help with 3 day strategy

[disneymagicgirl]

We usually do 10 day trips but this year are doing a 7 night DCL and only 3 nights at WDW. We will only have 3 park days since the latest SWA flight out has DME picking us up at 11am or so.

For park days we will have Saturday after disembarking cruise, all of Sunday, and all of Monday. Would be nice to hit up the main attractions in Ep, DHS, and AK and spend most time in MK. We may also do MNsSHP on Sunday pm.

How are the waits at TSM now with a second track? How crowded is AK at night? Thinking of doing AK, Ep, or DHS Saturday afternoon, MK/MNSSHP Sunday, and DHS/Epcot Monday.

AK, DHS, and Epcot are interchangeable. Doesn't really matter to me which we do on which day.
If we skip a park, my family wants to skip Epcot. Of course I love Epcot and want to fit it in. Thought about extending by a night but don't want the kids missing another day of school.
This will be in early/mid Sept if that has any bearing on things.

 

[rlovew]

We were just at the parks this past week. It was definitely more crowded than I am used to in the fall but early mornings and nights were less crowded. A lot of which you should do when depends on what rides and attractions you want to see in each park and your families ability to get up and stay up. I found it was really easy to get FP for most things after we finished our first fps last week but TSMM, 7DMT, and Soarin are exceptions to being able to do that. I was however able to secure an 8:30 FP for TSMM after we finished our first 4 FP of the day at about 3pm.
On Tuesday afternoon this past week we were at DHS and my daughter wanted to ride TSMM again (now it was just the of us so we were able to skip from the FP line merge to the front of the ride so about 10 min of the wait) but we were in and out within 20 minutes and the wait was listed at 40 min on Disney's app and 30 minutes at the entrance.
I would plan on using 1 FP each day on one of the above rides and going from there to figure out your schedule. We arrived at AK Sunday afternoon at about 2pm and were able to ride and watch everything we wanted by the time we got to the end of the evening show (went to the 9pm one). Now we did not watch the Nemo show but we managed to do Safari twice(once FP), Dino twice (standby), Everest (FP), Kali (FP), triceratops spin, and could have done Primevil Whirl and we had time to fit in Lion King Show. We had a sit down dinner at Yak and Yeti and arrived at 8:30pm for the 9pm Jungle Cruise show. I could have gotten FP for other things while we were at the park. I would say it is the easiest park to do in an afternoon and evening depending on what you want to see.

Also I found if I took a FP for an attraction we wanted (after our first 3) I could normally change it to close to the current time after accepting what I was given at first.

 

[wdw&sonny]

Crowds should be a little lighter. You'll need a car and a park hopper. After 7 days on cruise, your mindset may be less ambitious. Depends on what "main attractions" are to you. Could probably do all of Ep on Saturday and stay for dinner. Sunday hit HS early to get to TSMM, ToT and RnRC (no FPs needed). Go to AK later. Monday all day at MK.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Crowds should be a little lighter. You'll need a car and a park hopper. After 7 days on cruise, your mindset may be less ambitious. Depends on what "main attractions" are to you. Could probably do all of Ep on Saturday and stay for dinner. Sunday hit HS early to get to TSMM, ToT and RnRC (no FPs needed). Go to AK later. Monday all day at MK.

At Epcot we'd prob want Soarin, TT, and FEA. I'd say FEA would be the bottom of that list. So maybe rope drop Epcot Monday. Sunday we can only do 1 park in am if we do mnsshp in evening.

We are planning to try out DL in 2017, and in 2015 we skipped Disney for the first time in forever (lol) because I was huge preggers in the fall when we vacation. So trying to squeeze in all our faves since we won't be back til 2018.

 

[phillymummer]

At Epcot we'd prob want Soarin, TT, and FEA. I'd say FEA would be the bottom of that list. So maybe rope drop Epcot Monday. Sunday we can only do 1 park in am if we do mnsshp in evening.

Are you going to be able to make it to rope drop on Monday after being at the party late Sunday night.... after being on a cruise for 7 days? I know my family could not do that and still enjoy ourselves.

All of my trips have been short (3 days in the park) and the one thing I have learned is you cannot do everything. if you try to squeeze everything in, you will end up very tired and very stressed if something does not go according to plan (e.g.- a ride breaks down, you miss a FP time, transportation between parks takes longer than normal, a family member has a meltdown, etc). I would suggest cutting something out... the party or a park. At least you know you will be back in 2018. Your favorites should still be around. Just an opinion from someone who has experience with short trips.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Are you going to be able to make it to rope drop on Monday after being at the party late Sunday night.... after being on a cruise for 7 days? I know my family could not do that and still enjoy ourselves.

All of my trips have been short (3 days in the park) and the one thing I have learned is you cannot do everything. if you try to squeeze everything in, you will end up very tired and very stressed if something does not go according to plan (e.g.- a ride breaks down, you miss a FP time, transportation between parks takes longer than normal, a family member has a meltdown, etc). I would suggest cutting something out... the party or a park. At least you know you will be back in 2018. Your favorites should still be around. Just an opinion from someone who has experience with short trips.

We have an infant so won't be out too late at the party and will be up early either way. I am not 100% on the party. Just considering it. We have done it several times before so not a big deal if we miss it this time. We will come back to the resort mid day each day for naps.