How do you do everything and make rope drop?

[darnheather]

I don't know how we'll go to 9 or 10 pm and wake up at 6:30 the next morning to do it all again. Even with the afternoon break! Any tips?

 

[Spunky946]

Well my kids are always up early no matter what, and 9 or 10 is not that late.

When are you going and how long are you staying? You could alternate early mornings/late nights.

 

[Justmeandnooneelse]

We're morning people, so we have no problem getting to rope drop. But, we're done and ready to leave the parks by 8 or so.

It's too exhausting for us to do early mornings and late nights. We choose go back to our room, shower, have a relaxing drink and be in bed by 10, and up at 6 when we're at WDW.

 

[darnheather]

Going in November and staying 5 nights 6 days. I do have one late morning start (Epcot) and breaks planned the other days. Most of our ADR's are around 7 or 7:30. How late will that put us back to the resort?

 

[mymommom]

We have been Amazed at how much you can accomplish when you are at Rope Drop. It's totally worth it! What works REALLY well for our family (with little ones ranging from 2 to 7) is getting up early, having a quick breakfast at the hotel, going to Rope Drop and eating lunch in the park between 11-11:30am. We schedule our dinners as close to 5:00 as possible, then return to the Hotel for the night. Kids are in bed by 8:30 and the adults have some free time We used to go from morning till night, but then Everyone was grumpy We stay out late the last night to enjoy MSEP and Wishes at MK. It's actually a Vacation! We're all well rested and still have a great time. Good luck planning!

 

[Spunky946]

Going in November and staying 5 nights 6 days. I do have one late morning start (Epcot) and breaks planned the other days. Most of our ADR's are around 7 or 7:30. How late will that put us back to the resort?

Figure 60-90 minutes to eat depending on thr restaurant and another 60-90 minutes depending on where the restaurant is and what hotel you are staying at. We have only seen wishes/msep. We have not done fantasmic or illuminations. We might do one of them this next trip.

How many park days?

 

[Marionnette]

I don't know how we'll go to 9 or 10 pm and wake up at 6:30 the next morning to do it all again. Even with the afternoon break! Any tips?

You don't do everything. You'd be exhausted trying to do it all. So instead, we choose one day to stay out late and another day to get an early start. And in between those two, we plan a "down" day where we sleep in, hang at the pool, and do some shopping. If we were up for rope drop every morning and then stayed out past 10 each night, tempers would flare and kids would have tantrums. Then nobody's having any fun.

 

[darnheather]

Figure 60-90 minutes to eat depending on thr restaurant and another 60-90 minutes depending on where the restaurant is and what hotel you are staying at. We have only seen wishes/msep. We have not done fantasmic or illuminations. We might do one of them this next trip.

How many park days?

6 park days. Two half days, one late morning day and two with mid-day breaks. The final day we're headed to visit other family but will stay until 2 or 3pm.

 

[RedHeadedFairy]

I don't know how we'll go to 9 or 10 pm and wake up at 6:30 the next morning to do it all again. Even with the afternoon break! Any tips?

We don't do it all in any one day, for us it's an either/or. Either rope drop OR a late night; the only time we've managed to do both in the same day was with a very long midday break coupled with very late Extra Magic Hours at the Magic Kingdom afterward. The next morning we slept in and hit the parks around 11.

 

[bumbershoot]

6 park days. Two half days, one late morning day and two with mid-day breaks. The final day we're headed to visit other family but will stay until 2 or 3pm.

I was first going to respond with "we can't do later nights and early mornings day after day" (though we've tried!), but when I see your actual schedule I don't see how that's going to be horribly exhausting. That's just two full days and you're already throwing in breaks, so it seems to have taken care of itself.

Though at WDW I cannot take a break. I could barely do that at DLR; just the time to get back to the hotel, even the Grand Californian (especially the Grand Californian b/c we got the second furthest away hotel room you can get there...was as long from our room to the midpoint between parks as it is from the sidewalk from the HoJo offsite!), bugged us. And the one time I actually fell asleep I Did Not want to get up, and felt fuzzy-headed the rest of the afternoon/evening. And then couldn't sleep at night.


But going back to the beginning, we now do maybe ONE later night and the rest of it is as early as possible with a reasonable hour of leaving the parks. This trip our ONE late night will be for MSEP (I've never seen it at WDW, and my hubby and son have never seen it at all) and then late dinner at BOG.

 

[Happyjen27]

We just don't do everything. I've learned from the DIS that's impossible, so we pick like 3 or 4 things a day that are "must do" items, and anything else we do is bonus, anything we miss is proof we need to come back again.

I know for my family, I need to at least leave the potential for 11-12 hours of sleep. They don't always use that sleep, and might be up early, but I want to give the potential. So, any late nights are followed by sleep-in mornings. Any early morning means we are probably out of the parks after lunch. We might go back, we might not, we assess that after nap.

We have only ever seen Wishes, we haven't seen Illuminations or Fantasmic! either, we just haven't been able to work it out, because Rope Drop is more suited to our touring style than sleeping in and staying late.

7:30 reservations will take about 60-90 min for eating, so that's going to be 9:00. Then there is transportation. If you're eating at a resort and count on Disney transport, it might be an hour or so. If you have a car it will be much shorter. If you're eating at a park, I would count on an hour too, and if you get back early you'll be pleased. You've got to walk to the gates, hop in line for transport, and depending on the end of nighttime shows you might see no crowd, you might see heavy crowds. So, all in all, probably you'll be back in your room around 10 or 10:30?

 

[RMulieri]

we don't .You can't do everything or you will collapse from exhaustion
We are early risers by nature. We do rope drop , hang around the parks till about 12p and back to resort.We then go back in the afternoon for a couple of hours.We are done usually by 8pm.If there are days we want to see something at night, we don't do rope drop.It is supposed to be a vacation, and getting up early and going FULL tilt till 10pm at night is not a vacation for us

 

[sb682]

My 3-year-old is up by 6:30, no matter what we do on our trips. We take afternoon breaks around 12 or 1 and usually are out of the parks by 8 or 9. The one exception on our last trip was Wishes; he really wanted to see the fireworks and so he didn't go to bed until 11 that night. He was still up bright and early and we were at Epcot for rope drop. For our family, one or two late nights is OK, but any more than that and none of us is getting enough sleep to have fun the next day.

 

[Aliceacc]

I'm a morning person.

So I set my alarm, say, for 6:15. (That's "sleeping in" compared to my routine during the school year, when I get up at 5.)

I shower and change, and wake my husband before going down to fill up the refillable mugs for everyone.

Once he's out of the shower, he turns on the lights and TV. At about that time, I return and get everyone up. We order breakfast stuff through Garden Grocer and the kids shower/change/eat.

And we're out the door by 8 for 9 am rope drop.

Since we go in the middle of summer, we ALWAYS get back to the pool for a mid day break. We swim until dinner time, then head back to the parks through fireworks. Then we collapse into bed, and start over.

We come home tired but happy. As teachers, we always have at least a week or two to decompress before school starts. If we had to return to work within a day or two, or if our trip were longer than a week, we would need a different strategy. We know we won't "do everything" but we do manage to see and do quite a lot.

 

[buzznina]

After our first couple of trips we found that we enjoyed Disney more at night then in the early morning. So now we usually only do 1 rope drop and we make sure the night before is not a late night. We do not schedule any early activities after a late night, and this has worked great for us. We also will have a no park day or two during an 8 or 9 day trip. No one is over tired and I cannot remember (parents included) any real melt downs in years. Knock on wood

 

[darnheather]

Thanks everyone. I may try to change a few things around so that one of the MK days is not an 8 am EMH. I think that's just really stretching it for us. I know I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to make this a perfect trip and that in reality it can't be so I need to chill out but just haven't found that peace yet. I'm still feeling and

 

[Minnesota!]

We are all early risers..and 9 or 10 is EARLY for us. That's about the time we start settling down at home. Usually in bed by 10, sleeping by 11 or so (me..usually 12).

ODS and I require 4 - 6 hours a night. YDS needs a little more - 7 or so. DH just rolls with whatever everyone else is doing.

If you think your family will need more downtime...go back to the resort for lunch, swim, and a nap for everyone. We did discover the joy that is "that downtime" last trip (August...heat...pool felt amazing!). Even 20 minutes of chilling out in A/C...fresh shower...rejuvenates!

 

[Minnesota!]

I'm a morning person.

So I set my alarm, say, for 6:15. (That's "sleeping in" compared to my routine during the school year, when I get up at 5.)

I shower and change, and wake my husband before going down to fill up the refillable mugs for everyone.

Once he's out of the shower, he turns on the lights and TV. At about that time, I return and get everyone up. We order breakfast stuff through Garden Grocer and the kids shower/change/eat.

And we're out the door by 8 for 9 am rope drop.

Since we go in the middle of summer, we ALWAYS get back to the pool for a mid day break. We swim until dinner time, then head back to the parks through fireworks. Then we collapse into bed, and start over.

We come home tired but happy. As teachers, we always have at least a week or two to decompress before school starts. If we had to return to work within a day or two, or if our trip were longer than a week, we would need a different strategy. We know we won't "do everything" but we do manage to see and do quite a lot.

This is us, exactly! Get up around 6, shower, get DH out of bed (or vice versa), he showers and I get ready, then I leave to get pop/coffee, etc. When I get back the kids are up, getting dressed, DH is about ready to go. About 45-60 minutes after getting up, we are ready to go! We are up and out people. And we stay thru fireworks....and rinse and repeat each day of the trip

We are hell to vacation with - everyone we know sleeps in, etc. Ha ha!

 

[PHXscuba]

We decided to skip the morning EMHs so every morning was a 9 a.m. rope drop. We made it to all but one that week (and still got to Epcot on that day before 9:30 on our "taking our time" day). We found we could get up around 7 and take turns showering/eating in our room before being out the door just after 8 to catch a bus from All Stars. This is all with 2 rooms and 4 kids, ages 6-15. They are all good about getting up on a vacation, even the teens.

We alternated later nights that included evening entertainment with early evenings (AK, leaving Epcot at 7, waterpark/DTD day). I think NOT having parkhoppers helped -- we didn't have the urge to go somewhere else when we finished what we planned for the day.

PHXscuba

 

[tlh0726]

every family is different. only you know what is going to work for your family. Do what will work for them and enjoy your vacation
Alot is going to depend on their normal routine at home. If they are early to bed, asking them to stay up late and then get up early day after day is only asking for trouble.


For us, we do not do down time. We are at Disney and we are going to enjoy every minute of it If we wanted to sit on our butts or swim in a pool, we would stay at home.

Our kids have been doing 4 parks in one day since their 2nd trip. They actually want to do all 4 parks and the 2 waterparks on our next trip.

DH travels for work and our kids have been on the go since birth. We do not have strict bedtimes at home, but they know there is no whining or complaining the next morning about how tired you are.