To Park Hop or not?

[nicolej92]

I love the park hopper option! When I went with my friend, if we missed a ride because of a long wait time or whatever reason, we were able to hop back over on a different day to ride it.

 

[alopez926]

I never felt the need to have them, but we never leave the park at noon to go back to the hotel. We are "stay all day" kind of folks and we make a day of it whereever we are. However, in light of the recent crowd levels, I'd definitely consider it next trip. It does give you flexibility when you're in a Level 8-10 crowd and the other parks are more manageable on a given day.

 

[stinkpickle]

We always buy hoppers, especially since AK (early closing) and HS (few attractions) aren't all day parks. We like to attend morning EMH and then hop to a recommended park afterwards..and the opposite with evening EMH.

 

[SM101]

Hoppers all the way. We frequently do rope drop at one park to enjoy rides, take a break back at the hotel, then head off to another park to use FP's, dinner, enjoy the lights, go to some shows.

 

[John Paul]

Lots of great info...Main thing for us is Meals. We could plan parks but where we eat is important to us. So if you wish to do Crystal Palace in AM but are eating inside Epcot that evening u will need PHs

 

[Dis703]

We always had hoppers up until our most recent trip, but even when we had them out of 8-10 days we rarely ever hopped more than twice. Those occasions were usually days like when we went to AK and it poured rain to the point we gave up and left the park mid day. Then we went into Epcot that night since it was close to our resort. Or we wanted to do Fantasmic on a day we were in Epcot because there was no show on our planned HS day.

I was nervous about not having them this year but we had to bring the budget down and I couldn't justify the $350 for our family of five to hope maybe once or twice. I have to say I didn't miss it at all. We planned one park per day and it worked out beautifully.

I think it's one of those things if you think you'll want to do it and the price is not an issue you may has well, but if budget is an issue you won't miss it. You can also add it after you are there if you are unsure.

 

[d1gitman]

We have grown to like hopping now that our boys are older and we dont' have anything in tow while in the parks. however, our August trip of this year was our first with the magicband and FP+. while we liked FP+ and magicband, we found hopping was a disadvantage when using our ghost bands. for our January trip we will not hop in order to maximize FP+ and SDFP+ with our ghost bands.

 

[Accident]

We are DL regulars and are taking a trip to WDW in February. I am not used to the advance planning with FP+, and am trying to figure out if we should Park Hop or not?

Being from DL, the first thing your going to notice is how far everything is from each other in WDW. Park hopping can take awhile to switch parks. My recommendation, save your money and don't get them. They will cost exactly the same to upgrade them while there if you decide it's worth the cost.

 

[lb2000]

Thank you for all of the great tips!

 

[ReluctantDisaholic]

We always get hoppers - I also like being able to head to MK if it's open until midnight after we've gone to other parks.

 

[mummabear]

We have always done park hoppers since DLR was our home park, so we hopped 3 out of 4 WDW trips. The last one we decided not too and it was awesome.
We made the choice since the cost for our family to hop vs the number of times we had hopped had been $60 each time.
So this trip instead of hitting MK after AK closed we went to AKL and ate at Sanaa then watched the animals by the campfire, we then went back to the pool and swam. We had dinners at resorts, we swam way more than we had in previous trips, we watched movies at the beach, we hit the campfires etc. And it was so relaxing and so much more fun then park time until we dropped constantly!

 

[thewelts]

We are DLR regulars also. We purchased hoppers for our first trip to WDW in December 2013 with the full intention of using them. We were there for 7 nights and we NEVER used the hoppers. NEVER! We were also at a Monorail resort (Grand Floridian).
WDW is way too big and transportation between parks is not easy, fast or convenient.

We return in two weeks - no hoppers for us this trip!