Help me decide parks please!

[stobaugh6]

We have 8 park days in our upcoming January WDW vacation. Right now I have planned 3 days MK, 2 days Epcot, 2 days Hollywood Studios and 1 day at Animal Kingdom. My hubby and I are bringing our DS12, DD9, DS7, DD3.

I'm wondering if I should change our 2nd HS day to AK? Or should I leave it? Or maybe change it to a 4th day at MK? Or maybe I should do 1 day at Epcot and 2 days at both AK and HS?

In the past, Epcot has been my family's least favorite park. But I enjoy it. My older teens (not coming on this trip) love HS, so we've always scheduled 2 HS days. It just seem like there not much to do there anymore?

Thoughts??

Heather

 

[mister morrow]

yeah HS, imo, is a ghost town right now.
i'd definitely do 2 days at AK, 3 at MK, 2 at EP, 1 at HS.

others will disagree with me, but this is what i would do personally

 

[CynBeth]

yeah HS, imo, is a ghost town right now.
i'd definitely do 2 days at AK, 3 at MK, 2 at EP, 1 at HS.

others will disagree with me, but this is what i would do personally

I completely agree.

 

[RedOne3781]

3 MK
2 EP
2 AK
1 DHS

But I would also try to space it out a bit. And play it by ear a little. Do 1 day at DHS and 1 day at AK. Then figure out from there which one you guys feel you should revisit later on in the trip.

Maybe something like:
MK
EP
DHS
MK
AK
EP
Either AK or DHS based on what your family wants to revisit
MK

I always like starting and ending my trip at MK. But that's just my touring preference. I have never been a fan of visiting the same park two days in a row.

 

[heidijanesmith]

I would schedule more time at AK. AK at night is fantastic. We really enjoy AK and at night it's beautiful.

DS is great for those thrill ride lovers, as we can do ToT over and over.

 

[Austin Carlile]

Visit the Animal Kingdom, the Magic Kingdom, the Studios, and then Epcot.
I'd just plan my time around trying to see the most attractions you can at those parks.

 

[ssxa]

We are here now and HS doesn't really warrant 2 days IMO. AK on the other hand is great, I'd switch and do 2 at AK and 1 at HS.

 

[tmoo]

With an 8 day ticket, I think the cost of the park hopper is justified. That lets you break it down into half days instead of whole days. You can show up to park 1 at rope drop and then move to park 2 where you have afternoon fast passes, or spend most of the day at MK and go catch the nighttime show at one of the other parks. The first day in each park you won't want to hop, but by the second day in each park it really helps you utilize your time more efficiently.

 

[Mosey03]

When I saw this post I thought it was great because we just planned out our 8 days (for March 2017) and came up with the exact same plan as you! 3 MK, 2 Epcot, 2 HS, 1 AK. I see that others are suggesting 2 days for AK instead of HS, but I just want to share with you why we ended up deciding to do 2 days at HS. It mostly comes down to this - when it comes to attractions that we would want to do more than once if we had the opportunity, for us, there are several more of those at HS (Tower of Terror, Toy Story Mania!, etc.) than at AK. For you, it may be AK! Just wanted to share that we had thought of that aspect. HS also has both Fantasmic! and the Star Wars fireworks, and depending on how they are scheduled when you are there in January, you might need 2 days in order to be able to see both. In addition, we are pretty confident that we can accomplish everything we want to at AK in one day between a morning EMH and the new later park hours.

That's how we arrived at our decision. Yours may be different, just wanted to share!

 

[mshanson3121]

We have 8 park days in our upcoming January WDW vacation. Right now I have planned 3 days MK, 2 days Epcot, 2 days Hollywood Studios and 1 day at Animal Kingdom. My hubby and I are bringing our DS12, DD9, DS7, DD3.

I'm wondering if I should change our 2nd HS day to AK? Or should I leave it? Or maybe change it to a 4th day at MK? Or maybe I should do 1 day at Epcot and 2 days at both AK and HS?

In the past, Epcot has been my family's least favorite park. But I enjoy it. My older teens (not coming on this trip) love HS, so we've always scheduled 2 HS days. It just seem like there not much to do there anymore?

Thoughts??

Heather

I would do two days at AK over HS right now. AK can easily take 2 days to enjoy if you really take your time on the trails, especially if they do Wilderness Explorers (great program that your 3 youngest will likely enjoy). Also, two days would allow you to enjoy Conservation Station, which really is a great spot, but a lot of people skip it because it takes time (plan on a couple hours) so most people don't have the time to enjoy it when they only have 1 AK day. Do the safari both days, at different times to get a different experience.

 

[dekraut]

Before I even read the second line of your post, I was thinking, "man, I might trade the extra HS day for another AK day." So I suppose I agree that two days in HS is likely more than you will need, unless you will be doing every one of the little stage shows (Disney Junior, Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, Indiana Jones, etc.). The more shows you want to do, the more time you might need. Our DS is a Star Wars fanatic so we did 1.5 days there, staying for Fantasmic the first day, and then going back on another morning just to hit a show or two, Star Tours (a few more times), and the Launch Bay.

Don't forget the newly redone Disney Springs. You may want to carve out half a day to browse, eat, or walk around there. We hate giving up park time to shop, but we haven't been there for about seven years, so we are thinking about checking it out on our next trip.

Also, if you are doing park hopper tickets, you certainly don't have to allocate your time in one day increments. On the 1/2 day sat HS we took the great boat ride from the front of the park to Epcot international gateway, and spent the rest of the day just around the world showcase, checking out the countries for the first time with our kids. So hopping is a great option once in a while to dividing up your time.

Good luck.

 

[nilla]

We do AK in less than a day, but we skip a lot of it. Personally, I'd do 3 days at Epcot, but I LOVE Epcot. We did 4 days there this year

 

[dreiwhit]

A lot depends on what attractions you want to go on at AK and HS. When we went to HS back in March, we arrived at 10am and had done everything we wanted to do by 6pm, including a 1 hour break for lunch. We did the same at AK, but there were several 1 and done rides at AK that we wouldn't go on if we went back.

With 8 days, I would do 3 days at MK, 2 at Epcot, 1 at HS and 1 at AK and then take the last park day to go to whichever park was your favorite or whichever park you didn't get to do the most of what you wanted to do.

 

[wookiebeck]

With that many days on your vacation, it might make sense to upgrade the tix to hoppers to give you the freedom to bounce around. It is a one-time fee that is cost effective when viewed over the 8 days.

 

[twinprincesses09]

We did a 7 day trip with our DDs 6, 6 with 3 days MK, 1 day Epcot, 2 days HS, and 1 day AK. 1 day at Epcot was enough for us, but FEA and the meet and greet weren't open yet, and we didn't want to spend a lot of time in WS. We would have needed another day if we had included these attractions or wanted to see more of WS. We did spend 2 days at HS, but we used these as our "rest" days and only did half days. One day that we stayed for evening EMH at MK until 1 am, so we got to HS about 4pm the next day stayed until close to see the fireworks. Our other HS day we got there about 12 and left by about 5. Our AK day, we arrived for morning EMH, took a break 1pm-6pm, then stayed until closed. We did everything we wanted (Safari x2, EE x 3), but would have liked to have had a little more time to just look around and explore some of the trails. If I were to do it over, we would probably spend 2 days at AK (even if they are shorter days) and just 1 day at HS.

 

[kitkat4622]

3 MK
2 EP
2 AK
1 DHS

I totally agree with this plan