3 days, 4 parks with 3 year old?

MamaTiger

Earning My Ears
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
Is it crazy to try to go to all the parks in only 3 days? My son will be just shy of his 3rd birthday so we will be skipping many of the "big" rides. Original plan was to skip Animal Kingdom, but the more I look into it, the more I think my son would enjoy it.
We will have park hopper tickets and the basic plan is to rope drop, stay til 1, go home for a nap, and then come back for the evening.
Could add on 1/2 a day on our arrival day probably, but not sure this would be worth it really.

Basically just looking for opinions and advice because I can't decide, thanks for any input!
 
You know your child. I am not sure I would pack 4 parks in three days with a 3 YO, but if you think he will be up to it, I would plan DAK early in the morning, get the safari, the trails, and any other experiences he may like out of the way. My DGD liked the flights of Wonder, and Nemo. Lion king bored her and she took a nap.

DHS after dinner would perhaps be better I think for a child then DAK,
 
With an almost 3 year old you REALLY need to be flexible. My oldest had been to DW 3 times but the trip right before he turned 3 was a nightmare. He was suddenly scared of loud noises, hated thunder (do you know how many attractions feature thunder??), had an opinion of what he wanted, and was not happy when he did not get what he wanted!! At 3 I honestly would skip HS all together. I would plan MK, EP, and then an AM at AK and an evening at MK. But you must ensure that sleep is had by all!! For us, when the kids were little, we did not do the 1pm break. We toured until we were done and then we went back to swim, eat and sleep. Except for a middle day when we would take a break and return for fireworks, but the next day we did not RD.
 
No it is feasibble as long as you work in rest/nap time. Even if our son naps in the stroller we go back to the resort for rest and downtime. This is what I would do.

Day 1 & 2 MK & EPCOT. Go first thing at opening (or son is an early riser so making a 8 or 9am opening is no big deal for us but depends on your child), ride a few things. You can probably get in 3 rides if you utilize FP's and a character meet. W have lunch early around 11:30-12 because that is when he eats at home. Then go back to hotel for nap or swim. Return to a park around 5ish for dinner, another ride and just enjoying evening activities. How late you will stay depends on your child. This trip my son will be 2 1/2 so we may stretch him until 9-10 because he has occaisonally stayed up that late at home though is regular bedtime is 8pm. We will do this one night as not to exhaust him. For us we prefer to do this at MK because Illuminations may be too much for him.

Then I would split AK & HS one day. In fact we are doing this next trip because we prefer to do MK more then one day. We will go to AK first thing in am, ride a few rides (for us this the safari, Rafiki planet watch, the new one in Pandora and letting him play in Dinoland. Our lo won't really sit through the shows. too much waiting in line then sitting but again it depends on the child), see Pandora, eat lunch and go back to resort around 1 pm. We will go to HS in evening at eat the character meal at H&V with a 6pm ressie. We will see Disney Junior and possibly ride TSM if it's not crazy. Otherwise there isn't too much at HS for toddlers so that was the planning thought. He did like the Star Wars fireworks in Oct. but they are not showing on the schedule yet.

As mentioned above, you can plan but prepare to make changes and be flexible depending on your LO. This will be our fourth trip with our toddler and it can be the most fun, but you have to let them rest, eat and stay a little on their schedule or they may have a break down lol! Hope this helps..
 
When were there the week preceding up to Hurricane Matthew, we had to punt and do a couple parks in one day to get them in. My boys were 4 1/2 at the time, and were total troopers through the whole trip with all the issues due to weather (super hot, rainy, windy, etc. etc.)

We did just decide to skip Animal Kingdom altogether as there wasn't much for them to do there, and we can go to the zoo anytime. We did Epcot, the MK, then DHS/Epcot (to see the Star Wars stuff), then a final day at MK (the day they closed early for the hurricane).
 
We did three days before our cruise last September with our special needs DD who was 3 at the time. We got up for rope drop every day and went directly to the rides we most wanted, then used Fast Passes the rest of the day. The best thing we did was to head back to the room around noon and swim before or after DD took a nap. (DD isn't a napper, but she was at Disney! ) It was much needed down time from the constant go go go of the parks. We didn't end up doing any rides at Hollywood Studios, but we were ok with that.
 

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