If Genie+ and 2 kids, rope drop with ETPE or go later and stay later?

[Jen81NYC]

We're going to Disney for the first time the week after Easter and we have two kids, 6 and 9. I haven't been to Disney as an adult. Staying at Poly and prepared to throw money at Genie+ and any extra ILL rides that may be available to minimize kid and husband whining. I'm having a fair amount of anxiety over not knowing until 7am each day what rides we'll get to easily ride and the fact that I can't control what time slots we'll get since it sounds like with Genie+, you get what you get. There will be two extended evening hours the week we're there (Epcot and MK). Given all this uncertainty, I'm not sure how to best approach the trip and prepare everyone. Do I try to hustle everyone out for rope drop even if the Genie+ slots I get might be late? Or focus more on everyone taking it easy in morning and then rides, fireworks, etc later in the day? We'll be there for 5 nights. Thanks!!

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Rope drop plus Genie+ on the same day is the most valuable bang for your buck. If you want to do as much as possible, I would skip late nights entirely for the sake of being able to wake up early and get to rope drop every morning.

 

[zillayen]

Our kids are a little older (11) but we've already talked about planning for late nights instead of the stress of rope drop. We are coming from a different time zone so it's already going to be nearly impossible to get them up at 6 am. It's Spring Break for Florida / Ontario so even rope drop is bound to be a nightmare with the crowds. I'd rather get up early, book what I can for the afternoon with Genie+, then plan to stay til 1 am with shorter waits for the big rides.

 

[Jen81NYC]

Rope drop plus Genie+ on the same day is the most valuable bang for your buck. If you want to do as much as possible, I would skip late nights entirely for the sake of being able to wake up early and get to rope drop every morning.

Thanks for the input. Do you mean skip the official late night hours, to clarify, or staying up late at all, even for fireworks? I'm so torn because I picked Poly in part to see fireworks view from their beach but I fear I'm setting up my kids (and husband) for epic overtired tantrums no matter what we do, sigh.

 

[MainMom]

Can you do a combination of late nights and early mornings? For example, our first full day we are doing EE MK, afternoon break, hop to AK for the evening, back to MK for extended hours. The next day we are sleeping in and having a pool day ending with a nice dinner at Epcot & Harmonious. I will stack some rides for Epcot while we have down time. The day after Epcot we will be up early for EE at HS. We have 3 kids in our group ages 6-10.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Thanks for the input. Do you mean skip the official late night hours, to clarify, or staying up late at all, even for fireworks? I'm so torn because I picked Poly in part to see fireworks view from their beach but I fear I'm setting up my kids (and husband) for epic overtired tantrums no matter what we do, sigh.

Yeah that's the hardest pill to swallow for my family too. As much as we like the evening shows, we end up exactly where you describe when we attempt them... epic overtired tantrums. So for each trip, we pick one of the shows to do and we do it the last night. Fantasmic is still a bit too intense for my littles, so next trip we'll choose one of Harmonious or Enchantment.

The next day we are sleeping in...

This is where knowing your particular family is so important. If my kids go to bed at 8:00, they'll be up at 6:30. If my kids go to bed at Midnight... they'll be up at 6:30... and then be monsters starting around lunchtime.

 

[DeeBee3]

My kids are 4 and 8, but my upcoming plans involve rope drop as they wake up by 6am. If they magically sleep later, then I'm not going to wake them up, but I think we all do better in mornings. They definitely would not be happy after 9pm. We are early to rise, early to bed. I think it depends on your family.

 

[RamblingMad]

I've witnessed way too many kids your age having melt downs in the early afternoon. It's really going to boil down to what your kids can reasonably handle.

 

[Jen81NYC]

Yeah that's the hardest pill to swallow for my family too. As much as we like the evening shows, we end up exactly where you describe when we attempt them... epic overtired tantrums. So for each trip, we pick one of the shows to do and we do it the last night. Fantasmic is still a bit too intense for my littles, so next trip we'll choose one of Harmonious or Enchantment.


This is where knowing your particular family is so important. If my kids go to bed at 8:00, they'll be up at 6:30. If my kids go to bed at Midnight... they'll be up at 6:30... and then be monsters starting around lunchtime.

Yes, my kids are the same way. 6:30 or 7. Hoping it's more flexible due to all the activity but I guess I shouldn't count on it. We do have a fireworks dessert party on Friday night, our last night, so it sounds like I should give up on my beach fireworks dream and do that. It's hard because I want to balance doing as much as possible with not turning into everyone into monsters, sigh. This will probably be the one Disney trip for us.

 

[MainMom]

This is where knowing your particular family is so important. If my kids go to bed at 8:00, they'll be up at 6:30. If my kids go to bed at Midnight... they'll be up at 6:30... and then be monsters starting around lunchtime.

These 3 kids are my nephews and niece so I have no idea about their sleep habits. They also never go on vacation. I’m just trying to make a common sense plan, but all of the adults agree that of one needs some sleep/sleep in someone will go back with them or stay with them. Their 3 siblings have been fine so

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Yes, my kids are the same way. 6:30 or 7. Hoping it's more flexible due to all the activity but I guess I shouldn't count on it. We do have a fireworks dessert party on Friday night, our last night, so it sounds like I should give up on my beach fireworks dream and do that. It's hard because I want to balance doing as much as possible with not turning into everyone into monsters, sigh. This will probably be the one Disney trip for us.

Do you have any flexibility on the length of the trip? 8 nights at a "lower-tier" Deluxe resort probably wouldn't cost you any more than 5 nights at the Poly, but it would let you space everything out a bit more. More rope drops, more Lightning Lanes, more opportunities to sleep in or take an afternoon off.

 

[zillayen]

Can you do a combination of late nights and early mornings? For example, our first full day we are doing EE MK, afternoon break, hop to AK for the evening, back to MK for extended hours. The next day we are sleeping in and having a pool day ending with a nice dinner at Epcot & Harmonious. I will stack some rides for Epcot while we have down time. The day after Epcot we will be up early for EE at HS. We have 3 kids in our group ages 6-10.

This is close to our plan. We're coming over from Universal so we won't get into the park on our first day for EE anyway, so we might as well sleep in, have a chill afternoon at Epcot since we can walk from the hotel, then head over to MK after dinner and stay til the end. We'll sleep in the next day, do whatever is "slow" at MK, hop to AK if we feel like it, and have an early night. Day 3 we'll be up early for DHS.

 

[Jen81NYC]

Do you have any flexibility on the length of the trip? 8 nights at a "lower-tier" Deluxe resort probably wouldn't cost you any more than 5 nights at the Poly, but it would let you space everything out a bit more. More rope drops, more Lightning Lanes, more opportunities to sleep in or take an afternoon off.

No, I'm limited to April break. The original April 2020 trip was going to be a couple of nights longer for that reason but due to Covid, it now coincides with a long pre-planned 3-night DCL cruise my in-laws are treating the family to on Easter weekend for their 70th birthday. I've also never been on a cruise before, but that's a separate issue. So we're on a cruise Friday April 15th to Monday and then Monday morning head to WDW. I'm hoping that having seen characters on the cruise (right? they have characters?) will make character stuff and maybe ADRs generally less relevant at WDW, which will give us a bit more flexibility.

 

[Jen81NYC]

Can you do a combination of late nights and early mornings? For example, our first full day we are doing EE MK, afternoon break, hop to AK for the evening, back to MK for extended hours. The next day we are sleeping in and having a pool day ending with a nice dinner at Epcot & Harmonious. I will stack some rides for Epcot while we have down time. The day after Epcot we will be up early for EE at HS. We have 3 kids in our group ages 6-10.

Thanks for the input! I think if I knew what I was doing originally, I wouldve tried for this and maybe I'll still try. But for example, the day after MK late night is our HS day and that definitely seems like a rope drop park, right? And the day after Epcot late hours is our first full MK day. Very privileged problem, I know! But makes it confusing for me to figure out.

 

[leeniewdw]

Can you do a combination of late nights and early mornings?

This is what we do and we're 50-somethings with no add'l people/kids with us. We've done this since our kids were little and we still like the afternoon quick nap/rest and pool time before heading back out.

This Saturday, we did RD ToT and RnRC + an early LL for MFSR. After I tapped into MFSR we started stacking for the evening back at DHS (we'd normally hop to a different park, but this was a quick trip and we were just doing 2 parks, so just got the non PH tickets). Came back and had 4 rides, plus RotR ILL$ stacked up for evening.

That wasn't even a "late" evening per se (as compared to Ext Hours or AHs), our last ride was ToT-LL right at 9pm and we were on the Skyliner and back to room by 10pm.

 

[MainMom]

Thanks for the input! I think if I knew what I was doing originally, I wouldve tried for this and maybe I'll still try. But for example, the day after MK late night is our HS day and that definitely seems like a rope drop park, right? And the day after Epcot late hours is our first full MK day. Very privileged problem, I know! But makes it confusing for me to figure out.

What is your current plan?

 

[running2disney]

We were just there and did a combination of rope drop and genie + and it was great. The only park we really struggled with was DHS. The park was hot and insane by midday, so a few of our party went back and rested and then were able to join for the evening hours over at Epcot. I think picking one show to do at night is a great plan for those ages or trying to take a break midday. Even if they don't nap, getting out of the chaos might help them making it a bit longer.

 

[sponica]

This is where knowing your particular family is so important. If my kids go to bed at 8:00, they'll be up at 6:30. If my kids go to bed at Midnight... they'll be up at 6:30... and then be monsters starting around lunchtime.

I nearly spit out my drink I was laughing at this. Hard same. My oldest is awake at 530 most days....


@Jen81NYC I think since your kids are also early risers, you might as well embrace the early morning. Book your lightning lane/ILL at 7 AM and adapt from there. I know everyone has their own strategy, but I'm approaching the lightning lane as "which line do I HATE the most" so I'm not looking at return times first, I'm just picking Jungle Cruise and planning around that.

 

[Stargazer65]

This will probably be the one Disney trip for us.

hahahha*snort*hahaha...ahem...sorry, I was just remembering I said that exact same thing also back in 2009. Then we joined DVC on that trip, and came back the following year, and now we will be there this Easter and following for I think the 8th or 9th trip since then.

It's harder than you probably expect to keep up with a loaded schedule. We did a 4 day in a row TP visit trying to do rope drop, extra hours, even park-hopping to maximize time in the TPs but found it too hard on one trip even with only teens and adults. Even the teens quit. Then another time we extended our stay one time with a cheaper hotel outside the park so we could rest between parks. Of course you lose the magic hour advantage, but we went from rope drop until fireworks without being overtired by not trying to do back to back parks. So that worked, and we added on more DVC points so we could stay longer without moving.

 

[AngieInOH]

Personally I think I would take advantage of the Extra hours at Epcot and MK. I would bank lightening lane passes, get ILL and go when the kids are up and ready. It seems people can get a lot done in those extra hours. I think it would take the stress out of rope dropping.