August Trip - Park plan

[Chris401]

Hi there,
I'm trying to juggle park calendars and what not to decide what days to visit what parks while we are there from Aug. 12 (arrive around noon) to Aug. 19 (depart around 4 pm), so 8 total days for park if we go on arrival and departure. We are getting park hoppers just to be safe. Family of four with two kids, ages 4 and 6, staying at the Poly. This will be their second trip; not sure how much they remember from our 2015 trip

I am hoping to buy the tickets tomorrow and HOPEFULLY have them loaded right away to MDE, so I can make my Fastpass reservations right away when my 60-day window opens up Tuesday morning. But I still don't know what days to do what parks. And I don't have any dining reservations yet. I check all the various crowd calendars (and signed up for Touring Plans), but there's a lot of conflicting information so not sure what calendar to trust.

Can you help me figure out what parks? And if there's any must-do things given the kids age (example: Jedi training, which I think means I need to do a H&V reservation to get in early for sign up, right?).

Here's a tentative plan:
Aug12 - EP or MK
Aug13 - MK
Aug14 - EP
Aug15 - AK
Aug16 - DHS
Aug17 - MK
Aug18 - AK
Aug19 - MK or EP

Thoughts?

Thanks so much!

 

[sbrost13]

I think crowd calendars are becoming a little less important than they used to be. The best thing you can do is figure out what kind of a touring strategy will work best for your family. Would you like to get to the parks early to get stuff done, then take a break before going back out to the parks? Do you guys want to sleep in and stay in the parks later at night? Once you decide on a general strategy, it'll be easier to plan the parks. You'll definitely want to take advantage of the Poly pool while you're there!

Since you're onsite, I'd check to confirm which parks have EMH. My family loves doing the park that has AM EMH, so that determines the park we start in each day. We also have park hoppers, so typically we start in one park and go from rope drop to early afternoon, then go back to the resort to swim/relax (change clothes since we're totally sweaty!). Then we park hop to a different park at night, or sometimes just stay at the resort and go to bed early so we're ready for rope drop the next day. My kids are now 12 & 9, but we've always been early risers, so that's why hitting rope drop works for my family.

Definitely get your tickets loaded ASAP. Not sure the height of your kids, but Flight of Passage fastpasses are going quickly, so you definitely want to get that reserved at 60 days just to be safe.

There are lots of dining reservations still open for our July trip if you're okay with eating at off times, so don't stress too much about the dining.

Good luck planning!

 

[Chris401]

Thanks for the reply! Last time we were pretty good about getting there early, and the family is definitely an early-riser family (although we will be coming from central time, so that will lose an hour in transition to east coast time). Looks like EMH are as follows:

Aug13- DHS - AM
Aug14 - AK - AM
Aug15 - EP - PM
Aug16 - MK - PM
Aug17 - EP - AM
Aug18 - MK - AM
Aug19 - AK - AM

 

[sbrost13]

If your kids want to do Jedi Training, a good way to get signed up easily is to go on the day HS has AM EMH. That way you've got fewer people to compete with when signing up in the morning.

If you stick to doing rope drop at the AM EMH parks, then that gives you Tuesday and Wednesday to get an extra hour of sleep in the morning!

We're coming from central time as well, but it usually takes us a day to get adjusted, so hopefully it won't be too bad.