How do you do the parks without hopper

[agavegirl1]

The only time I did the parks without hoppers was thus...

I chose the park without EMH (Extra Magic Hours) in the morning and was there by RD (Rope Drop or Park Opening). I had a very detailed touring plan involving going to Adventureland/Frontierland first and going counter-clockwise with FP for Fantasyland and Tomorrowland.

The most important aspect of my plan was when I went...Late February.

 

[DanielNYC]

We never use hoppers. Stay in one park the entire day. No going back to the hotel during midday. Don't like to waste time traveling back and forth. My kids (11 and 9 years old) are fine with it.

 

[Tomh]

even though I still have about 120 days left I have started planing the parks I have 2 days for each park. I was wondering how you tackle it. Do you go clockwise or anti clock wise, 1/2 a park per day, or section by section, frontier then tomorrow land ect. Suggestions on all parks would be great. I have been once (14 years ago) but my partner has not been before. Thanks for any suggestions.

We visit every summer without hoppers. We usually spend 10 days in the parks, so it is pretty easy to break things up for us.

With 2 days in each park, to be honest, I don't think I could spend two full days in DHS, there just isn't that much in the park that interests me right now.

AK Day 1 I would get FP+ for Flights of Passage, and maybe Rivers of Light, and what ever other one ride you want. Day 2 I would get Navi River Journey, and what ever you didn't get for day 1. I would plan on spending time in Pandora after dark that night.

MK I would say Day 1 start in Fantasyland at Rope Drop, you should be able to do Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, and Ariel with little to no line. FP+ for 7D around 10:00 - 11:00 (if you can get it for that time) do Small World on standby, and work your way towards Tomorrowland. FP+ Space Mountain (if you want to ride it) and Buzz. The rest you should be able to do standby without too much waiting. Day 2 I would start at Big Thunder and Splash at rope drop, then Haunted Mansion. FP+ Pirates starting at 10:00 - 11:00, then Jungle Cruise and maybe use your 3rd to repeat a ride you really like. You should have no problem doing Alladin, Country Bears, and Hall of Presidents standby.

Epcot, our strategy is to break future world in half. One day do Test Track at Rope Drop, then Universe of Energy, FP+ Mission Space 10:00 - 11:00, Spaceship Earth 11:00 - 12:00 and Frozen Ever After in the afternoon. Once you've ridden Spaceship Earth, work your way out to World Showcase. Grand Fiesta Tour you can ride standby with no problem. Day 2, Soarin at rope drop, then Living With The Land, go over to the Seas. You might want to use a FP+ for Nemo. Go do Journey into Imagination (FP seldom needed there) and the Pixar film festival. You could use your tier 1 FP for either a second ride on Soarin', OR for another go on Test Track (just make it late morning, or early afternoon so you can finish the Land, Seas, and Imagination first) or another ride on Frozen Ever After (again, make it for afternoon). The only rides that often need FP in Epcot are Soarin, Test Track, and Spaceship Earth.

 

[Delirium]

We hop virtually every day of our trip (normally 7-10 park days). We go mostly in October, so it's party season. And, that increases the need for hoppers if you want the best MK experience. Hopping has become part of thee experience we truly enjoy. It provides a chance to get off your feet, and the method of hopping is often an experience in and of itself (monorail from Epcot to MK, boat between Epcot to HS, etc.). We love to hop over to a different park for a specific event. Fantasmic just feels different when you are not at HS all day. Want to see a concert at Epcot on a MK day? No problem, just hop. Want dining reservations at the Boardwalk on a HS day? Afterwards, you have a little 5 minute walk to be at Epcot.

I can't see us ever doing without them on a long trip. It's simply a part of the trip that we enjoy having.

 

[tndisney5]

Well, we don't find hoppers to be necessary. We go to a park and stay in that park all day. When we had small children, we would take a break in the heat of the afternoon (we also go in the summer).

As for strategy, we use https://touringplans.com/, which creates a plan for us using our dining reservations and FastPass+ reservations for optimum riding and minimum waiting. The strategy is different per park and what you want to accomplish. For example, any strategy I gave you for Animal Kingdom would totally skip Avatarland, because I've never seen the movie.

We never park hop. We try to start early at the parks, do what we want, use a FP or 2 in the morning. If we feel sluggish we go back to the hotel for a bit then back to the park for more attractions and evening shows/fireworks. We have never found a need to park hop and we have been at very slow times - early Feb - and busy times like spring break and Christmas season.

As far as strategy, I think if you have 2 days planned for each park you should be able to do most of the things you have planned.

 

[kwdw]

With two full days in each park - just plan your FP+ and don't worry too much about the rest of the plan. You've got plenty of time - especially because you aren't hopping.

At MK with two days - If I am planning rope drop both days - my strategy is a bit different first thing. One day I'll plan to hit SDMT first thing, the other day it will be PP. One of the days I'll likely just hit Fantasyland rides at RD - the other day - I will plan things like Buzz or SM or HM. But otherwise - with two full days - I divide up my "must ride" FP's between the two days - and go with the flow. One day I might plan to wait for a good spot for the parade - but not the second day. I'd hit the fireworks one night for sure - but the other night would be a maybe.

At AK - I haven't been with Pandora open - so I can't say exactly how I would handle this. I love all three shows - FOTLK, Nemo, and Flights of Wonder - and its really hard to do all three in one day - so I would pre-plan splitting those up. And I would only plan to see ROL once - and the Tree Awakenings once.

At HS - TSM is my favorite ride - so I would hit that at RD both days. I'd FP it one day - but FP a different tier one FP the other day. This park - walking distance wise - is small right now - so I really wouldn't worry to much about planning this in two days. Maybe plan Fantasmic one day and SW fireworks the other day. Right now - I think this park is one full day - and maybe a good half of a second day. But I'd plan either Disney Springs, or sleeping late, or a nice dinner, or something else on part of one of these days. I'm sure this park will be back to two full days after one of the new sections opens - but right now - it's not that large of territory and doesn't have an overwhelming number of attractions. Note that even now, though, I feel like it's tough to do EVERY attraction in one day. BTW - my favorite attraction here is the Citizens of Hollywood. They are hilarious and its slightly different every time as its live comedy.

EPCOT is the only park I think I might not cover the whole park on both days. I often do half of FW one day - and then as much of the WS as I feel like - and half of FW the other day - focusing more on the WS part I didn't hit the first day.

In EACH park - on one day - I would plan a TS meal IN THE PARK. One the other day at that park - I'd plan my TS meal for the day "close by" that park - but maybe not in it. We typically eat one TS meal per day - so this tends to work well for us. We like the longer break in the park when we are there all day. But the day we are eating outside the park - that day at the park might be shorter as we may be arriving late due to a breakfast someplace or leave early due to a nice dinner planned. We may or may not go back to the park after dinner - that could be the day we head to bed a bit earlier vs. staying out too late.

Oh - and even though I am an AP holder right now - I rarely hop. Hopping takes time.

 

[IrishNYC]

We had hoppers for our last trip, but only forced it into our plans because we had it. We could have easily done without it. The time it was most to our advantage was when we started our day with brunch at Chef Mickey, went into MK for a few hours, took the monorail to Epcot to walk through to get to Beaches n Cream for an ADR to have ice cream. Without the hopper we would have had to go from MK to DHS then walk/boat from the entrance to BnC. Not a big deal, but DD also wanted to ride the monorail, so it was a no brainer with the hopper.

For our upcoming trip we originally didn't purchase hoppers, and made our plans with that in mind. Our days pretty much look like this: rope drop, leave around 11, come back around 4, stay until we're done, plus one party day of late breakfast, relax by the pool, go to park at 3:30. But now we have hoppers because we switched to free dining, so I'm debating changing our plans. I probably won't though.

 

[Allie B]

To me it depends on how many days you are staying. Sounds like you have plenty of time to enjoy all the parks With option to rest some half days if you want.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I wanted to add if we didn't have hoppers we would definitely skip EMH. One of the benefits is to do AM EMH and then hop to another park when that park gets very busy.

 

[IrishNYC]

Regarding EMH: We prefer to do AM EMH at AK and DHS whether we have hoppers or not.

DD was 5 last trip, will be 8 this upcoming trip. I think hoppers will be more beneficial as she gets older and has more stamina, especially at night.

 

[DisneyMom93]

Wow. Opinions are all over the place in this post. That's awesome.

We park hopped before we had children. We haven't since we've had children. We feel park hopping just takes too much time, but now that you can take park to park buses it might've been something we considered if we felt it was worth it. We just don't think it is, especially since park hopping costs extra money.

We just spend the entire day at one Park, and doing that helps us to just relax and take our time. If one park closes early like at 6 PM or 7 PM we just have the latest dinner at the park. Then we see it as a bonus early day to go back to the resort and take it easy. As it is by the time you take transportation back to the resort and shower etc. it's already late and we start our days early during Disney vacation.

We plan our park day in advance. We schedule our FPs and ADRs and work around them.

We usually do the entire park in one day, and if for some reason there are rides we can't do that day we will just make it up another day. However, my husband wants to try doing half a park in one day and the other half the next day this year. I just don't see us doing that.

We go in November when the parks aren't as crowded so we usually can do a whole park in one day easy, riding rides multiple times. But we go to the parks for 10 days so we have enough time to do everything.

Even with all the time that we have, and all the planning, we always feel a little rushed. This year our goal is just to try and relax a little more, and just enjoy walking around the park not feeling like we have to run from ride to ride.

We also do not go to the parks on the weekends. We spend the two weekends in between at the pool. And we spend a day at Disney Springs. Those are the days we sleep in.

 

[Miss Frankie J]

even though I still have about 120 days left I have started planing the parks I have 2 days for each park. I was wondering how you tackle it. Do you go clockwise or anti clock wise, 1/2 a park per day, or section by section, frontier then tomorrow land ect. Suggestions on all parks would be great. I have been once (14 years ago) but my partner has not been before. Thanks for any suggestions.

I just recently started park hopping. But before I did (and when I was younger) I would go from rope drop till the park closed, sometimes taking a break midday. However I would never do that now, too tiring!

Instead I buy at least a 5 or 6 day ticket. I spend 2 at Epcot, 2 at MK, 1 at AK and 1 at HS. HS is my least favorite park so sometimes I bypass it all together. Now that AK is open so late and with pandora I would probably use 2 days there. Touring plans can help organize a list of things to do to keep you on a schedule. But with so much going on at all the parks I just found that adding the park hopper is so much easier in terms of time.

For example if I'm absolutely done with Epcot I can hop someplace else. I now don't worry that I must see everything or worry about missing something that day. Makes it more flexible. Also hopping helps with tiered fp parks

 

[MagicalMurphys]

We don't use hoppers - we plan to stay in the park and just hit what we want to while taking our FP's into consideration.

DHS is a 1/2 day for us so usually we'll go back to the hotel and swim/ eat there or go to Disney Springs for the evening.