Itinerary help, trip in 2 weeks!

[kkbrig]

My DH has a meeting at JW Marriott and my schedule has just now cleared to allow me to go. So very last minute planning here which I am not used to! I will be bringing DD 13 and DD 11 but not my 2 older kids. Dh will only join us at the parks one day. I am renting a car and hope to see as much as we can at the parks while leaving us some time to enjoy the lazy River at the hotel as well as visit with other friends at the meeting. This is my 3rd trip to WDW, the last trip was 10 days and we experienced most attractions, BUT it was 8 years ago so my girls don't really remember it.

My question for today is how to best divide my time between the parks. I have bought 5 day tickets. Here's the crowd numbers for our days, with the park I was thinking of going to listed first:
Tuesday night- fly in
Wed- HS 2, (AK 4, EP 4, MK 5)
Thurs- AK 5, (HS 3, MK 4, EP 6) (I hope to not go late on this day)
Fri- MK 5 (joining a friend this day) + MNSSHP, (AK5, HS6, EP6)
Sat- EP 6, (want to be back at hotel at lunch or early afternoon), (MK7, AK7, HS8)
Sun- EP 8, (MK7, AK8, HS8) we fly out at 6:30 so will need to wrap things up around 3 or 4.

Our park priorities are MK, HS, AK, EP.

I got my tickets today and started trying to get FP (obviously my choices are limited here) and working out a personalized plan on touring plans.

Thoughts? I am worried that I don't have enough time at MK. I had originally thought adding in MNSSHP would help us finish out the attractions that day, plus let us experience all the cool extras. But reading more about it, it sounds like the cool extras could take up all that time (and more!).

I had originally planned Thursday to be a hotel only day, but looking at the lower crowd numbers that day plus the higher weekend ones shifted me to the current idea of ending mid to late afternoon Thurs and midday Sat instead.

Thanks!

 

[danny1649]

My advice is to do HS and AK same day.That would give you two days at MK and Epcot.Be at rope drop at HS and then go to AK or visa versa. HS is easy to do in 3 hours if you arrive early and don't do TSM. Also see if you can line up some FP's and ADR's if you plan on some sit down meals.If you have any other questions you can click my avatar and start conversation. Danny

 

[MinnieSweetheart]

It looks to me like you have less MK time than you would likely want. You also have a lot of Epcot time and based on the ages of your kids, they might not like it as much unless they are really into World Showcase.

I'm confused...are you doing MNSSHP?

Do you have hoppers? I do recommend pairing AK and HS. Especially with the construction. If you'll be there in the evening, Fantastic! is a good pick for evening entertainment.

 

[kkbrig]

I put Epcot down on Sunday, but it can actually be the day to go back to whatever park we wanted. I was thinking we would need more Epcot time since we would only be there for 3-4 hours on Saturday.

Yes, planning to go to MK AND MNSSHP on Friday, both with a friend and her 2 kids (so that day is set there).

Trying to get FP+ now, which I've never done before. Is there a way to see what times are left available or do you just have to take one of the mixes it gives you? I asked for TSMM, ST, and ToT. It gave me these options:
TSMM- 12:20, ST- 3:20, ToT- 12:20
TSMM- 12:30, ST- 4:55, ToT- 3:15
RnR (it substituted this)- 12:05- ST- 3:00, ToT- 1:15
RnR- 9:05, ST- 12, ToT- 10:15

Does this mean that the earliest time available for TSMM is 6:20pm??

 

[MinnieSweetheart]

Mesaboy (I'm sure that's not exactly right, sorry) has a thread about FP+. I don't know how to link threads, but try to search for it. You have to accept one of the combinations, but then you can go in and adjust the individual FP+ in MDE. Your fast pass time for TSMM does not mean that's the earliest time available, that's just the time it assigned you. When you fiddle, you can pick earlier or later based on what's available.

I am not sure what the going advice is, but I pick times that are the furthest from what I want, because it won't show times that would overlap another fastPass. So if I knew I wanted TSMM around 4:00, then I would make sure to pick a combination without a 4:00 fast pass, so I could go in and select the fp+ time closest to 4:00.

Can you switch which day you do MNSSHP, so you can be at MK more than 1 day?

 

[kkbrig]

Thanks. I found that feature. It looked like the earliest TSMM FP was after 3pm, and my touring plan has me already done with all my attractions by then even without using any FP! I guess I will play around with it tomorrow.

I got FP for all my days but got very few of the recommended attractions plus times. Meaning for some I could not get the attraction at all. For others, I was able to get one for the desired attraction, but not the time that the touring plan prefers.

On my MK day, it says there are none available for 7DMT or PP. So I chose Space Mouuntain, BTMR, Jungle Cruise. So does this mean I should head first to 7Dmt and PP, then could head to one of the FP? Was trying to get them earlier in the day to free up the option to get some day of FP, but maybe I'm thinking of it all wrong and should have had the FP for middle of the day? I will search for that link also.

 

[MinnieSweetheart]

7DMT does run out quickly. Peter Pan doesn't always, but it could be a case where it's only available during times you have other fast passes. Many people like to do morning fast passes and then pick up extras throughout the day.