Leaving the parks for a break...what time for dinner reservations

[wendylk]

We are planning on leaving the parks for my sons afternoon nap. He will be almost 3 during our trip. He normally does a late afternoon nap (about 2 hours somewhere between 2:00 and 5:00), although it is getting harder to get him to fall asleep lately. He really won't be able to make it through the day without a nap. By around 5:00 he is luggage

I am wondering how long it will actually take to get back to the parks and if we should make dinner reservations or just do counter service for dinner. We will be there the end of September (staying at POFQ) and most parks close arond 9:00. Will dinner reservations at sit down restaurants eat up too much of our evening time in the parks? Are the counter service meals that much quicker?

Thanks in advance for your help. I just don't really know what to expect. We haven't been to Disney in 13 years and have never been with a child!!

 

[Tam1067]

Since he's so little, you'll probably find that you cannot do as much park time as you did last time you went. We took a 15 month old in 2003, and she was wiped out, even with a nap, so that after dinner, we rarely went back to the parks. Even my middle DS who was 4 at the time wasn't really "up to" much touring after the afternoon break.

On that trip, we didn't see any of the evening shows in the parks. We got the parks when they opened, toured until just after lunch (about 1:00 or maybe 2:00), returned to the hotel, got the youngest her nap, took the older ones swimming, and then did dinner. After dinner, we hung out at the resort generally and then we got in bed by about 9:00. I know lots of people do more than that, but we found that the kids just can't handle too much park time, and for us, getting up early in the morning was preferable to sleeping in.

This time my kids were older so we got to do more, but with a little one, you need to take it more slowly.

From your resort, you should plan on at least 45 minutes to an hour to get from the resort to the park. That's because you have to wait for the bus, ride, and then get through the gates at the park. Many times it'll take less time but on our trip this July, we waited up to 20 minutes for a bus to take us from AK to our resort (we were at the Polynesian). That was the high end of waiting, but you need to be prepared in case the bus doesn't come super quickly and in case you have a line to get into the park.

If you had a reservation and eat the TS meal, you're going to spend probably about an hour to eat although sometimes less. And depending on where you eat, you might have travel time to the restaurant--like to another resort. CS meals would be quicker of course but you'll still have to wait in line, order, get your food, and eat, probably a good 30 minutes total.

 

[wendylk]

We will definitely want to head back to the parks. After my son wakes up from his nap he will need to do something to burn off the energy he builds up from sleeping! I would think if we weren't planning to go back to the parks we would just skip the afternoon break all together and just stay at the parks a little later and put him to bed early. We will be doing that one night at MGM because we have 4:30 dinner reservations for the Fantasmic package. I don't think we would be able to make it back to the park by then.

 

[minnieandtink]

Well, we took a two almost three year old and just some tips to think about. We planned early ADRs thinking she would be tired and grumpy even with a nap. We never got back to resort for rest as early as we planned, the wind down time, the exhausted nap time 2 hours or so, then the travel time from park to resort and from resort to adr place (epcot, mgm, mk, etc). We did not realize our snacks would hold us over for a later adr (6-7 pm) would have been a better time frame. Next time we will know. We stayed at the poly so bus time was not an issue except when returning from DTD (we waited 45 minutes for a bus). And crowds were not an issue. But, this was our first experience with the DDP so we will know more next time.

 

[MamaK]

We made our dinner reservations early (5:00, 5:15) - this way, we didn't have to wait for a table, because we were usually first arrivals, and also we had time after dinner (before the kids got too tired) to go enjoy a little more of the parks while everyone ELSE was dining. We had a 3 and 4.5 -yr-old. We were up early every morning and headed back to the hotel after lunch for naps - having a dark hotel room really helped. after waking from naps, we usually went to dinenr then the parks for a few more attrations. One evening we had a counter meal in the hotel after some play time in the pool. Another day we caught the MGM parade at 5:30 then had a counter meal afterwards.

With the dining plan, you get a lot of food, so snacks can help you in between meal times.

Also, we stayed at the Poly, so our travel time to any park was minimal. We took boat or monorail to MK, and drove to MGM and AK (15 min max), then 10-15 min from parking lot to park entrance. If staying at a resort your parking at other parks is free, too.

- MamaK