Advice/Tips for 1st Time Park Hoppers

[Ava]

Okay, so I'm not a first-time park hopper, but I've never done it with kids (or with FP+). However, I am thinking of adding hopping to our tickets for next year. This year we did just one park a day, and sometimes going back to the same park after a break at the hotel felt a little like déjà vu. Or like we were just going in circles. So I'm considering changing it up next year and trying hopping. But the planning aspect seems daunting.

For you experienced hoppers -
Do you hop every day, or just some?
How do you choose your two parks on the days you hop? (Crowd calendars, or another way?) Or do you wing it when it comes to choosing the second park?
Do you get your FP+ for your first or second park?
Any sites you can recommend with sample park hopping itineraries?

 

[happymommy]

We have always had park hoppers.

Yes, there may be a day or two that we end up only at one park, but in general we like to be free to go wherever we want.

We usually end up at Epcot (or maybe DHS) in the evenings. We like the choices for food at Epcot, and MK doesn't serve alcohol (except dinner at BOG which doesn't appeal to me anyway) so a drink at Epcot is fun.

We don't usually plan where we're going later in the day much. That's one thing I don't care for with FP+. We liked the old system much better. I recall one trip when we were staying at AKL, and we waited for a bus. We just decided whichever bus comes, that's where we're going first! It was fun.

You can always add hopper to your tickets after you get there, so you don't really need to decide ahead of time. It does sound like you would have liked to have it last trip though.

 

[baseballnut]

We generally plan the morning at one park and evening at another. And we usually ended up at MK at the end of each night, lol.

If you've used up your three FP+ in the morning, you can pick another when you get to the second park. We like to go at rope drop so we really don't have to FP+ at the first park, so we can just schedule them at the second park.

You can get a lot done during those first two hours without FP+, then go back to the resort for lunch when lines are busiest.

It depends a lot on what your priority rides are, though. We have always gone on the rides we wanted plenty enough without waits or by scheduling FP+ this way.

 

[Ava]

You can always add hopper to your tickets after you get there, so you don't really need to decide ahead of time. It does sound like you would have liked to have it last trip though.

Yeah, there were a couple days that I would've liked to have had it, mostly because the weather was so iffy. We barely got to see World Showcase because it rained all evening/night on our EPCOT day - not very pleasant for strolling the countries. If we'd had hoppers I'd probably have gone over to DHS and caught some of the indoor shows or something, and done WS on a different evening. We're going during the rainy season again next year, so it would be nice to have the option to switch it up if the weather isn't cooperating.