How do you Disney?

[Ratpack]

I heard once that park hopping with little ones is not a good idea. Would you suggest otherwise? Should I consider hopping?

Yes, park hopping has always worked for us. Makes one day feel more like two since you see two parks in a day. Really no different from going back to the same park

 

[Dulcee]

I need to learn how LL works, as well as genie and whether or not park hopping might be a good idea for our family.

We almost always park hop. I think the key to park hopping with little kids is one park in the morning, BREAK, and then one park in the evening. Where hopping is (in my opinion) a mess with little kids is when you try to do a park all morning/afternoon, then hop immediately to a new one.

For us that midday break really allows for a fresh start for the evening, regardless of whether its a new park or the same one from the AM.

 

[sponica]

Our last trip was in 2016, looking at past notes, it seems as though we did not do as many TS either (I just cant seem to remember how this worked out for us). I also don't know what dining would look like if I did not make reservations and we just winged it. Thoughts?

I had a one day plan where we winged it, it did not go well. I figured we'd mobile order for counter service, but there were no pickup times within a 2 hour span for lunch. We somehow lucked into a late lunch/early dinner at Le Cellier and then grabbed something back at the hotel

 

[sponica]

We almost always park hop. I think the key to park hopping with little kids is one park in the morning, BREAK, and then one park in the evening. Where hopping is (in my opinion) a mess with little kids is when you try to do a park all morning/afternoon, then hop immediately to a new one.

For us that midday break really allows for a fresh start for the evening, regardless of whether its a new park or the same one from the AM.

Our breaks end up being a disaster, but that's how my kids are wired. If they go back to the resort, they're done. Once they get in that pool, they're not going back to a park.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

Hi!
We are staying for 8 nights at WL BRV. DH likes to balance pool time with park time. DD13 and DD16 will be up for anything, DS4 will most likely start off strong, fall asleep around 1:00-3:00 and then rally until about 9:00 or so. We will eat breakfast on the go, not sure what we will do for lunch, dinner will most likely be TS and ideally between 6:00-7:00.
We plan on hitting the parks early and taking a break throughout the day; most likely we will return to the parks later in the evening.
How do you fit in meals? How does your family navigate meals/rest? We are a quality over quantity kind of a family.
Thank you!

When my daughter was young, we'd go all day. When tired, sleep in the stroller. We'd have 1 break day at resort and park hopped. ADR's for most lunches and for all dinners. We felt time is money and money is time and had to do it all. WE just got back from a 7 night stay. We did not do park hopping, first time in 20+ years. Our lunches were quick serve and ADR's for dinner were at hotels. Left the parks to get ready for dinner and if we felt like going back, we just returned to same park we visited earlier that day. Going forward from here, it will be less and less park time (and definitely not during the hot summer months, and more resort/relaxing time.

 

[Specter]

Hi!
We are staying for 8 nights at WL BRV. DH likes to balance pool time with park time. DD13 and DD16 will be up for anything, DS4 will most likely start off strong, fall asleep around 1:00-3:00 and then rally until about 9:00 or so. We will eat breakfast on the go, not sure what we will do for lunch, dinner will most likely be TS and ideally between 6:00-7:00.
We plan on hitting the parks early and taking a break throughout the day; most likely we will return to the parks later in the evening.
How do you fit in meals? How does your family navigate meals/rest? We are a quality over quantity kind of a family.
Thank you!

We are a family of 3, DD is now 5 but last went when she was 3.5 years old, going again next March and plan to stick to this same basic structure.

First, we live in Texas and my parents and my in-laws both have pools, and there is a neighborhood pool. They aren't anything compared to Disney World but at the same time, swimming is not enough of a novelty for us that we bother. DW and I are both of the opinion that we are paying to go to Disney World, we want to do things we can't do elsewhere. The exception to this is the occasional evening dip in one of the quiet pools. This is actually kind of therapeutic after some of those long park days putting a lot of miles on your feet. For the same reason I just mentioned, as well as the fact that DW is a teacher and so most of our trips are over specific school breaks, we are not paying all that money to hang out at the hotel/pool, we also don't take a non-park day. We do take midday breaks to make sure we get a little AC and quiet time, but we are there to enjoy the parks and that is what we do. Now, that said, this is what works for us and I always say enjoy your vacation the way that you want to.

As far as meals go, we will typically get a QS breakfast our first morning while waiting on our grocery delivery, then eat simple breakfasts in our room while we get ready for the day until check-out day, then we usually have a larger TS breakfast to fill up before travel. We try to be at the park at rope drop, or at least close to it, and we hit as many rides as we can in the mornings. Usually around noon or shortly after we find a QS lunch. We are not super picky about this unless we are in AK or HS in which case we are going to go to Satuli or Docking Bay 7, respectively. Otherwise we generally just consider where we are in the park and what's close. Bonus points if we can do the order ahead post-pandemic, one of the post-pandemic changes we actually do like.

After lunch we will either leave to go have a midday break or, if there is a ride with a short wait between us and the exit we will hit that and then head back to our room. Typically, we estimate about 3-3.5 hours between travel and actual rest/nap/quiet time. Then we will quickly freshen up and head back to the parks. We do TS dinners about 99% of the time, ideally in the 6-7 time frame but if you know Disney you know that there are plenty of times that we are eating at 5-5:30. We just do what we can between arriving back at the park and our ADR and then after dinner it's much the same. Sometimes we close it out, sometimes we call it an "early" night, early meaning leaving the park around 9 in most instances minus AK since they aren't typically open that late.

Again, this is how we like to do Disney. We may not do it the same way as others but we also don't knock it. Disney resorts and pools are great but we just don't prioritize them. The closest we come is typically our arrival day. Rather than pay the cost of an extra day on the park tickets we will typically do Disney Springs on arrival day, get a little preliminary souvenir shopping done (we always get a customized Christmas ornament, better to do that early we feel), and sometimes resort hop around. We especially like this when we go over Christmas or Thanksgiving break to see the different decorations at the resorts, the gingerbread house at GF, some of the chocolate sculptures at other resorts, etc.

 

[tom1944]

I heard once that park hopping with little ones is not a good idea. Would you suggest otherwise? Should I consider hopping?

We tried it last year when my granddaughter was 4 and it was not successful. This year we are not buying it.

Our plan is get to the park early and have lunch around 2. After lunch maybe hit a ride or 2 and then go back to the resort. We will have a light dinner on the 6 park days.

On our 2 non-park days we will have a character breakfast/brunch and a table service dinner.

We are there for 9 nights. We don’t do anything on arrival or departure days beside dinner on arrival and breakfast on departure days.

 

[tinkerjo]

The older I get, the more I enjoy a nice quiet resort day or 2.being from Ohio and mostly traveling in winter months, we really enjoy the pools and hot tubs. We also go back to our resort and make dinner almost nightly. I know most people don’t like to cook on vacation but my stomach can’t handle too many park meals. We do try and make it easy meals and me and DH take turns cooking (he actually cooks more than me on vacation which is nice). Wal Mart delivery was a huge plus and super easy to use. when I had teens/young adults, they had the option of getting up and rope dropping with us or sleeping in and meeting us in the parks. I also would let them do evening extra magic hours(when it was a thing) and sometimes stay out till 1-2AM but usually they chose to stay with us and rope drop. There are no 2 trips alike and what is quality to one may not be quality to another(my brother and family are rope drop to close people and love it but I find it miserable) our next trip with the grandkids will mostly be ride driven, stay a little later than we normally would, and see lots of pool time.

 

[DizneyFamof4]

For a 8-9 day trip, we will usually have 1 R&R day at the resort and to go to DS. We do not do midday breaks, we much rather sleep in a bit and get to the parks around 10. So we have breakfast in our room or QS at resort to start the day without rushing. We also rarely do TS, because, for us, we find it takes up to much time and also very expensive, especially when you add in the tip When we get hungry we will find a park QS place to eat at. We much rather use that $$$ for ILL and G+ at MK and HS, we rarely get G+ at AK or EPCOT and have been totally fine without it. There are a lot of QS places that we can take breaks at if we have too, and not needing to waste time going back to our resort. I'm not a G+ fan because it forces me to get up before 7am to get my 1st G+ ride and I found that I am on my phone a lot more than with FP+. We do not park hop and much rather spend a whole day at 1 park because it makes for a MUCH more relaxing time. All I can say is that when we started touring like this, when get home we do not feel like we need a vacation because of our vacation. LOL

 

[Mouse Tracker]

I heard once that park hopping with little ones is not a good idea. Would you suggest otherwise? Should I consider hopping?

Depends a lot on the type of transportation used to "hop" if going park to park.
Age and "personality" of little one / weather / others to help - all factor in.
Typically taking a resort break with little ones allows you the opportunity to "hop" from resort (resort / park / resort-break / new park.

 

[Mouse Tracker]

YES! This sounds very much like our family. I would be just like you- let's go!
I appreciate your advice, I will try and find ways to compromise and meet everyone's needs (at least some of the time).
I imagine that we probably will split from time to time and send our boys back to the resort while us ladies hit the PARKS!

I get the vibe that a one park per day ticket is what ya'll need. Tweak it that the boys get gift cards for snack / lunch.
Maybe start off all together then break up around lunch, maybe plan to meet up in the park for dinner.
This might satisfy the hard core-goers with the resort swimmers.

 

[SwanVT2]

Our breaks end up being a disaster, but that's how my kids are wired. If they go back to the resort, they're done. Once they get in that pool, they're not going back to a park.

Same here. It is tricky because DD is not a morning person but if we do a break mid day she is exhausted and done for the day. Plus she prefers the pool early evening when it tends to clear out some. So we do the morning and usually come back to hotel by 2 for rest and then either pool then dinner or early dinner then pool,

 

[cedricandsophie]

We do Disney by going the first two weeks in March, usually staying at two resorts we rarely go to parks. But if we do we get a park hopper and do 3 parks in a day just to get it o we with. Last year we just happened to be there during two moonlight magic nights. We did animal kingdom and Epcot during those times. Free nights at a park is a wonderful thing. When we are there in 2025 we probably won’t go to parks at all unless we hit a moonlight magic again . Personally I don’t enjoy them any more. Too expensive, too crowded, too much rushing around. It’s like an endurance test for me. We enjoy the pools at the resort, playing tennis and shuffleboard, eating breakfast in room, sharing a sandwich at the pool and going out for a nice dinner with a bottle of wine most nights. We usually go over to bay lake one night to watch fireworks from the roof or we go to narcoses at the grand Floridian for dinner and watch them from the porch. It’s still an expensive trip just minus the parks.

 

[jimmymc]

We go all in on our park days, including hopping, then schedule a few days off during a week-long trip. Animal Kingdom is usually combined with another park, and we'll schedule multiple mornings at Epcot to get on Guardians as much as we can. Sometimes we might hit 3 parks in one day to get the most out of virtual queues and Genie+. But then on our rest days, we sleep in and spend a lot of the day at the pool.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

We’re in a park most days of our trip. During our 2 week trips we typically have 2, maybe 3 days where we don’t set foot in a park at all. On those days we sleep in, swim, DS, visit other resorts etc. We’ll usually do one open-to-close day for each park (2 for MK) Then we pop in and out of them for partial days the rest of the trip. We’ll usually arrive at the parks around the afternoon and stay late. We do breakfasts in our room, lunch is usually QS unless it’s at a restaurant with “night time” theming (like SciFi, San Angel, Biergarten,etc) then we do those at lunch because it’s cool to go from bright daylight to the evening effect. Otherwise dinner is usually where we do our daily TS. We usually do 2 or 3 character meals, one with the “main” characters, one with princesses and maybe one other. We’ll typically have 2-3 snacks a day just to try things. We always do a MK fireworks dessert party because I can’t stand trying to find a spot and sometimes we’ll do the Epcot boat fireworks package. We don’t usually park hop although we’re going to try it on our upcoming trip. We give the kids each a preloaded Disney gift card for souvenir money and when it’s gone, it’s gone. They’re much more thoughtful about what they buy this way. This is generally how we do Disney.

 

[Cadiewampus]

Well if are trying to get in a virtual cue we will get up early to be able to try and do that before 7. Even at that we do not get in a big hurry to get there. We usually get to the parks around 9:00. We always have a loose plan but not some military death march like some we have seen. We just go with the flow and have never not been able to do everything we want in a park

 

[DizneyFamof4]

We do a resort day every 4th day. Our family much rather close the parks than do RD and we never take a midday break, for us it felt like a waste of time plus there are no nappers in our family. Plus we live in Florida and during the summer the worst time (sun related) to be at a pool was between 11-2 in the afternoon. When our girls were young we always had a stroller and they would rest and sleep in it while we were at the parks. We also make sure if we get in late that we do not get up early the next day, we always made sure our girls got their rest. Now it's more for mom and dad. LOL We also do not do hopping anymore so we can just take our time in the park we are in and get everything we wanted done. We also only do maybe 1 TS meal and much rather save a lot of time doing QS meals. Since we started doing it this way our trips have become so much more relaxing and when we get home we no longer feel like we need a vacation from our vacation. LOL

 

[NYCgrrl]

Our upcoming trip is pretty fluid. Started as DGD (18) and her much younger sister (6) and self booked @ AKL. Now, we are a possible party of 7 with two more children under the age of 7, looking for a DVC 2 b/r throughout the moderate and deluxe resorts.

Assuming all go and this is a 10 night stay during the holiday season will be suggesting one resort day every 5 days, one water park day approximately every three days and the remaining days for parks minus one DS day which makes about 4 park days. Hopefully that will fit into everyone’s budget which since there are two AP holders in the original party will spread the benefits as it were.