I'm really having an hard time with the idea of NOT park hopping. I think we will end up adding it on when we get there, or before. Here's one example of why... we have 7 days (really 6 1/2 depending what time we get there on Monday after visiting family on the west coast). That gives us 2 days for each of 3 parks and only 1 day for the other park. The most obvious choice would be AK to visit only once. Anybody remember what Alex's two favorite rides were last time??? ToT and "The Yeti Ride." He must have ridden 6 times. And Zachary is looking forward to being tall enough to ride, next time we go, whenever that may be...
It worked out really well last time spending our last two days visiting each park and riding our favorite rides over again. The first part of the week being more for exploring (and riding our favorites too). So for now, I'm planning my itinerary based on park hopping.
Here's my first draft:
Monday 4/27 - check in and head to Epcot. Dinner at Garden Grill (or CS?)
Tuesday 4/28 - AK in the morning/break?/ DHS in the evening (50s PTC for dinner)
Wednesday 4/29 - MK all day - dinner at Chef Mickeys - early night
Thursday 4/30 - Epcot/break/DHS (Mama Melrose F! dinner package)/F!
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This part gets tricky because I don't even have park hours yet...
Friday - Sunday: in no particular order...
A) AK (Tusker house character breakfast - either 8am or late instead of lunch)/break/Whispering Canyon for dinner - early night
B) Epcot (LeCellier lunch)/break/Magic Kingdom - stay for Wishes
C) ??? DHS & Something ???
I'm not in love with this itinerary. I currently have two ADRs for Chef Mickey's - Monday and Wednesday (both at 5:00). We could go to MK on Monday and have Chef Mickey's be our first night - and maybe top it off with Wishes, but TGM recommends avoiding MK on Mondays, so I thought we might want to save it for later in the week. I would like to have one of our later nights be early in the week, but maybe we'll catch Illuminations on Monday?? Fantasmic would be great on Monday night - but it's only showing on Wednesday & Thursday (and I'm guessing Sunday - maybe we'll change F! to end our trip on Sunday??) Or maybe we could start of with MK/dinner at CM/Wishes and test out TGM. We've used him every time in recent history so it's hard to know how we would do without him... I'll have to give that some more thought.
I don't really feel like I can finish up this itinerary until I get May hours, which might not be until after January 27th (my 90 ADR day).
The other thing (I dropped a hint and nobody commented) is that the condo is still an option - which would mean our week at WDW would probably have to be Saturday 4/25- Saturday 5/1. Which would mean a whole new itinerary and a whole new set of ADRs, plus more members of our party.
We talked with DBIL over the weekend and told him what our plans are. He said they would come and meet up with us for a day or two, but since we don't have the condo, they would be on their own for lodging. This is fine for a night or two, but I would feel bad making them spend money to visit us (even if it is at Disney). Plus if we are in the condo, the adults can stay up and chat after the kids are in bed - hard to do at a hotel - with two separate rooms - that may or may not be near each other. So we followed up with an email putting our dates in writing for them and adding that if they had wanted to come and spend more than a day or two with us but the cost would be prohibiting them from doing so, we can still get the condo. They may not even have time off - the kids are in school that week - and DH's mom is going down to visit them for two weeks in early April, so they'll be needing to use vacation time then too. And we haven't heard back from them... I'm guessing we probably won't until we ask them about it - closer to the condo exchange date in late February.
So with all of that in the back of my mind, I'm going forward with my current plans and I'll change them if I need to. I'm sure that will mean a change in some ADRs too - needing to add them on. With that in mind I may want to go heavy on TS early in the week and have some more flexibility with CS for later in the week - or maybe make a back up ADR for a party of 8.
I feel like I just did a brain dump in this post... sorry.
Comments, Questions...