General Park Strategy?

[Cyrra]

Hi Disers, just wondering what the general park strategy is for most of you? Broke out the maps this past weekend and starting to eyeball things up for our upcoming trip and was curious as to what others do?

Do you enter the MK and go clockwise? counter clockwise? start at the back and work forward?

Do you follow the numbering on the maps or go backwards? Do you run for FP as soon as you get in or just meander around? Curious as to what others do.

TIA

 

[Tinkim]

If I had little kids I would head to Fantasyland first and do Dumbo, carosuel, Philharmagic, Peter Pan, Snow White, and get a FP for Pooh.

But . . . since I don't have really little ones we usually head right to Tomorrowland and get FP for Buzz or Space Mountain (whichever is longer and then wait in the stand-by line at the other) and then go on TTA, Astro orbiters, Speedway, and Carosuel of Progress. We all love Buzz and we try to go on that first. I have to defend my title within the family.

 

[dzneelvr]

We've gone so many times and are so familiar with the parks, (DS and DD are teenagers) we all split up upon entering the park and get FPs for later in the afternoon. I've already made a PS for lunch, so we meet at the restaurant to enjoy a leisurely meal and then head to the FPs. We look at the show times and make sure each one of us gets to see the "show" they want. Our main strategy is to sleep late, swim and hang out at the resort until 11am or later; catch a bus to hit the parks at lunch and stay until closing, so there's never any problem with going on the most popular attractions multiple times. Between 9pm and park closing, it's wide open. At MK we may monorail over to Poly to do Ohanas or to the GF to look around.....
EPCOT is the only park we go around in any order, just because of it's sheer size. MGM, MK, AK--we eat first and then have all our energy just as families are winding down in mid afternoon to head back to the resort for their nap and swim times. If we do a water ride, we make sure there's time to dry off before going into a PS, for example because you can freeze in the AC if you're too wet. WDW Rocks in the summer with this schedule...we can't wait to hit it again

 

[matt&jakesmom]

For some reason when we enter MK we go into Adventureland. Even though our boys are 8 & 6 you would think that we would head straight to Fantasyland. Now that you got me thinking, we do all the parks counterclockwise. Interesting...

 

[SoCalKDG]

Go to a park the day after EMH's, and use FP on the most crowded rides.

At a minimum you should be able to get 4 FP's in a day, more likely 5-6. Get the rides like Splash, Space, Test Track, Mission Space, TOT, RNR, Dinosaur, first. Then start getting more FP's throughout the day(either at 2 hours after your previous one, or the return time on your ticket).

Doing this should keep you out of any line over 30 minutes pretty much anytime of the year.

For just the MK, if you have kids under 10 and get there at opening, do Fantasyland first. Remember they have rides with FP as well.

Oh, even if a person doesn't want to ride(or can't) use their card to get a FP for and additional ride for someone(back to back trips on TOT, etc.).