Favorite arrival day

[Mrspeaks]

I am sure it is different for everyone, but what is your favorite day to arrive? I am planning for 6 nights. 4 park days and I resort day. I don't plan on hitting a park on either arrival or departure day.

 

[pork]

We usually fly in Friday. Usually we get there around 5 or so. It gives us time to unpack and hit a nice dinner at Disney springs or a resort.

 

[jmenjes]

I arrive on Monday afternoon, and visit Disney Springs on that night. Tuesday is my first day at a park.

 

[Moushe]

We like to drive up on Sunday morning. I need all day Saturday to finish packing and do stuff around the house so we can come home to a clean house.

 

[Hootch]

We usually get to WDW on Sunday. We drive to Florida. We leave Saturday so we can get packed an have a good night's sleep. We spend the night at my in law's house and head to Orlando Sunday morning.

One time, when we left on Sunday night, I rushed home after work, packed the car and headed out. I forgot to switch over my money clip. I had no ID and left half of our cash at the house. We still had a good time.

 

[TXHauntedMansionFan]

We like to drive up on Sunday morning. I need all day Saturday to finish packing and do stuff around the house so we can come home to a clean house.

We are in this boat other than we fly instead of drive. Typically we get everything situated on Saturday and then spend the night at a hotel near the airport as we like to take the early nonstop flight (6 AM). We get there Sunday around 10:30 and are usually in a park by 2 or so. Sunday is typically an easy day with a few FP and then an early dinner before hitting the hay. We then start going full on vacation mode first thing Monday morning.

 

[mickeygirl78]

We go for two weeks and like to arrive/depart on Saturday. We work/go to school Friday and then Saturday get to go to Disney! For the return, we like to have Sunday at home to unwind, do laundry etc before going back to work/school.

 

[bbjunkie]

My favorite day to arrive is any that ends in y!

 

[larissawbb]

We arrive on Fridays and leave on a Tuesday or Wednesday. The airfare works out better that way.

 

[willowsnn3]

With everyone's work schedule this year we are planning to arrive super early on Sunday and hang out at the resort and maybe Cape May for dinner. We only bought 4 day tickets but will probably add one more day to the tickets as the only early magic hours at MK are on our departure day and we want to head over there before driving home. Which also means we will probably pick a cheapo hotel on the way home so we won't be so exhausted. We will still have a Sunday to rest before going back to work.

 

[Anal Annie]

Any day is fine with us. If we fly it especially doesn't matter. If and when we drive on longer trips (like we'll be doing this summer) we usually leave home on Friday morning and put in about a 10 hour or so day of driving then stop for the night. Traffic is usually better on Fridays than Saturdays. Then we only have about a 4 hour drive to finish up on Saturday morning. We hit the road as early as we can then arrive, check in, stow our bags with bell services and head to a park. We don't have a particular park we hit first either (my cousin always hits MK first). We usually go by the easywdw crowd calendar and pick one of the green parks since we're arriving later in the day (we are DVC and usually have AP's so the fact that it's later in the day is irrelevant to us - doesn't feel like we're wasting a day on the tix). Our trip lengths vary from long 4-day weekends to 6-days to 10-days so no 2 trips are ever the same.

 

[disneyseniors]

Wow, seems like everyone usually arrives on the weekends. We always fly out on a Tues, or Mon, whichever day has the best rates. Flights are cheaper on those days, and I think, even on Wednesdays. We stay 9 or 10 days and fly out on Friday or Thursday. Seems to work for us. We get a very early flight on arrival and get to our resort before noon. We check in, head to the MK (our tradition), have a good TS dinner, and just wander around and go attractions randomly til we get tired. Then back to the room to get some much needed sleep. We are up by 2am and our flights leave before 5am with a connector, so it's a long day.

 

[DSLRuser]

Arrive Friday Morning (driving) and leave the next Saturday Afternoon (driving).

If we fly, it all depends on the air fare.

 

[minnie mum]

seems like everyone usually arrives on the weekends

I imagine that a lot of people want to minimize the number of vacation days they have to take off from their jobs and/or the number of days their kids are out of school if it is during the school year. When our kids were still in school we had to limit our stays so we could fly to Orlando on Sat and fly home the next Sunday.

Now we can stay as long as we like and arrive any day. We like to arrive on Tues or Wed morning. We've found the check in desks much quieter then. And then we drop our bags and head straight for the parks.

 

[AJA55]

My favorite was arrival Wednesday, stay 9 nights and leaving on a Friday. Now with a different work schedule we are trying leaving Friday, staying 8 nights and leaving on Saturday.

We’ll see how it works.

 

[PSUGuy]

Most often we arrive early on Thurs and get to the IG by 11 am. This way we have 2 full days before the weekend and as we go for Food&Wine we avoid WS on Sat due to crowds. Last several times we stayed 8 or 9 days, this year it's 10 because we have APs so we'll be on the ground 8:30 Wed, flying home the 2nd Sat.

Bill From PA

 

[tinkerbella16]

The past 3 years we've been flying in on a weekday, Weds or Thursday since airfare was a lot cheaper. This year we are doing Saturday to Saturday.

 

[mindeola]

Sunday . We arrive and relax. Explore the hotel, have a nice dinner at a resort. Hit the parks bright and early Monday morning! We have been trying to save some money by staying weeknights only. Its a little less crowded too.

 

[AtlantaDisneyDreamer]

We are generally stuck with Sunday arrivals (except for June and July), although they are very busy arrival days. We get a week at a time off from school, and I need Saturday to pack and clean the house.

Since we have had APs, we hit a park Sunday night using Fastpasses and have a nice dinner, returning fairly early to the resort to hit rope drop at one of the parks on Monday. When we do not have APs, we explore the resort, swim, and/or head over to AKL (if we are not staying there) to have dinner.

 

[Eighty8Keys]

We usually try to arrive on a Sunday to minimize the number of hotel nights on a weekend when rates are higher. We fly in from Portland, OR and we usually try to stay at least 11 nights since it's such a long travel day. Arriving on Sunday means we'll pay for 9 weeknights and 2 weekends. Every other trip we try to stay two weeks, in which case we'll look at crowd calendars and try to pick the two week period with the lowest predicted crowds.