DVC Members: How often do you go to the park during your trips?

How often do you go to the parks during DVC trips at WDW?

  • Every day, all day

    Votes: 20 13.5%
  • Every day, but we only spend a couple hours a day at the parks

    Votes: 48 32.4%
  • Most days, maybe skip 1 or 2 days for pool/relaxation

    Votes: 66 44.6%
  • No more than 1 or 2 days

    Votes: 10 6.8%
  • Never or rarely

    Votes: 4 2.7%

  • Total voters
    148

stewart715

DIS Veteran
Joined
Apr 5, 2019
I recently noticed a fair amount of members talking about how they 'rarely' or even 'never' go to the parks during their DVC stays at WDW. I was curious about how most people are using their DVC membership.
 
We like to go around the Epcot Festival times. We usually have three or four trips per year (F&G, F&W and the Winter Festival). So we'll head over to Epcot mid-day and do the Food Kitchens for our big meal of the day, maybe two or three hours. We might not do any attractions at all unless we're looking to cool off. So we'll hit the countries with movies like France or Canada or American Adventure. The last time we went to AK, there wasn't any Pandora yet. We haven't been to DHS for years, even before they shut everything down for the construction. MK maybe twice in the last few years. I don't think we've seen Happily Ever After yet. Mostly Epcot. It's been a while since I've even gotten any FP+. Now that we live in SW FL and can drive to WDW in a little over three hours, we'll do shorter trips, like four nights or three nights. We might do one, or two, ADRs, usually Olivia's is one of those and one other. We buy no souvenirs, we don't buy cupcakes or apples or almost anything in the candy stores. We will go to a few places offsite to dine, like Chevy's since we don't have any decent Mexican restaurants close by us. Or Chick-Fil-A since the closest one to us is about 15 miles from us. We might purchase FL resident tickets or use one of the APs that we bought years ago.

We live about 1.7 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, so we don't do the water parks any more. Plus we have a pool at our house. We do still hit the pools at the resort we're staying at, though.
 


When we were members we did a park pretty much every day, but for a very short time. Sometimes just for a single attraction and dinner. Sometimes no dinner as we prefer to eat at the resorts.
 
We try to get to the parks as often as we can, but don’t normally stay there all day. We may go back after a mid-day break but not necessarily - lazing by the pool can sometimes feel like a better choice. ;) We don’t go every day but try to get to one park most days. We also don’t do much “hopping” these days either. If one of our elderly parents are with us, park days are short.....they all enjoy going (the spirit is willing.....), but it tires them out quickly, so we don’t make ambitious plans on those days - maybe a few hours and a nice lunch at a monorail resort.
 


I am down to one park day per trip. Two trips planned for next year with only 1 park day planned,,,
I am also happy to chill at the resort.

Regards
Mel
 
Couldn't vote. Our answer depends on if we have tickets/AP.
  • Most of our visits are w/out tickets/AP, so we only enter a park if there is a sponsored party (free to us) or, perhaps, a hard ticket party (paid by us). In either of these cases, we'll have only one after-hours party per trip. This is pretty normal for our WDW visits.
  • If we have day passes, we'll visit parks 2 or 3 days of a weeklong trip. These will be all day visits, hard-hitting and fast paced.
  • If we have APs, which are exceptionally rare in our WDW travel history with just 2 years out of 15 as DVC members, we are in parks on most days of the trip but not, perhaps, as hard hitting as for regular day-passes. We might do 3-4 full days in the parks and "just visit, catch a show, eat a meal" on the remaining days of a weeklong trip.
FWIW, this is an AP year for us and we are loving it. It has changed our expectations and might even change our patterns going forward ... we'll see. We might get ~28 park days out of these passes. Hmmmm ... a new addiction?
 
We're between a couple of your options. It's usually everyday but not park open to close. More like 2/3rds of the day. Sometimes a little less. Sometimes a little more.

Same here.
I like to go for rope drop, but avoid the headliners: for example I don't rope drop 7DMT or FoP or SD. I go to SM, River Journey or Toy Story Mania first, so I can arrive a few minutes before park opening, stay ahead of the crowd and then tour immediately other attractions. Easywdw has excellent touring plans for this strategy. At lunch I like a sit down meal, to cool down, then head back to the resort for the afternoon in the pool. Finally back to the park for the evening entertainment and possibly a FP+ I got refreshing the app. I cannot see myself going to Orlando just to stay at the resorts, as lovely as they are, parks are still a huge draw for me.
 
We tend to drop in to the parks on most days for a few hours in the morning and/or evening. It's not about rides anymore (how many times does one need to ride Space Mountain in a lifetime) but just to enjoy the parks themselves.
 
I think we visit the parks the same as we did before DVC. We don't go every day. Normally we end up with about 1/3 of the days as non-park days. We don't do 2 early days in a row. One thing I like about FP+ is we can schedule our FPs starting around 11am so we can sleep in.
 
We go to a park a day only 3-4 hours- enough time to use our fast passes and catch a show or parade. Sometimes we will take a full day off.
 
I've had an annual pass for the last 2 years, so I book Fastpasses for each day. We love our pool time, so if we decide to swim all day, we just cancel our Fastpasses. The annual passes afford a lot of freedom and I don't feel the need to visit the parks everyday, all day, just to get my money's worth.
 
I voted only 1 or 2 days. We have 16 nights booked for June and don't plan on visiting a single park...Disney or otherwise. Last year we went 9 nights and only did 2 day tickets.
 
Typically we plan our trips to be 10-13 days long, twice in a calendar year, using annual passes to the parks. That being said, we usually go to a park each day, usually mid-day to sometime in the evening. Depending upon the weather, we likely will visit Typhoon Lagoon a couple times along with several day-time visits to Disney Springs, then usually a park visit in the evening. Our goal is to get good use out of annual passes but still somewhat relaxing days.
 
I put everyday all day, but like others here, it's for "half to most" of the day. We always take a break for the pool. Most days we go back in the evening, but not every time. The parks are why we go. We also only go as a whole family once every 2 years or so, so it's all about the parks.
 

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