Help me strategize: Morning at AK, Evening at DHS?

[megs1313]

We were originally planning to skip AK this trip, but with all of the closures at DHS, we are thinking maybe we should combine AK and DHS in a single day. Trouble is, I know we can only do FP+ at one park for the day....so I don't know how we can possibly make it work to get everything in....Do you see a way?

The day we are thinking about doing this is a morning EMH for AK, which complicates things, IMO.

Must do at AK:
Safari

Must do at DHS:
TSMM
JTA

My first thought was to do breakfast at Tusker House so we can beat the crowd to the safari in the early morning, but since it's an EMH morning, that probably won't work (the ADR available currently is 8:20am). Can I get a safari ride with less than an hour wait without a FP+?

 

[evilqueenmindy]

I've never found AK especially crowded first thing in the morning. The line for the safari should be manageable. I've done AK/HS split days with little difficulty in the past.
The concern with your plan is JTA. You need rope drop at HS to sign up.

 

[hakepb]

doenst JTA require a morning signup?

 

[soniam]

Do DHS in the morning with FP+. TSMM pretty much requires an FP+ even at rope drop. That way you can go sign up for an early JTA and then do TSMM. AK is pretty easy to do in the afternoon. We have arrived a couple of times after lunch and have been able to get FP+. Safari is a little harder to get an FP+ in the afternoon day of, but we have done it. Even if you can't get an FP+ for Safari, later in the day, the wait will probably be less than 30 minutes. We usually do during busy times, Spring Break and summer.

 

[vicb]

On our last trip in May 2014 when FP+ was pretty new, we had hoppers and used our hoppers spur of the moment to enter AK around 4pm one afternoon after being at Epcot rope drop that morning. We had used our FP+ at Epcot but were able to look at the ride wait app and see EE was less than 20 min. so we hopped the bus to AK. When we got to AK the EE wait was less than 10 min! We all rode it twice then the kids (young adults actually) did a third ride no wait! It was great. Then we decided to hike over to safari as app said 15 min. wait but when we got there the wait had bumped up to 45 min!? We decided we could not afford the 45 min. wait and ride as we had set ADR's for dinner so we bought a drink and leisurely strolled back to the front of the park and splurged on a cab to our hotel so we could shower for dinner.

If we had not been limited by our evening plans we would have spent more time enjoying the late afternoon in the park as mostly it seemed pretty mellow. We had planned to do a couple of hours on our arrival day at AK but our plane was delayed several hours so we had to miss that opportunity. Our kids had opted to spend our AK day at TL instead which was really fun too so it was nice we could still hop over to AK to ride EE.

Our next trip will probably be after Avatar-land opens so we likely will want to spend a day and use our FP+s there. Thinking HS might be just an emh eve for us which we did last trip and got on all the rides (ToT, TSM, RnRc, GMR, Star Tours and Muppets 3D) but none of the shows.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

We were originally planning to skip AK this trip, but with all of the closures at DHS, we are thinking maybe we should combine AK and DHS in a single day. Trouble is, I know we can only do FP+ at one park for the day....so I don't know how we can possibly make it work to get everything in....Do you see a way?

The day we are thinking about doing this is a morning EMH for AK, which complicates things, IMO.

Must do at AK:
Safari

Must do at DHS:
TSMM
JTA

My first thought was to do breakfast at Tusker House so we can beat the crowd to the safari in the early morning, but since it's an EMH morning, that probably won't work (the ADR available currently is 8:20am). Can I get a safari ride with less than an hour wait without a FP+?

We did this very combo on Thanksgiving day. The safari wait was less than an hour when we checked on MDE. But kids weren't interested. We just stuck with thrill rides. I think your chances are fine. Certainly better than trying to do standby at DHS in the evening.

Any chance you can switch to a non-EMH day?

 

[davkata]

RD one park, FP+ the other for later in the day. If it matters, Tusker House breakfast is one of our favorites! Keep checking the times, first time we went was during a busy week and we booked it the night before for a 10 ish time slot.