How do you plan what parks, what day?

[Accident]

We kind of make a must do, please skip list for both attractions and adrs and work from there. Generally we focus on getting that list knocked out the first few days so the rest of the trip is an actual "who cares what we do tomorrow" vacation. We also don't do a lot of table service so we'll save up something that's generally a large meal for later in the trip when we're getting a little tired of quick service.

Now in real life, what ends up happening is a lot of hopping back to MK in the afternoon or evening. We aren't huge fans of the other 3 parks but there is some things we do enjoy at them. MK on the other hand we can just sit or walk around and do nothing else for days and be happy and relaxed...

We never rope drop but do go out of our way to check it out every so often (not every trip). I'm the type of person that doesn't believe someone that always rope drops or never rope drops really knows which is better and you have to try the other way here and there to see if how your family wants to vacation is still the same or what the parks are like. The other side of this is we just don't wake up that early in real life so being up that early really takes away from the vacation and enjoyment. Also the stuff we like the most tends to not only be specific attractions but doing them in the dark.

We do make a rough plan just to get some fastpasses in place before we arrive but generally we don't follow any of it except for meals and even then we change our minds when it comes to actually needing to get there.

 

[Pmlocke]

My wife and I decide the park by which bus is outside the bus zone at the resort. If Magic Kingdom is there, we get on. If it's Animal Kingdom, great. As we don't do fast passes and really have no plans other than our dinner dining plans, we are always open for an adventure and we let what is going to happen come to us. I should state it is my wife and I now as the kids are grown and they come down with our grandkids so there is no urgency to see or do things from a ten year olds perspective. Just wait until you can all come down and really enjoy yourself. You will be amazed at what you had missed all those trips before.

 

[W.E.D.]

We almost always do AM EMH parks and then hop in the afternoon. Where we hop usually depends on where we have our dinner ADRs set up.
Other than that, we don't have anything near a "commando"-type plan.

 

[richmo]

I'll usually look at easyWDW's calendars as a general guide, but ADR's certainly factor in as well, especially if having a dinner at Epcot. Since we usually have a rental car, we usually leave the last day from Epcot. Epcot is the most predictable as to how long it takes to get to the car, out on the road and on the way.

 

[Praying Colonel]

If we're staying offsite as we do about half the time, we're going to parks that don't have morning/evening EMH or special ticketed events (morning/evening EMM, MNSSHP, MVMCP, etc.). After that we'd prefer to go to a park the day after it has evening EMH because we found crowds are often a little low for RD on those days. After we pick our days we'll take a quick look at TP.com and Easy WDW to do a "sanity check" and make sure we're not missing something.

 

[Babs1975]

EMH mornings are great if you're willing to get up early & hit RD, and then hop to another park when the crowds build past your comfort level. Otherwise we avoid EMH parks, and stay out of MK on Mondays. I agree that hitting RD, and maximizing your FP+ is the best bet, but RD doesn't work for everybody.

So do crowds build horribly because it's an emh day? If I'm not park hopping, should I avoid?

 

[phillymummer]

I've always had short trips (only 3 park days), so planning the park days are often dictated by our schedule. I have never followed the crowd calendars. In fact, I have often gone against them, because going to a park on the day it is least recommended worked best for my family. I've even gone to a park with early EMHs after the EMH was over! I do make ADRs based on which park we will be in; usually just one ADR per day. With so few days, it's really not that much of a hassle to plan out. I can't imagine planning out 5 or 7 or even 10 parks days.

 

[wsssup]

Just go with whatever park on whatever day. Your the only one in control of that.

Crowd callenders are purely a prediction and we take no notice of them. Busy or not there will still be people in the parks.

We did early entry and rope drop at disneyland last year and it burned us out pretty quick.
For disney world christmas this year we will be sticking with late night extra hours.

Yes christmas will be busy busy busy with heaps of people but we are aware of that and will go with the flow.

 

[tinkerbella16]

It is sort of our tradition to always do Epcot on our arrival night after relaxing at the resort since we arrive in the morning. MK is always our first full day. Next year our first full day will be Labor Day, and we plan on just making that a resort pool day and relax and do MK on Tuesday. We tend to do DHS on our 3rd park day and AK on the 4th park day. After that, we usually hit up Epcot, MK and another evening at DHS, in no particular order. Epcot and MK are the parks we visit the most.

We actually enjoy evening EMH. We always do rope drop at MK. We take midday breaks each day on our trips, so those first few hours are usually great and we can get on a lot of things with little to no waits.

 

[kennythepirate]

We are the type to hit rope-drop and stay in the park the whole day through (we don't do park hoppers). Last year DH and I mainly winged it based on what we could get reservations for (and also working around MNSSHP, which turned out to be a BIG mistake). I tried to take some advice from here though which proved helpful. Once upon a time we would hit the parks with EMH, but not so much now.

This time around, we are mostly guided by the KtP and Undercover Tourist crowd calendars. As I said before, my usual rule of thumb is not to hit parks (especially MK) on a Saturday, so we never go to the parks on Saturdays. Since we are being guided by the crowd calendars, we are only hitting morning EMH, which should make it OK. One of our MK days will also be a MNSSHP day, so that will be an incredibly short MK day, but we will be back on our last day, which is a few days after the last MNSSHP so I am hoping some of the non-MNSSHP crowds will have dissipated by then and not make MK so crowded. Plus its a Wednesday, so it should be at the very least tolerable.

Glad I could help!