How does your family tour the parks with an extended stay?

[poohfriend77]

My family just can't do "rest" days. We did 10 days last June ( usually do 7-8 days). We're not the type to spend a whole day at the pool or Disney Springs, especially with WDW within reach!

Especially now with FP+ it's so easy to go to a park for a few hours, to do a few favorites. We are usually rope droppers, but the longer stay allowed us to take a more relaxed pace. We mixed in a few sleep-in days, a couple early evenings, and plenty of afternoon rests/quick swims. It was a nice balance for our family!

 

[Accident]

DH was thinking we should use the first part of our trip to hit the parks hard, and then use the back end to relax and enjoy the resort. I was thinking I'd prefer to mix it up and hit parks hard a couple days, then have a rest/easy day, then parks, etc.

I recommend hitting the parks rigth away but not hard.. hard to me is like you have a 4 day trip and want to do it all. Get your must do, would like to do and don't really care about list together.. focus on what is important, especially if it's things that weather might make impossible to see like fireworks or night parades where rain can cancel them. After those 3-4 days you should know where you stand on what your new must do list is.. The rest of the trip you can just take it in, casually stroll around and do things that you would like and try to fill in your must do list that you skipped over.

Disney is a lot easier when you know you'll be back another day.. you may only get a week of that but treat it that way and look around a lot more and enjoy.. Sleep in some days, don't go at all a day or two.. go every night for fireworks if that's your thing...

you'll dynamically sort out the rest as it's happening .

 

[DVCkidsMOM]

I'm with the RD but done in a few hours folks on an extended trip, though we usually have to spend the first couple days in the parks most of the day because we're so excited to be there!. We'll go a few evenings to catch the night-time stuff after an afternoon relaxing at the resort.
Now if we stayed off-site, then it would be hit the parks hard, rest a few days, re-do what we want. You also have to take into account the personality of your travel party. What's ideal to you isn't worth it if the rest of your party is miserable. My parents refuse to move before 11, so RD never happens for them - they are happier standing in line or only doing their 3 FPP in a day. Their plan makes me crazy and my plan makes them crazy...