Best Day To Visit Particular Parks

[Paul Burrows]

I am visiting Orlando for 2 weeks commencing 15/8/04 with my 2 children aged 12 and 15. We are staying at the Quality Inn Plaza near the Orange Convention Centre in I Drive. Using the knowledge from no less than 3 guidebooks I have prepared the following provisional itinerary:
Mon - sleep in, shop for food and play some miniature golf.
Tue - Magic Kingdom
Wed - Blizzard Beach
Thu - Busch Gardens
Fri - MGM
Sat - Animal Kingdom
Sun - Wet n Wild
Mon - Epcot
Tue - Islands of Adventure
Wed - Typhoon Lagoon
Thu - Seaworld
Fri - Universal Studios
Sat - Discovery Cove (booked)
Sun - Return to whatever place we liked best followed by a night-time flight home.

Is this schedule realistic?
Is there really an art to avoiding particularly busy days or is it down to chance?
I would like to avoid some of the parks between 12 noon and 3pm and I would be glad of any suggestions on how best to split the days e.g. visit Park A in the morning, back to hotel, visit Park B in the late afternoon etc.

PS. what are grits and what is country gravy?

 

[KayleeUK]

Welcome to the DIS

You are avoiding all of the Early Entry Day's so that is good

We tend to get to the park early and then head back to the hotel for a swim in the afternoon before heading out again in the evening. What type of tickets do you have?

 

[Paul Burrows]

I have a Disney 10 Day Passport and an Orlando 4 Park Flexi-Ticket. (I think that is what they are called).
I can use my Discovey Cove ticket to gain entry to Busch Gardens.
By the way, I have also hired a car to get around.

 

[JohnnySharp]

Avoiding all the Early Entry days is good and also having a plan ahead of your visit is advisable.

Do not be surprised if you change it out there though.

Avoiding the parks between 12pm and 3pm is as far as we are concerned is essential.
Getting to a park early , having a break for a few hours and returning early evening is our ideal approach.

The only issue I would have with your plan is that you are visiting parks virtually every day, everybody has their own ideas for this and like I say stick your own ideas, we all do things different ways but bearing in mind you are visiting in High Summer with the peak periods for heat and crowds - maybe you will do things differently?

 

[KayleeUK]

Here is a link to Projected Hours for your hol's - this should give you an idea of times if you did want to switch parks for the evening.

HTH

 

[juliebro]

Grits is a porridge-type cereal which (imho) tastes pretty horrible! Not entirelysure about country gravy - I think it's a sort of cross between what we call gravy and a white sauce. The locals eat it over 'biscuits' which are a savoury version of our 'scones'.

Julie

 

[yourwelcome]

Gritz is an aquired taste, one not many brits like, IMHO AVOID any item on a menu which mentions gravy. It is nothing like our gravy and resembles solvite wallpaper paste with a hint of sweetcorn.

apart from that enjoy. Your itinary looks fine as long as you are fit and can withstand alot of walking for 2 weeks. Personally I like to break our schedule up with healthy doses of rest. The first time I went I had a schedule pretty similar to yours. I was a physical wreck after a week and needed a day or two doing "nothing"

Whatever you decide you will have a great time.

Brian

 

[juliebro]

As you have such a busy schedule with a park on just about every day, I would make sure you have a plan of action for each park. 'The Brit's Guide' is great for helping you pick out the rides & attractions that are the 'must do's'. We tend to hit the parks as they open and make for the most popular rides first, using fastpasses etc. e.g when MGM opens, we go straight to get fastpasses for R&R coaster and then go on Tower of Terror. This means you get the top 2 rides under your belt in the first 30 mins, rather than spend 2 hours or more queuing for them later in the day.

It takes a bit of planning but it's well worth it.

I also suggest getting maps of each of the parks ahead of your arrival there and try to get some sort of feel for how the park is laid out and what order you want to go on the rides etc. That gives you a head start and you can pack a lot more in.

Julie

ps I know this may sound a bit OTT to some people - but it has really worked for us