Coming from West Coast

[Princess and Queen]

My family(DHH, DD 8, DD 5) will be visiting WDW from CA. Does anyone have any tips with how they dealt with the time change and little ones? I want to make RD, but I'm thinking my kids will just be wiped out!

 

[bumbershoot]

My family cannot do RD for at least a week without feeling sick, grumpy, and unhappy. We just cannot do it. Since our trips are longer, this basically works for us. But we're also natural nightowls, so it is really HARD to get to sleep at any sort of early time to help us get enough sleep to wake up early and be OK.

Others have different bodies and natural rhythms.

 

[Disney Khaleesi]

I wouldn't try to do RD for the first few days. I would plan everything for at least after 10:00, it's going to take a while to adjust. The time change is only an hour for me and even I'm grumpy on arrival day and the next morning.

 

[Disney_Alli]

You can always start the time adjustment before you leave if you have time, getting them up earlier in the morning and moving bedtime up as well. Then its not a big shock to the system when you arrive.

 

[sndral]

We don't even try to do rope drop, especially early in the trip. It helps if you have a really early flight out as by the time you arrive in Orlando and transfer to your hotel you're pretty beat and can hopefully get to sleep early that first night.

 

[Meriweather]

We've traveled there for years.
We just go to bed early the first night.....easy to do after all the traveling.....and then get up and get going like usual.
Never had a problem. Maybe a nap the first day or two.

 

[sharonabe]

Or you could skip rope drop altogether and just plan on closing down the parks. Use the late EMH to your advantage where you can by going to the most recommended park during the day and hopping to the late EMH park in the evening. This works better in the summer and holiday times when parks are open later, but even if it's not quite as good as rope drop, it would allow your kids to stay on their natural clocks and still have a great time.

 

[Elk Grove Chris]

We are in same boat, er plane, hit WDW in 8 days. Redeye from Sacramento landing in Orlando at 6am. What I did was put all our FP+ selections for afternoons the first few days just in case not all of us could make a smooth transition. We have a longer trip, 12 days total, so we have plenty of time for rest and to leisurely see things. Like Meriweather, our first few nights end early with a signature dinner out of the parks around 7.

 

[Canuck16]

We had an 8am flight out of Seattle so we were up around 4:30-5 am on our travel day. So by the time we arrived in Orlando on got to our resort and had something to eat we were pretty tired and it was early to bed for everyone. This helped with everyone being able to get up early the next day to hit the park at RD. Our trip was 14 days and we hit RD on each of our park days to take advantage of the lower crowd levels.

Have a great trip!