Arrive Sunday before Labor Day. What to do 1st?

[Yak]

First time post. No more lurking...

Family of 5 arriving mid-day Sunday prior to Labor Day and staying at AKL Concierge for the week. First WDW trip in 5 years. First ever for youngest DD. What to do first? My 3 thoughts:

1. Bum around the hotel, pool, dinner at Boma, story time, night view of animals, and a fair amount of African vino for me and DW.

2. Some pool time, Character dinner at Chef Mickey's, monorail ride, watch Wishes from GF or POLY beach.

3. Straight to MGM (probably an EMH night?), PS for one of the Fantasmic Dinner packages.

What would you do? One of those, or any others! Also, how crowded will the parks be on Labor Day itself?

 

[Yak]

At the risk of developing a complex, I'm bumping my own thread. I'm also taking this opportunity to welcome myself to Disboards.

 

[buzzriders]

When we arrive on Friday June 24th we plan to go to Fantasmic (While we are not tired and can enjoy it!!) and have dinner!! And if we can ride any rides that will be even better since we probably won't arrive @ AKL until 4:00ish. Whatever you do I'm sure it will be great!!!

 

[indigoxtreme]

Hey, we will be arriving at the same time. Leaving on the 11th. We are stayong at POR with our 4 y/o Gdaughter. We plan to relax around DTD and have dinner at Chef Mickey's.

 

[ktink]

Hey, we will be arriving at the same time. Leaving on the 11th. We are stayong at POR with our 4 y/o Gdaughter. We plan to relax around DTD and have dinner at Chef Mickey's.

We are arriving the same day and leaving the 10 and also staying at POR.. I'm not sure what we will be doing maybe going for dinner at Whispering Canyon. Any good ideas?

 

[Yak]

Thanks for the thoughts. I might just leave it up to the kids. The difference in price between 5 day MYW and 6 day MYW tix are negligible enough to make a short trip to the parks on arrival day worth it.

Anyone know what the parks are like on Labor Day itself? Crowded with locals?

 

[OKW Lover]

Do you have tickets for the entire stay? If so, go to one of the parks, say Epcot, to get your day's worth out of it.

If you don't have admission for the entire stay, then consider just going to the pool and having a nice meal at the hotel.

 

[Dancind]

I'm so jealous. We went the same week back in 2001, and the parks were empty. I don't remember Labor Day specifically, but you will have no problems doing whatever you want all week. Do take rain parkas, though!

 

[Yak]

Do you have tickets for the entire stay? If so, go to one of the parks, say Epcot, to get your day's worth out of it.

If you don't have admission for the entire stay, then consider just going to the pool and having a nice meal at the hotel.

I haven't bought the park tix yet. I'll buy 5 or 6 day passes depending on if we go to a park on arrival day. Sundays are generally an EMH evening for MGM, so we'd go there. Quite honestly even if we only see Fantasmic and do nothing else but explore, it should be worth it to cross one "must see" off the list. That's the idea, anyway.

 

[Yak]

I'm so jealous. We went the same week back in 2001, and the parks were empty. I don't remember Labor Day specifically, but you will have no problems doing whatever you want all week. Do take rain parkas, though!

When I found out my kids' school was opening late because of summer construction, I immediately thought of WDW for our vacation this year. Needless to say, the kids were happy to oblige. We'll hope for no rain.

 

[Maureenmouse]

We're arriving the same day also, but not activating our tickets until Monday. we plan to go to RFC at DTD and look around a bit there. We'll buy the autograph books then and i hop to get the girls silhouette done. I'm sure whatever you do you'll have fun. i'm with you on hoping it's not too crouded that week.

 

[gigi1313]

we go around labor day weekend every year... this year we're going a bit earlier and coming home saturday of that weekend...

there are no statistics for labor day weekend last year due to hurricane frances, so i can tell you that park crowds were almost non-existent, but it was more likely a combo of time of year and hurricane, although previous visits have always been low crowds, so your timing (imo) is great!

my advice, based on a few past trips... if you don't want to miss it, see fantasmic as early in your stay as you can... we missed it in '01 due to bad weather the night we were planning on and had ps' for another place the next night (our last night) so we never got to see it... last year had we not planned it for the second night, we would not have seen it either due to weather/park closing (hurricane)...

for our first day we typically have to drop our rental at the dolphin, so we take the boat to epcot's international gateway, grab some dinner (historically garden grill for our first character meal) and then watch illuminations... for us that's when we know we're at WDW!

we are planning something similar again this year

 

[indigoxtreme]

We are driving in on Sunday, that is why we are doing DTD, also like other we want to get the autograph books etc and just relax. DTD is great in itself and many times we just go there when my DH and myself come to Orlando or Daytona and we don't go to the parks. We were just in DTD in February as we were staying in Daytona for our anniv.