Do you keep your young kids up later at Disney?

[StitchesGr8Fan]

5 and 2 year old. Here now. No bedtime. When they are tired we put them to bed. We will worry about routine when we get home.

 

[sponica]

Mine has always been a sleeper & similar with light cues. I can’t put him to bed til it dark out so during daylight savings it’s an hr later. We also have his room as dark as possible with room darkening shades & drapes. That helps in the morning so he doesn’t wake up until it’s really sunny. If it’s early like before 7 am or overcast he’ll sleep. He’s been sleeping this way since 6 weeks old. I know everyone is different, but a lot of the ppl I know personally who claim their kids never slept well didn’t do anything conducive to sleeping.

Part of my problem is that she can move the shades from her bed (the joys of having a 3 year old who is the size of most 4 year olds)....i think we're going to tint the windows because dusk extends until 9 PM right now.

 

[LSUmiss]

Part of my problem is that she can move the shades from her bed (the joys of having a 3 year old who is the size of most 4 year olds)....i think we're going to tint the windows because dusk extends until 9 PM right now.

Oh wow! Yeah that would be a problem lol! DS likes it pitch black!

 

[CanadianEmily]

As most others have said here, my plan when we go in 2020 is to keep our regular bedtime routine except for one night (the last night). It will mean either leaving the parks by 5pm to grab dinner at our hotel or having dinner in the parks at 5pm so we can still make it back to our room by 7pm. My son (4 now, 5 when we go to WDW) has trouble sleeping in hotels in general, so I know he'll need quite a bit of time to fall asleep. We plan on doing rope drops at each park, but on our last night there, I'm planning on letting him stay up for the fireworks if he wants to. We're driving home (2-3 days back to Canada), so we're not on any particular schedule on check-out day. He can sleep as long as he wants, and then we'll get up and leave. Or we can drag him up early and he can sleep more in the car. But he's going to be so tired the whole trip anyway. I know he needs the best sleep he can get. He went on an all-day field trip with his class a couple weeks ago. In this case, "all day" means 9am-3pm. He came home and immediately fell asleep on my lap. So I know this trip will be exhausting for him. Right now, we're also planning a break day in the middle of our trip, even though we're only going for five days. We're planning to do Monday and Tuesday at parks, Wednesday a break day or at least not as scheduled -- we'll probably go to Disney Springs and ride the monorail to different resorts, then Thursday and Friday at the parks again. Our FastPass selections might alter this a bit, but I think I'll keep to this plan regardless of how that works out for us. Staying rested and feeling good is my #1 priority at this point. I'm even going to pull him out of school for an extra week beforehand, because last February we were sick with various kindergarten illnesses the entire month, lol.

 

[danielocha30]

My kids nap and have a 7pm sleep time, but they also wake everyday at 6:45am. Disney is way better at night, less heat, beautiful all together, and we don’t rope drop, they don’t wake up early at Disney obviously. I do it because I know they won’t get cranky the next day. IMO let parents be parents and let it go.

 

[ILOVEPOOH1]

We will be taking our granddaughter next Feb/March and she will be almost 3. We will absolutely let her stay up. She stays up for the fireworks here on July 4th so why not? We are in the same time zone as Disney and we can sleep in the next day. We are also DVC members so this will not be her only trip, she will likely go every 2 years, maybe even every year, so missing an early morning rope drop is no big deal to us or her mom.

 

[PollyannaMom]

As most others have said here, my plan when we go in 2020 is to keep our regular bedtime routine except for one night (the last night). It will mean either leaving the parks by 5pm to grab dinner at our hotel or having dinner in the parks at 5pm so we can still make it back to our room by 7pm...Right now, we're also planning a break day in the middle of our trip, even though we're only going for five days. We're planning to do Monday and Tuesday at parks, Wednesday a break day or at least not as scheduled -- we'll probably go to Disney Springs and ride the monorail to different resorts, then Thursday and Friday at the parks again.

I think that's a really good plan!

 

[Kelly014]

I remember my first trip (I was 18) and there were so many kids melting down....and their parents saying "we spent 398757753478593 dollars, YOU'RE STAYING".

Seriously, it's not worth it...it's so not worth it. Maybe if it's a once in a lifetime trip...but for those of us that go frequently enough, it's not worth the meltdown

My kids have certainly had meltdowns when they are well rested. Please don't assume that just because you see children melting down that the parents are at fault for pushing their kids too hard. Those parents could be one hour into their first theme park day and have a child melting down because, well, kids do that at the most ridiculous times sometimes.

I'm in the no bedtimes at Disney camp. My kids have always napped in the baby carrier or the stroller depending on age. I've never embarrassed myself (or maybe I just don't care enough!) and my kids love the late nights and fireworks. One of my favorite memories is my 9 month old DS bouncing away to the Hallowishes fireworks in his Pascal costume (DD was Rapunzel ). I do try really hard to schedule late mornings following our late evenings. We do have our limits. But really, as with 99% of the posts on this forum, do what works for you!

 

[Jennifoo]

It definitely depends on the child. I've done rope drop to close at MK without a break with my 2.5/3.5 year old (same kid, two separate trips) and he's fallen asleep in the stroller while my husband and I enjoy the fireworks. Other parks when we do open-close, we take a midday break to swim and relax at the resort. This helped to recharge all of our batteries. My son has never watched a full firework show, usually always passing out in the stroller, but we don't mind. He was never grumpy...just excited to be in Disney.

 

[starearedkid]

It is is SO child dependent. My daughter (who is now 8) had to be on a regular bedtime there. There was some wiggle room of course, but not much. When she was 3.5, she went to bed at 8 instead of 6:30 (which was her normal at home bedtime). She didn't nap. She didn't nap in strollers. I think one day we literally had to force a nap on her because we had late reservations.

When we went back when she was 5, same thing. She has never seen the fireworks. She isn't interested in it because she doesn't like fireworks. But we had to go back to the room by 8:30 otherwise it was hell on wheels.

Now when we go, I fully anticipate ONE late night. She can stay up late one night, but multiple nights would be horrific to her. This is known. She slept over a friends house on Friday night-the girls were up until 11:30. She woke up at her regular time the next day-6am. Pretty much she spent two days recovering. (she didn't nap but you can see how tired she is). We will have a 1.5 year old this time, but she is still napping in the stroller life-so I don't think that will be that bad.