How long do you stay at WDW?

saraschoening

Mouseketeer
Joined
Nov 21, 2014
We are from Victoria BC and are going on our first WDW vacation in May. It is a little way to go so we have decided to stay for 14 nights at POR and buy 10 day tickets. Our friends and co-workers keep asking us why we are staying for so long and it is because we want to see as much as we can.

I was just wondering how long everyone else goes for when they travel to WDW? Also how many days do you usually spend at each park?
 
Last year we went for 18 days. This year, we are also going down for 18 days. We go to the parks daily because we buy annual passes and we park hop a lot too. We spend most of our time in Epcot/MK, followed by HS and then AK. We will probably got to AK 2 or 3 days out of 18 days.
 
It varies from trip to trip. Never less than a week. The longest was 2 weeks. Our MINIMUM park days are : MK- 2, EP- 2, DHS - 1, AK- 1. We always have at least one non park day in the middle of the trip to rest and relax. With longer stays we'll add extra days at our favourite parks and extra non park days to explore other things.
 
The longer the better! We drive 24 hours to get to Disney so never less than 12 nights. This year it will be 2 nights Universal/10 Disney with one night each way on the road.
 


We are driving straight from Mtl (24h drive) and will stay 7 nights at WDW (5 days at the parks) and 10 days at the beach.
 
We stay at St.Pete Beach (3rd time we go there) but some say it's not the nicest of the area. Check Clearwater or Anna-Maria on the gulf side.
 


I like 7 days. 3 MK, 2 EP, 1 HS and a 3/4 day for AK.

I don't like to use more vacation time but 7 works fairly well to try and get average ticket prices in the acceptable range.

The quickest is due east.

East coast and Gulf coast beaches are different though. In FLA I prefer the gulf. Takes a little longer though. For a day trip I'd probably just go east, several small and large beaches right there on the space coast.
 
You might also consider cutting the number of park days but adding WPFAM instead. We went gung ho on the Disney Parks our first few trips (1 week each), but now we spend more time out of the main Disney parks than in. In that many days you can get your fill of the parks and a taste of some of Disney's other offerings. The water parks are terrific, DisneyQuest is great for tweens and teens, and WPFAM also includes golf and mini-golf if either of those interest you. Our first trips we were good with 2MK, 2Epcot, 1AK, 1HS. After that, you've seen/done it all. Now we only do about a half day in each park doing our favorite rides, and we can skip any of Epcot, AK or HS easily; MK still holds a special place.
 
what beaches in the area are nice? We were thinking of a day trip...
Cocoa Beach is probably the closest to WDW. It's a little over an hour drive but worth it. There's a Ron Jons there also. Great way to spend a half day, especially if you like waves.
 
We're from Saskatchewan (hard to spell, easy to draw!) and with the cost of airfare, going fewer times a year and staying longer is a nice way to maximize our winter get away. We have done a couple of 7 night visits and a 12 night and most recently, combined a 7 night cruise with a 10 night stay (5 nights before the cruise, 5 nights after). Our next trip will be the longest yet, Jan 2016 for 21 nights! Rough plan now has us in the parks during the weekdays and sticking to the resort for the weekends. Really looking forward to that!
 
We're from Saskatchewan (hard to spell, easy to draw!) and with the cost of airfare, going fewer times a year and staying longer is a nice way to maximize our winter get away. We have done a couple of 7 night visits and a 12 night and most recently, combined a 7 night cruise with a 10 night stay (5 nights before the cruise, 5 nights after). Our next trip will be the longest yet, Jan 2016 for 21 nights! Rough plan now has us in the parks during the weekdays and sticking to the resort for the weekends. Really looking forward to that!


How was the cruise split stay? We contemplated doing that this time but we were already spending almost $20 000 so we decided to wait. We leave Victoria on April 29th and are staying in Seattle for 2 nights (shopping) and then we fly from Seattle to Orlando on May 1st. We are staying at POR for 14 nights and then the Hard Rock at Universal for 3 nights... then we fly home late on the 18th. We usually do a 2 week long road trip to DL and when we are coming back we always try to prolong it by staying an extra night here or there but its not the same so this time I just booked us a long stay at Disney. I did Universal after WDW so that we had something to look forward to after leaving WDW. I find that I get really sad when we leave.. like really really sad.

I agree with you though that it is a long way to go.
 
Cocoa Beach is probably the closest to WDW. It's a little over an hour drive but worth it. There's a Ron Jons there also. Great way to spend a half day, especially if you like waves.

What about Daytona Beach? My dad is a HUGE Nascar fan so I wanted to get him a few things from there... but what is the actual beach like and the surround areas?
 
POR is a great resort, but have you considered the cost savings to stay at a VALUE resort? We prefer POP Century and this allows us to save $$ to stay longer. I prefer 7-10 days as this allows us some down-time, time for shopping, water parks etc.
 
I was just wondering how long everyone else goes for when they travel to WDW? Also how many days do you usually spend at each park?

I think 10 days will give you a chance to do every single thing at a leisurely pace. In my older years I am finding that some of my most enjoyable times are sitting and people watching and just enjoying the sights and sounds. One of our favourite things to do is resort hop and visit different places for a snack an to shop. We killed the better part of a day once riding the monorail between resorts and shopping / checking things out. For example, we have never stayed at the Contemporary Resort as a family but my son loves to go there to walk around and hit the arcade which is awesome. My wife loves to shop at Grand Floridian and etc etc...
Have a great trip.
 
POR is a great resort, but have you considered the cost savings to stay at a VALUE resort? We prefer POP Century and this allows us to save $$ to stay longer. I prefer 7-10 days as this allows us some down-time, time for shopping, water parks etc.

This is our first trip to WDW and if I knew in the start what I know now.. most of my new found information is from you fine folks.. I would have totally stayed at a Value for 10 days and then 4 days at a deluxe.There is actually a few things that I wish I wouldn't have planned... but hopefully everything will work out. We have a travel agent but other then booking the trip for us she really hasn't been too much help.

I agree with jkquinn.. I love just people watching and exploring. I love going to Vegas and wandering through the different hotels and I really am looking forward to a day of resort hopping. DH doesn't see the point, he just discovered rollercosters 2 years ago so he is all about the rides but I just like to take in the whole experience.
 
What about Daytona Beach? My dad is a HUGE Nascar fan so I wanted to get him a few things from there... but what is the actual beach like and the surround areas?
I can't comment on Daytona Beach, I've never been.

As for Port Orleans, that's the only Disney Resort we've ever stayed at (on 3 occasions) and we absolutely love it. So much so, even though we now own a condo close to Disney, our daughter keeps bugging us to stay there again for a night or two. Almost every visit I'll still hop on the Sassagoula riverboat at Downtown Disney and take the cruise to Port Orleans, get off and walk around the resort for a while. You'll enjoy it!
 
We used to live in Ontario and went to WDW/FL often, usually for 7-10 days. Now we've moved to BC, I wouldn't go for less than 2 weeks. We went for recently for Spring Break, the schedule was:

Day 1: Drive to Seattle, overnight stay
Day 2: Flights to Orlando, stay overnight
Day 3-10: 7 night Disney Cruise
Day 10-13: Hard Rock Cafe/Universal Studios
Day 13-17: Stay with my parents in FL
Day 17: Fly to Seattle
Day 18: Drive home

Between the long, drawn out travel time and the 3 hour time change, it makes sense to stay as long as you can!
 
How was the cruise split stay? We contemplated doing that this time but we were already spending almost $20 000 so we decided to wait. We leave Victoria on April 29th and are staying in Seattle for 2 nights (shopping) and then we fly from Seattle to Orlando on May 1st. We are staying at POR for 14 nights and then the Hard Rock at Universal for 3 nights... then we fly home late on the 18th. We usually do a 2 week long road trip to DL and when we are coming back we always try to prolong it by staying an extra night here or there but its not the same so this time I just booked us a long stay at Disney. I did Universal after WDW so that we had something to look forward to after leaving WDW. I find that I get really sad when we leave.. like really really sad.

I agree with you though that it is a long way to go.

We would like to try driving to WDW, taking our time and enjoying the journey as well as the destination. That's probably going to have to wait until my retirement (in a couple of years) so we'll have the time. I also say we're going to have to rent a trailer for all the things we've wanted to buy but were to expensive to ship and too big for the luggage.

Cruise split stay was fantastic! Transfers were a breeze, Disney efficiency at it's finest. An added bonus to the trip was the fact that we stayed at resorts other than our home resort. So we got a good look at the Boardwalk Villas before the cruise and Old Key West after, and it made us realize how much we enjoy Bay Lake Tower. The cruise itself (our first) was outstanding, everything Disney knows about guest service leveled up!
 
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Shortest trip was 1 week; upcoming trip will be 15 nights (our longest stay ever:-)) For this trip our park time will be 3 days MK, 3 days Epcot, 2 days DHS, 1 day AK. This will give us resort time in between. We also plan a day of DTD shopping (while teen DD's spend 3-4 hours at Disney Quest, we shop). We've done water parks before, but are not doing them this trip. Rather than a water park day, we added 3 days at the front end of our trip at Beach Club to enjoy SAB.
 

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