Doing a short trip?

[freckles04]

I've only experienced Disney in week-long doses, and I'm considering an *extra* trip this June to take my parents along. (4 day trip) It would be very budget conscious: 1 or 2 TS if we do any (all our favorites are booked, anyhow). We'd stay at POP and spend most of our time in the park.. 1 day at each park.

For those of you that do short trips, can you share any advice? Is it too exhausting? (we love our rest days...) Have you done one and will never do it again? Is it worth the $? How do you take advantage of what park time you have?

 

[Viking Princess]

My only advice would be, know and respect when people are 'done' for the day. It can be easy to try to fit in too much because of not having that full week.

If you do that, then it isn't too exhausting because longer days (MK and Epcot) are offset by shorter days (HS and AK). Two years ago I went for a long weekend and did AK and Epcot one day and then HS and MK the next, then went to Universal and flew out on Sunday. I'm not sure I could have gone to work on Monday if I didn't already have it off, but I would absolutely do it again.

 

[Epaima]

I took a short (Friday night to Monday afternoon) trip the beginning of March. We normally take midday breaks during our longer trips, so it was a bit more exhausting to go from morning to night. We felt it was worth it, though we had just been in December and thus didn't feel like we had to do everything possible and could focus on just having a good time.

 

[katt789]

I do short trips all the time! Mostly solo, and they usually involve a ton of park hopping!

I'll usually arrive as early as I can, and head into a park for the evening festivities that night. And take advantage of EMH if there are any, head to say, AK for AM emh, finish everything I can, then hop to somewhere else to do as much as I can there.

I usually just do the favorite activities , and skip out on the things I don't REALLY love. It is kinda tiring at points, but still awesome!

 

[ghtx]

I am a big fan of short trips. Our last one was just three full park days (with hopping).

I like that we can just focus on the parks (which is what my family and I like best) and not have to worry about rest days or down days. We cram a lot in (but still take afternoon breaks and early nights - little kids).

The main drawback is that transportation costs, per day of the trip, are higher (you have to pay twice as much airfare for two 4-day trips as you do for one 8-day trip).

 

[freckles04]

Thanks for replying! I looked at the crowd calendar on touringplans for our dates and came up with a tentative schedule. all these are "best parks" for that particular date.

day 1: MK.. full day of course

day 2: AK (we were done with AK by 3pm last August, so maybe pool time and rest in the evening)

day 3: Epcot (full day... we LOVE epcot, but strolling through W.S. in the evening is not exhausting to me. we could probably do lunch and rest time at POP before coming back for W.S.)

day 4: DHS.. we actually did this rope-drop til closing and loved it, so again, a full day. probably would a TS here for fantasmic pkg since my parents haven't seen fantasmic.

I'm concerned about feeling rushed! but may feel less rushed.. last trip, I was too concerned with riding and seeing every little thing that we didn't stop to smell the roses. At least I know what rides we want to do & leave out the ones we didn't care for.


I guess I should add that airfare is out of the budget and we'd be driving 12+ hours each way (making this really a 6-day thing). that's the real bummer!

 

[dragonfly08]

Most of my trips are four days...that's about how long my kids last before they're too burned out for it to be fun any more.

We just know that there's no way we can do everything in a visit. It helps that we don't do any thrill rides, so no time wasted running for FPs or standing in any lines for them. Even so there's a lot we don't get to. Especially fireworks/parades/etc. at night. My kids are early to rise, do RD types so they simply can't make it all day. We eat a quick breakfast in the room as we get ready, hit the parks first thing, stop for lunch when we're ready (I don't do ADRs because they take too much time and tie us down to scheduled meals which doesn't work as well for us), and go until the kids are done at about 3 PM. Then it's back to the resort for a swim, nap, shower, dinner in a resort or DTD. Some down time at the resort after that and lights out by 9:30/10:00 at the latest.

By day 4 they're beasts and while we're sad for our vacation to be over, we're still sort of glad to be heading home. Disney is the kind of vacation we love, but need a vacation from when it's over because it's mentally but definitely not physically relaxing!

 

[JamiLeigh]

This will be our first trip with kids, previous trips have been a week long. We fly in early Thursday afternoon and have plans to hit DD. Friday is HS for SWW and Saturday and Sunday we plan to spend at MK and fly home Monday. My boys are 5 and 2 so I think after 3 1/2 days they will be wiped out. We plan on going back in about 2 yrs do we aren't concerned with doing everything, since we are skipping Epcot and AK. We just plan on hitting those things we know they will enjoy, we will skip just about all princess related stuff to cut down on time. We have a few character ADR's planned as well. I think it's totally doable, just do your research and know what to do and what to skip.

 

[freckles04]

Thanks for the insight!

Now to decide if going in mid-June is a smart idea. We (just my son and I) went in early August and the heat was brutal. I swore I'd never go again in the summer, but I guess it's like childbirth, you kinda forget the pain and have another one... hehe.

 

[amypetecar]

I did 4 days last year over MLK weekend. I liked it alot (except the 38 degree high temp!). but for us, we focused on just 3 of 4 parks.

We did 2 days at MK, 1 day at the studios, and 1 at universal. Not trying to cram all 4 parks in made it enjoyable.

The time we tried to cram 4 parks into 3 days several years ago was a disaster!