Are park hoppers worth it?

[fbarker]

Here are the biggest things to me and you'll have to decide based on your plans what you want to do.

Benefit #1: You're not tied to restaurants in your chosen park. We often would find that we could only get reservations we wanted in a park where we didn't really want to spend the day for some reason (i.e. it was an EHM park that day). This makes it much easier.
Benefit #2: Makes evening entertainment much easier. If I want to see fireworks or Illuminations I can jump over to a park just for the evening (this was even more important when we went during times where things weren't every night).
Benefit #3: Gives more flexibility to go do certain crowd-proof things during the hours you want. (For example, during Food and Wine we'd want to make sure to get a few trips to World Showcase but didn't want full days there).

That all being said, it does take time and energy to hop. With 8 park days you'll probably not need it as much since you'll have a lot of flexibility and opportunity to do all you want but also gives you more opportunity to go do more things you want to do again as you get further into your trip.

These are all very good points and are the reasons we use Park Hopper. Its one of the little splurges that we budget into our trip. We love the flexibility of eating at restaurants outside the park we might be visiting on a particular day. We find we do most of our dining in Epcot and the Park Hoppers allow us to do that. So very good points for the benefit of Park Hopping

 

[Pigletpal40]

We rarely spend a whole day at one park. If a park gets too crowded, we'll switch. We hit MK Early EMH and will leave by 11, grab lunch somewhere
and hit another park in the afternoon.

 

[SnipsNSnails]

You are at $18.25 per person per day for food with the QS. If you always share, don't get dessert, soda, or snacks, you might, maybe be able to do it for less, but it's doubtful. Two adult QS without the drinks or desserts will be hard to come out under $20 per day. So that to me would be a no brainer. If you were planning on TS before, price that against the upgrade to DDP. If you had only 1 or 2 planned, it's not going to be worth the upgrade unless you would want to do more. We had hoppers on our trip because we had 2 days with dinner in different parks. One night we hopped to HS for the fireworks too. Just depends on how you tour and what your plans are, might not be worthwhile for you.

 

[Huff]

Many people enjoy visiting only one park each day. For us, we love spending the morning and afternoon at one park and head to another for the evening. This makes it easier to catch the night time shows we want.

The main reason we get PH's is dining. We have the DDP. PH's allow us to go to the park we want for the day and dine at night at or near another park. Especially true since so many of the restaurants are in Epcot. We don't want to spend so many days at Epcot. We'll go to one park, then to Epcot for dinner. Or, we'll eat an early dinner at Epcot then head to Disney Studios.

Other times we'll be at AK for the day then head over to one of the monorail resorts for dinner and finish the night at MK when its open late. If you only have QS dining then the use of PH's for dining is less important.

 

[Huff]

For a very low cost you might want to add 1 or 2 days onto your park tickets in order to be able to visit a park on arrival day or in the morning before you depart.

 

[Lisa F]

We got the park hopper for the first time last year when my kids were 6 & 8. We loved it! It was nice to have the freedom to switch parks when we wanted to, especially in the evening for fireworks or dining. Most days we hit 2 parks and one of the days we visited all 4. Now that we can book the 4th fastpass in any park via the app, I think it is more appealing.

you can book the 4th fastpass at a park different than the first 3 now? How did I miss this news?! AWESOME!

 

[loves to dive]

Another lover of the park hopper, we have never been to WDW without them and we have been going for over 30 something years. Because we've been so many times and go so often, PHs allow us to be more spontaneous. Before the advent of ADRs and FPs, we would go to GS every morning and get that days reservations for meals, with PHs we weren't tied down to any specific park. We find it even more helpful now with the whole ADR/FP set up because we get to still do this. We are not big planners, we prefer to just go for it so if we book FPs in advance, it might be a week in advance but more often than not it's the night before and we still book our ADRs day of, PHs make this so much easier.

 

[Hikergirl]

We never get hoppers, but we don't spend all day in the parks. If I was at RD and planning to stay until closing maybe we'd do it just because I could never spend that much time in some of the parks. Maybe we'd just go back to the resort and enjoy the pool.
For us there is enough entertainment and meal options to not need to go to another park, plus many options outside of the parks at resorts or Disney Springs.

 

[Lisa F]

to answer the OP, it really depends. On my last trip I saved the equivalent of the Halloween party for parkhoppers (just me and my kid) and felt like the Halloween party allowed one day of flexibility for a "half day park" type day coupled with the party was a good tradeoff. I am a single mother so the $130 or whatever it is amounts to real value - the party or two sit down meals etc. On my upcoming trip I split a DVC AP for my son with his father so he has parkhopping and it was only $64 to upgrade my ticket as well and I decided to go for it to give us more flexibility since he already had it and also since I saved so much on the cost of his ticket by splitting the AP vs. two 7 day tickets. I think total what I paid for his ticket and mine was less than I paid 2 years ago for two 5 day tickets without parkhopping.

All that said, we had an awesome trip. I am a planner and once the days were planned, it was fine. I was able to do what I wanted to without parkhopping and kiddo was SO into the parks, he had no desire at all to take breaks. We spent a day in each of Epcot and HS, half a day before the halloween party in AK, and first and last full days at MK in addition to the halloween party. He was younger and at the time it was fine, we only did nighttime stuff at epcot and the halloween party and watched fireworks from our room at BLT the rest of the time.

This trip he is a couple years older, stays up later an we plan to hit all of the nighttime shows including Epcot twice and the PH will help break those longer days up a bit more. I could probably see everything without but it gives me more flexibility of planning with.

 

[Tomh]

10 days 2 adults, 2 teens with 8 day tickets free park hoppers and add on water park fun, no dining for 2799
10 days 2 adults, 2 teens with 8 day tickets, no park hoppers, add on water park, free QS dining for 3388.

These two packages have two differences, second one you do NOT get the park hoppers . . . and you get "free dining" but it costs you $500 more . . . . park hoppers are what, $64 each * 4 so that is $256 worth of park hoppers you aren't getting, so that "free dining" offer is actually costing you $756 more. It still may be better than paying oop for food, i guess, depending on how much you all eat. My family are pretty hardy eaters. We are actually budgeting $2500 for food for our 11 day stay.

Anyhow, on to the question of the park hoppers. Personally, we've never used them, have no interest in them. We tend to spend our entire day in the park, from open to close, and aren't interested in burning maybe an hour and a half of our time to travel from one park to the other. It just isn't appealing to us. If you are mid day break kind of people, then the park hoppers might make more sense for you, as it won't really add any travel time since you are already leaving the park mid day.

 

[PlutoTheDog89]

For us, the park hopper isn't just a necessity, it's a security blanket.

We go during Christmas, which means the parks will be packed. We've become accustomed to this and it doesn't really bother us, but, we know that the rides will have long lines and it will be crowded. We often go early in the morning, take a break in the afternoon, then head to another park (or return) at night. Here's a few reasons why I believe a park hopper is a must-do:

- If the park is very crowded, you can leave and head to another park.
- It makes it easier to book ADRs in different parks. If you have an ADR in EPCOT, you don't need to spend your entire day there. You can head to MK or AK, then head to EPCOT at night.
- The curious case of Hollywood Studios. Hollywood Studios has become a one-day park, but the long lines and tiered FP+ make it very difficult to see and do everything in one day. We'll normally do DHS one morning and do Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, Tower of Terror and Frozen Singalong. Then we'll do DHS one evening and book a FP+ for TSMM, Star Tours and Tower of Terror, then end the night with Fantasmic. We'll usually incorporate EPCOT into this day. We'll do EPCOT for dinner on the morning we do DHS, or eat around the world in the afternoon before heading to DHS for our evening FP+.

Edit: it does depend on how long you'll be there and what you're there for. As a PP mentioned, if you're just going for the Halloween party or Food & Wine and don't plan on going to too many parks, then don't get it. If you are going on a long trip or feel like fitting everything into 3 or 4 days, then do it. For us, while we could easily do a-park-a-day over our 9-day trip, it'd be boring. We like to hop between the parks.

 

[kmacht]

Where are you getting those prices from? Do they include the hotel? Looking a undercover tourist and 4 adult 8 day park hopper tickets with the water part fun and more add on is only $1918 not $2700.

Keith

 

[mickeyluv'r]

OP, you should read this sister thread: http://www.disboards.com/threads/park-hopper-with-a-3yr-old-is-it-even-worth-it.3507622/
It basically asks the same question.

I would NOT prepay for the Water parks before you arrive! Here's why:

Just as you can wait to add hopping, you can also wait to add the WP option.

It is also possible to buy stand alone water park tickets at the WP gate. The price is $63.90/adult including tax, and $57.51/children 3-9 including tax. If you happen to be going before May28 or after Aug 28 the one day prices w/tax are $58.58/$52.19.

It isn't a huge savings over adding WP to your regular 10 day tickets, but you ALSO get the advantage of not prepaying for something you MIGHT not use.

This far out, you REALLY do NOT know what the weather will be. If you end up with daily thunderstorms, you might regret prepaying. You know you want to go to the WP, but maybe not how many days. when we stay onsite, we generally prefer to stick with the hotel pool.

We had fun at TL, but even with our own rental car, getting there and back took a big chunk of our day! Via WDW transport is even slower!

 

[disney world dreamer]

generally i say no its not worth it especially when you have that much time in the parks.

i only get PH when i have a shorter trip because i like to combine HS and epcot into one day when i am short on time.

if i'm there for at least 4 park days i don't get PH.

 

[Smbmoyers]

For my trip I need to hop. I am taking my 3 year old for the first time. I love the flexibility the hoppers give us to do a crowded park in the morning and then hop to a quieter park in the evening. Were also going the beginning of December so mvmcp makes the hoppers a necessity as well for us. We love mk. So not being done at 7pm when the party kicks off and being able to go enjoy other parks seals the need for us

 

[smiths02]

I would book option #2 and add on park hoppers while there if I needed to.