?? for those with more than 2 young children

[DebRMN]

If you have 2 or more young children, did you get the Park Hopper Option?

My twins are 4 & my youngest is 20 months. We went last year & got the park Hopper Option, but never used it.

We stayed offsite, as we are again this year. I just don't see us going to a park in the morning & then going back to a different one at night. Too exhausting for them

The only thing that came close to it last year was we did MK during the day, went 'home' & went back to MK for the parade/fireworks

Anyone have any suggestions or opinions about their experiences

 

[Nanu57v]

I would look at the price difference also. So with 4 tickets you'll be saving $200 by not getting it! I wonder if it would be cheaper to just get an extra day on each ticket just in case? In some cases an extra day costs like 4 dollars! I wonder if this is legal?

We stay onsite and only have 1 child, but I understand what you mean about the hopping. We try to limit it due to travel time. Our plan is get to the parks early, go home at 1 for nap, and back to the parks at 5. This worked great last time. However if I were offsite I probably wouldn't come back onsite, except for special occasions like you mentioned (fireworks).

I'd look into the extra day thing and do that rather than the park hopper.


ETA: Oops, just talked to my mom and that's not allowed. But, if you really don't think you'd use it, it is a substancial sum. Maybe check into an upgrade if you change your mind.

 

[bartleby1]

We don't hop. My kids last trip were 6, 4, and 1-1/2. We did one park per day, but we stay from open to close. The kids nap in the stroller when they need to. I guess we could hop, but I just feel like it takes so much time to switch parks. I suppose if we went back mid-afternoon for a nap, then maybe we would be more apt to hop to a different park in the evening.

I'd rather take the "hopping" money and add an extra hotel night or two to extend our trip. Adding extra ticket days is minimal if you want to add an extra days ticket also. But, as the previous poster stated, you can only use one days worth of tickets per day so you can't use the extra day to hop.

I think it all depends on how long your trip is and how you like to vacation as to whether hopping is worth it to your family. We tend to stay 10 - 12 nights so there really is no need to hop. If we wanted to see it all in less time, we might choose to do two parks in one day so we could see just our favorites in each park.

 

[Twingle]

We have annual passes now, but before we purchased them we did one park per day - staying from pretty much open to close. My kids just napped in the stroller, which we were amazed at, but we NEVER went back to the room. It just didn't work out that way.

I would look at your schedule and see what you have planned for each day - and then what would happen if you didn't go back to your room for a rest. I know that there are LOTS of people that really recommend going back to your room, but it totally didn't work for us.

 

[MommySiobhan]

Last year we went for 6N & 7D, my kids were 5, 3, 2 & 3 months old

We did not need to hop. Sometimes we went to the park early in the day, came back to the hotel for a rest or swim and then went back to the park in the evening for dinner and more.

I never once thought 'man I wish I had hoppers'.

This year I opted not for hoppers either. We'll be going as ages 6, 4, 2 & 1

I figure theres enough to do at one park per day.
I guess it all depends on what you want to fit in.

Good luck!

 

[Disneyforus]

We decided not to hop. We will have 7 days that we "could" be in the parks. Here is our plan:

So far we are planning to do a full day at (1)AK, and (2)MK. We will go for rope drop and stay until 12 or 1, go back to our Villa and let the little ones nap while the others go swim and then head back later afternoon early evening and stay for evening festivities. When we go to (3)Epcot we probably won't arrive until after lunch. For (4)MGM we have a ADR at 10 am and will probably stay for the parade and play the rest by ear. We plan to go to (5)MK for a ADR at 4:30 hit some reides and stay for the Spectro Magic Parade. (6)We might use another day to go to Epcot in the late afternoon and stay for fireworks. (7) We are going to let the kids pick a park to go to in the morning for a few hours....we don't have to be to the airport until 2pm

Hopefull this will allow enough time for us to enjoy the waterpark/swimming at our Villa and still see everything without wearing out the little ones too much.

Have a great trip!

 

[kstinw19]

We have three ages 6, 5 and 1 and we did use the park hoppers, but mainly for dinner reservations. For example, we had the MGM Little Einstein bkfst one morning and then left, went swimming back at the Poly, and then went to MK to ride a few rides that night.

We like it when we are at a monorail hotel since it's so easy to go back and forth between Epcot and MK via the monorail.

We will be doing the same this year when we go in two weeks.

 

[PrincessasMommy]

For the logistics of it all and the children's and your sanity I wouldn't do it.

We also stay off-site as we like the space and our own pool and laundry. We buy 5 day passes instead of 3 so we can take it slow and do shorter days if we want to. The cost is less than hoppers and the time is more enjoyable than trying to cram it all in a couple days. We went last time with 3 kids, 9, 27 months and 8 months. This time is with a 12 year old, 4 year old, 3 year old and 3 month old so from my experiences I would not buy the hoppers.

HTH!

 

[GreatLakes5]

Mine aren't quite so young anymore (11, 8, 6) but we don't do the park hopper option either. If the parks were right next door to one another maybe we would, but it just feels like more work than anything else. Too much stress.....Perhaps when they are teens and they find that kind of thing exciting.

 

[DebRMN]

Thanks everyone! We will have an 8 day pass, so no need to rush. I think I will pass.
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

PrincessasMommy~ We stayed at Windsor Palms Last year......Hampton Lakes this year We LOVED staying off site in a home.......though I can see the allure of on site

 

[peemagg]

We have bought the hopper option the 2 of 3 trips. We have only used it once. I don't think it is a good option if you are only planning on one park per day.

Something that my family has found helpful for us is that we don't use the theory of going back to the resort in the afternoon. We will take the first 2 days and hit the parks until we decide we have had enough. We then take the next day and rest. Then we hit the other 2 parks the next 2 days and then rest again. The last day we either hit DTD or resort hop. We found this works well for us.