3 Day Hopper or 4 Day 1 park/day?

[casadegeorge]

I'm hoping for input. Would you rather have a 3 day hopper or a 4 day one park per day?

We have 3 full days to dedicate to DL (T/W/Th) Feb 9th-11th with lower crowds, but we could spend a partial 4th day on that Friday (much busier crowds) if we get the 4 day but I'd lose the park hopper option if we do 4 days.

Staying in GCH if that makes a difference. Its been 8 years since we were in DL so several new attractions, but also some things are closed, so I can't decide which route to take. We are WDW vets so 3 days seems like so few days but I realize the layout/parks are quite different.

ETA: I just checked the schedule for Friday the 12th and it looks like Soarin' will be open plus they have EMH at DCA at 7am, so I am leaning towards 4 day 1 park per day so we can get a chance to ride Soarin' on this trip.

 

[Butterfly123]

I would do the four day...2 at DL, and 1 and the partial at DCA. I love hoppers, but I think more time beats out the hopper in your case (I love soarin').

I just want to add that those first few hours are when you get the most done, so even though it's a Friday, I think you'd get a lot done that morning.

 

[sherilaine]

I would do the 4 days and pick park day based on EMH since you are onsite.

 

[figment_jii]

I'm a big fan of park hoppers, because they give you a lot of flexibility. The two parks are so close together, you can essentially get from one to the other in less than 150 steps. Think of DL as Epcot's FW, DCA as Epcot's WS, and the Esplanade (the are between the two parks) like the bridge that connects FW and WS. I like park hoppers because you can go between the two parks as much as you want. So that way, if something comes up, you can go back to the other park. For example, let's say you wanted to ride RSR, but it goes down before you can ride it on your DCA day. You either have to dedicate a second day to DCA or forgo that attraction...on the other hand, if you have the PH option, you could go to RSR during DCA's EMH, then hop back over to DL for the rest of the day. Similarly, if DL is open later than DCA, you can hop over to DL for a bit after DCA closes (on your days, it looks like DL is open for an additional hour, which is enough time to ride at least one or two attractions).

 

[chickapin parterre]

Your EMH is the key to a successful trip, being that you have no "traditional" bonding with Disneyland, one day tickets complete your goal and my gut feeling is that you will find DCA is a better visit then disneyland.

 

[MICKEYFIL]

I have the same problem coming up and I went with the 5 day 1-park per day pass versus the 4 day park hopper. Personally I prefer to camp at the side that I am on rather than run back and forth.

 

[todzwife]

I may be in the minority but I prefer single park tickets because once they started enforcing the fast pass return times, hopping wasn't as easy. I also have 4 kids and moving everyone through the park, standing in line to get through again on the other side takes upwards of an hour+ and found that we were wasting a lot of time. We just do 3 day 1 park per day tickets now and don't feel like we're missing out by not hopping.

 

[nacho113]

I'm hoping for input. Would you rather have a 3 day hopper or a 4 day one park per day?

We have 3 full days to dedicate to DL (T/W/Th) Feb 9th-11th with lower crowds, but we could spend a partial 4th day on that Friday (much busier crowds) if we get the 4 day but I'd lose the park hopper option if we do 4 days.

Staying in GCH if that makes a difference. Its been 8 years since we were in DL so several new attractions, but also some things are closed, so I can't decide which route to take. We are WDW vets so 3 days seems like so few days but I realize the layout/parks are quite different.

ETA: I just checked the schedule for Friday the 12th and it looks like Soarin' will be open plus they have EMH at DCA at 7am, so I am leaning towards 4 day 1 park per day so we can get a chance to ride Soarin' on this trip.

We are also WDW vets and visited Disneyland for the first time, a couple of years ago. We stayed offsite, but offsite in Cali is only 1 city block from the parks (totally different animal from WDW layout). We only had 2 days for DL and were debating the hopper ticket also. The 2 parks are similar to WDW but SOOOOO different in the layout and even themeing. Ended up booking without the Hopper and glad we did because there was so much that was different, and any of your knowledge of WDW touring goes out the window. We had 2 very full days and ended up adding the third day and spending the morning at DL to hit the "Mountains" one more time before we moved down to San Diego.
Enjoy and be ready for a much different adventure (that will seem...oh so familiar!)

 

[scrapperkimmydee]

We did park hoppers when we only had 3 days. It was actually pretty great to have 1.5 days at each park. On our 4th day, we did a character breakfast before we headed home. It was quite nice to sandwich our 3 park days in between DTD trips (we shopped our 1st night there).

Next time, we're going for 4 full days, so we won't need to park hop.