10 Park Days, In order or mix it up?

[LiveToTravelNicely]

We mix it up. I try to spread them out sort of evenly through the trip though. We utilize park hopper to spend some extra time in EP and MK and one half day at each HS and AK. (ends up with 1.5 days at each AK and HS and 2.5 days at each EP and MK) And when we go for 9 or more days, we like to hit every park on the last day (We call it 4 Parks 1 World day! Start at the AM-EMH park and end at the MK for fireworks doing 1 or 2 attractions at each park. This year, we're starting at EP, then AK, HS, and end at MK.) For the 10 days presented by OP, I'd divide my week into 4 days, rest day, 4 days, and last day as the four parks day.

 

[Farro]

We mix it up.

We do 9 days and honestly by day 6 all our plans tend to go out the window!

Unless it's a fast pass we just have to do, we usually at that point just start going to wherever we feel like we want to see again. Maybe we'll go to one park just to ride the scheduled fast pass, then leave and hit another park. Or the pool. Or we'll wake up and see what we can switch for fast passes if we feel like another park. Or just miss our fast passes altogether.

We try to get all our must do rides done within first 5 days because we know ourselves...

10 days is a nice long time, enjoy!

 

[Skippyboo]

With the Fast pass system, you want to do the hard to get ones first like Flights of Passage, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Toy Story etc so those FP are going to dictate what park you go to. Also if you have hard to get ADRs those will also dictate parks. If you going to eat at Ohana at 6pm, you want to be near the Poly.

With the amount of days you have I would mix it up. Do early mornings, take a break at hotel and then hit a different park later in the day. AK you want to go in AM when the animals are most active and then also come back for night to see Tree and Pandora.

In August, pay attention to the nights where Not So Scary Halloween parties are because the MK will close early on those nights.

If you don’t already have it, adding the plus option to your park hopper gets you water parks and mini golf plus other stuff. The add on cost is not that much and it pays back the cost with one trip to the water parks.

 

[GillianP1301]

We do 10 park days in August and mix it up too. I like to spread things out for variety and I also get a hopper so I have some flexibility to change plans on the fly. I have a general plan in place so I know what I want to try to cover at any given park on each day so that I don't end up missing out on anything I really want to do. By the time I spread it out and split up my days with hopping I generally visit each park 4 to 6 different times over those 10 days.

 

[kuhltiffany]

Wow, great advice everyone, so much to think about! We will only have 1 ADR (BOG breakfast), as we tend to just eat wherever, whenever, which will be easy on the Free Dining. I think I'll have to make a list of FP we want to get and see how we are able to schedule those in (mornings hopefully). The afternoons we'll play by ear, depending on the weather and energy levels...

 

[SplashMo]

I like to decide on the number of days in each park. Then I use Touring Plans to pick the best MK days. Then I asssign from there

Perhaps

MK 3days
Ep 3 days
AK 2 days
DHS 2 days

Then if you want less in one park perhaps hop or do something diffrent.

 

[Bostonbeans99]

This trip I did it a little differently. We are going 10 days. I have it MK the first 2 days and then after that I went alphabetically AK, Epcot, HS.
(I have park hoppers though so that doesn't mean I will end up in the evening with what park I started with.)

That covers 5 days and then I went back through to AK, EP, HS, end with MK,MK.

The reason I did this alphabetically is so even without my itinerary handy I can remember which park I start the day off with.
As my vacation days are getting closer, I am able to "tweak" things.

A good example is : Online I saw one of the parks was staying open much later and that I would probably not be in bed until 2, 3 a.m. & I knew by memory I had a very early Epcot Soarin' FP next morning that I might want to get rid of. Unfortunately only 6:45 & 7:15 p.m. Soarin's were left so I am leaving it alone for now.

My ADR's were made a long time and my fast passes almost 60 days ago. I am excited to see the park EMH changing and some days on my vacation now MK is open until midnight and 1 a.m. WOOHOOO

(btw, I promise I am not OCD...I noticed I booked FP's for MK,MK then AK,E,HS and noticed the easy to remember pattern & then went what the heck AK, E, HS, with MK MK bookends.)

 

[DaisyDuck001]

If I am staying at one hotel for the whole trip, then I'd mix it up. However, usually I do a split stay among three or at least two hotels, in which case I may do consecutive days at the park closest to the hotel where I'm staying at the time.

 

[slpeters]

We mix it up, but I kind of found that the list of things we wanted to do sort of planned it out for us. We did EMH every day, took afternoon breaks every day, preferred not to have morning and evening in the same park, wanted to see all five evening spectacles, wanted at least one day with FPs at each park, wanted two days of FOP FPs, wanted to do 4 half days at MK and three half days at each of the other parks. By the time we plugged all that in, there were actually only two configurations that worked.

 

[mickeyfanachey1999]

We typically hit 2 parks each day except for the day after evening EMH in MK since they usually run pretty late. We tend to start with MK each trip but after that it's pretty random.

 

[MaC410]

My wife and I typically have the same plan each trip. We start the trip by going to each park once and then for the rest of the trip go back and forth between Epcot and Magic Kingdom since those are our favorite parks. We get park hoppers so we are never tied to one park. When we start alternating between Epcot and MK we sometimes divide those days between different parks if let's say we find ourselves wanting to go to HS again.

 

[juuuliebeth]

I definitely prefer to start and end with Magic Kingdom. Especially starting. It doesn't feel like a Disney trip until I see that castle. I always do each park before repeating anything. And this may sound weird, but I prefer going in order of openings - Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom. I don't know why, but I do.