all picked, I then pick which ADRs or CSs I will try to visit around the days and where I'll be in terms of those ADRs. So far, these plans don't stick and are broken by other plans, but this only worked when I didn't have ADRs so I would definitely try getting where you will go during the week first based on personal preference and EMH then ADRs and I recommend, if you are not willing to staying up until the end of night EMHs you plan around the morning EMHs.

Hope this helps!

 

[Merida]

Welcome back! Even though I'm super late!

We (or rather I, but Bear is becoming way more interested in it now) don't really do much planning. It's mostly based on where we want to eat, plus reading easywdw and touring plans. Definitely try to hit up any EMHs available and will parkhop if we don't like the way a park is turning out (esp. since we have the car). Then we just wander through the park, picking out rides pretty much at random/based on wait times. It's not very organized or efficient but it works about 90% of the time. I think our "touring style" is more suited to Disneyland - there's no way to out-plan the locals (I tried and failed). Blundering around like idiots seems to confuse them though!

 

[ronnmel]

Welcome back! Hope I didn't miss too much while I was away from the Dis. Will sub to your TR, so I can read it soon.

We didn't have park hoppers last time, so we tried to avoid all EMH. The only time we went to one (evening EMH at MK), we took a super long break during the day, and woke up mega late the next day. So our next day was World Showcase at Epcot, since it doesn't open until 11am and there aren't really any rides that require being there early anyway. I think we showed up by early afternoon. Besides avoiding EMH, we look at crowd calendars and try to at least avoid worst park. We end up with a mix of good and neutral parks.

Since we are "get up early, stay in the park until closure without a break" kind of people, we need a good rest day about every 3 days. We tried taking mid-day breaks, but it just doesn't work for us. Maybe if we stayed at a deluxe resort and were close to a park it would work better. Or if we had a car... But we like not having to drive and worry about parking.

We actually don't like ADR so much because we don't like being tied down to a schedule. So we stick more to counter-service.