How do you pick park days?

[BellsFam]

If you are traveling in August, how do you pick park days?

By the touring plans suggestions, by the EMH's, dining reservations?

I'm having a hard time with picking park days, ie we want to do MK on Sunday, touring plans says it's "not recommended", but there are EMH's and dining available, etc...

I'm wondering what "not recommended" really means...

 

[whitney37354]

For our first trip, I decided which character meals were most important. I tried for the most important at the first of the trip, then went down the list. I was able to get all ADR's within 15 minutes of what I wanted. Then I planned our parks based on where the ADRs were for that day. I had printed off which days were supposed to be better than others, but my ADR's were the most important thing for that trip.

Our second trip was with another family & we just went along with whatever they were doing. We didn't do all the ADRs with them, so when they had an ADR on their own: 1900 PF, we went on to MK & they sent us a text when they were in the park & we met up; Akershus, we did other things around the park & ate our own CS meal. they sent us a text when they were finished & we met up again. Again, I had printed off the days calendars, but we didn't go by them.

Our next trip is planned for June 2015 & we're bringing my mother with us. With two knee replacements, she can walk fine, but needs to rest too. We've always done park hoppers before, but we plan to just do one park per day & I will go by the easyWDW planner as to which park to go to on each day as far as crowds go.

Decide first what's most important on your trip & go from there!

 

[dawnhaze]

Most of the crowd calendars do not recommend visiting parks with EMH that day. The thing with EMH is, if you aren't going to take advantage of the EMH - arriving before open or staying until close - you're subjecting yourself to the extra daytime crowd for no reason. I personally like morning EMH and then hopping to another park when crowds arrive. EMHs are not 'always avoid' in my opinion, it's situational.

With that kept in mind, I use EasyWDW's explanations of the crowd calendar to plan my days. They explain why each day is more or less recommended at any given park. It's someone's best guess based on historical data, so it isn't perfect. But, it works pretty well for me as a basic guideline.

I reserve dining based on my park days, not the other way around. The only ADR I'd consider changing park days around for is Be Our Guest, only because of how difficult it is to get, but I'd probably just park hop for that particular ADR, personally.

Another thing to consider is the nighttime entertainment - the MK evening parade doesn't run every night, so if you want to see it, you'll need to be there a night it happens.

Basically, step 1 should be figuring out your priorities. If going to MK on Sunday is important, go to MK on Sunday. Once you know what's important to your family, go from there!

 

[jrjankowski8]

I try and pick parks that have the longer hours, but not EMH. i.e. a regular day where MK is open til 1am.

But I like to hop so it doesn't always apply.

 

[dvcHammer]

on the first day whatever bus shows up first we go there

 

[GillianP1301]

I start with picking my days based on touring plan recommendations. EMH's are not something we usually take advantage of, so that doesn't play into our decision.

Once I have my park days, then I do the ADRs to work with the days I have planned.

 

[ciera321]

For the past 5 trips, I've used Josh's recommendations on easywdw. I plan his top pick for each day, figure where we'll eat, and go from there.

 

[AKies47]

on the first day whatever bus shows up first we go there

That's such a cool thing, I may try that next.

 

[JosieMouse]

I'm going by the crowd calendar on easywdw.com. Then I used the MDE app to track wait time off and on just to see if I feel like I need to change my days around. I made my ADR's based of that. No matter what you go with I would say avoid the park with EMH that day unless your taking advantage of them or have park hoppers. After a year of looking at wait times, I've learned that it was the best advise I have gotten from other Disboarders.

 

[Stephaniesue]

For our first trip in 2011 I made dining reservations and planned parks around there. We did 2 parks per day. One in the morning, then went to the resort for rest. Then we park hopped to another for the evening time. It was a huge waste of time IMO. We didn't see half of the parks.

This time I got onto easywdw.com and looked at the projected calendar. I had to do some changing due to MNSSHP (we are going in October). Basically I am trying to go to the most recommended park of the day. In order to see Wishes (DH favorite thing) I made some changes.

I have a list of ADRs I would like to book, with back ups if needed. My window opens Monday YAY! We are not park hopping this time. The kids are older so we are planning to spend the entire day at the parks.

I hope this helps .

 

[tinker&belle]

EMH make the park busier, I would only go there if we had PH.

Easywdw.com is the way to go; Josh explains all his rationale and the I try to get as many best picks as possible.

 

[brownhaired_girl]

Another vote for easy WDW. With that I plan Sea World on Saturday since that is usually a high crowd level day in the Disney parks and our Sea World days are planned around the shows which have large capacity. The only other way we stray from Josh's suggestions is that I may choose MK an extra day since we usually travel with children who have not been to Disney and may need an extra MK day.

 

[lustergirl]

If I have an ADR in one park we go there first. If not we usually just hop whatever bus comes first.

Good Luck in your planning

 

[hallie]

We just say where do you guys wanna go today and we decide. With this new fast pass+ it makes things soo different, I'm just not a planner, we're spontaneous people. So this next trip we're staying at Universal instead and going to MNSSHP twice and we also have 1 day park hoppers from a previous visit. We'll just wing it as usual and whatever we get done, we get done. It'll be fun no matter what.

 

[tbia]

I have actually had good luck going opposite EMH, especially evening ones.

It seems to me that a part with evening EMH starts getting crowded later in the day as people are planning to stay later than normal that night. So we go in the morning.

Maybe I have just been lucky.

 

[squirrel4569]

I look at Josh's suggestions for park days and then book my ADRs around those. The exception to that is that we like to have MK be our first and last park, which are not always the suggested days. Last August we booked based on Josh's suggestions (except for one of our MK days) and had a great time. It's all relative and subjective though. Our not recommended MK day had evening EMH and the park seemed relatively empty to us but at DHS and our recommended MK day seemed fuller for some reason.

The thing with EMH is that resort guests without hoppers are tied to that park for the day. The EMH strategy that is employed by many DISers is to hit the early morning and then hop to a less crowded park. Depending on if it's early or late August will determine the overall crowd level too. Later in August the crowds will be much lighter as kids go to school and the recommended park isn't as big of an issue. Earlier in the month it may prove more beneficial.

 

[bigskip]

First day HAS to be Rope drop and opening ceremony at MK, after that, onlt plan to be in the park that we have ADR's for in the evening. Always have hoppers, decide either the night before or what ever bus turns up.

FP's always booked for afternoon.

 

[xipetotec]

for us, no matter when we go, this is how we choose:

EVENING EMH hours are days we go to the parks. We love the parks at night and don't find they crowd as much as MORNING EMH.

We book dining according to that. ( Typically, but not always, it's been Sundays at MK, Mondays at Studios, Fridays at Epcot... )

MORNING EMH days we *avoid* we find parks get super crowded on those days.

remaining days we either play by ear, or consult things like touringplans to have an idea of how crowded they will be. But we almost always book our dining by what parks we'll be at and not the other way around. The EXCEPTION is when there's more than one restaurant in a park that we want to do ( or surrounding resort hotel ), then we'll book the dining and do our best to be in the area of that park that day.

 

[PaulaVonSchweetz]

Once I reserve my trip we decide what restaurants we want to eat at.
Once we know that, we look at Park hours calendars and use that as our guide.
We will do morning EM but never evening.

This method helps us to also not be scattered around different parks or property locations trying to rush to travel somewhere else for dinner. (Ie - MK day with a HS dinner ressie.) Therefore giving us the most time in a park on a given day.

 

[BellsFam]

WOW... thanks for all the suggestions!!!

I used easy WDW for all days except 1, which is our first full park day, and the only times I could get advanced reservations for the things I wanted... (CRT and BBB)... so I'm happy, I guess we'll fight the Sunday crowds if need be!

The rest of the days, I'm not too worried about now, but I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that typically likes to avoid EMH's...