Late Friday Morning Arrival

[DEff]

I'm looking for some suggestions on what to do with our first day as we will be arriving at our off-site (but close) resort on the order of 2 PM. This is a Friday, the Friday of President's week. The MK is open until 10 PM that day with fireworks at 7 PM.

Because it is a holiday week, sort of, I should imagine that the park will be pretty crowded, not to mention the later hours (compared with the following week where the MK closes at 7 PM.

So, should we go to the MK for the afternoon/evening, or should we do something else? Downtown Disney comes to mind...

We will have been up since 4 or 5 AM, we could do an early dinner, and wake refreshed for Saturday. We've got two kids, 3 and 10.

The next day, Saturday, has early hours at Animal Kingdom. Will people really flock to AK because of the extra time or will they still go to MK or MGM?

Also, when a park has extra evening hours, do people tend to do other parks in the morning and hit the park w/the xtra hours later in the day? IOW, will a park with extra evening hours be more likely to be less crowded that morning?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Donna

 

[jlaspoq]

You could try a character meal (gets you in the Disney spirit right away!) and then get some sleep. Or go to Downtown Disney for awhile, or the Boardwalk - we did dinner at Spoodles on our arrival day last trip and it was fun. I'm not sure there's really enough experience yet with EMH to predict what it will be like during a busy weekend, but apparently not everyone believes in park hopping like most of us do, and so they do go to the EMH park all day.

 

[jehma]

We're arriving late morning on Thursday (on-site) and plan to hang out at the pool and relax! We have a 6:20 at Ohana to get us in the mood. If the weather is bad that day, we'll probably hang out at DTD for a few hours instead of the pool.

I figure we'll be running the kids ragged the next few days, so might as well take an easy day when we can.

 

[DEff]

Thanks, guys. Yeah, I think DTD is the way to go. Sufficient Disney but won't cost a ticket and will let us get to bed on the early side. Next day however LOOKOUT PARKS! ;-)