Long Stay, Less Park Days?

[Carolynleanne]

Has anyone done an extended stay without extended park tickets? We're considering only doing a 3 day park hopper + for our next trip, even though we're staying 10 nights. Coming from the West Coast, we lose a full day going and a full day heading home, so that leaves us with 8 full days at WDW. With a 3 day park hopper +, wed spend 3 full days in the parks, and 2ish days doing water parks and mini golf. That leaves 3 full days without stepping foot in any park. Wise? Or stupid? Haha. We have three kids under the age of 8 and will be staying at DVC resorts.

Our other option is to drop the hopper+ and do two extra full days (non hop), but we'd still end up with a couple extra days.

 

[Disneylover99]

I'd definitely drop the hopper and add 2 park days.

 

[star72232]

With little kids I'd suggest more, shorter days instead of trying to park hop. You could probably add 3 days to your tickets (maybe even 4 days) for the price of the park hopper and only plan on being in parks half the day. I can't imagine park hopping with little kids (strollers?) would be fun.

 

[Carolynleanne]

We don't generally hop, so you make a good point. When we do full days we generally go for opening, take an afternoon break, then head back in the evenings. Maybe we should just stick with a 5 day non hop.

 

[marchingstar]

we’ve never done quite that different on park days/vacation days. i think it would depend to me on what resorts you’ll stay at. if we are somewhere like beach club, i think a day or two for the hotel pool would be amazing. plus a day at downtown disney, time at the water parks, and all of a sudden your days are full!

 

[Carolynleanne]

We've got requests in at Boardwalk Villas and Grand Floridian - so very nice properties!

 

[isabellea]

I would do 5 days (no hopper) + waterparks.

 

[marchingstar]

We've got requests in at Boardwalk Villas and Grand Floridian - so very nice properties!

nice choices there’s lots to do on the monorail loop and along the boardwalk. i would go with 5 day passes and do shorter days like star suggested, with resort activities mixed in. you’ll have a blast.

 

[starry_solo]

I would do the longer park ticket but separate out the non-park days in between of park days...so time to rest up in between of the park days

 

[Minniemoo15]

I’d drop the hopper as well. We do 10 day visits but some of our park days are just an evening for dinner/fireworks/a few rides. We really enjoy pool days and taking it slow

 

[hdrolfe]

If you are going while the Canadian deal tickets are valid I would definitely go for at least 4 park days. If not, I am not sure. I know we have a hard time not going to the parks. Even when we stay at Yacht Club. There are other things to do if course but it seems all the ones we want to try cost money, like hoop de doo or that one at Poly, or even the pirates cruise to see the fireworks at MK. I guess it depends too on when you go. We is usually go late August and storms close the pools a lot.

 

[michelb]

FWIW, we pretty much never do back-to-back park days (maybe a water park but even that's the exception). We like having a relax day between each park day.

As far as Park Hopper, we do actually use it as we've been to Disney many times so skip many rides but on a typical day when we are trying to do as many rides, I don't think it's worth it as I don't think you really have time to use it so I wouldn't recommend it. We used to use it pretty much every time we went to AK as it used to close much earlier than the other parks (DW has changed that and AK now stays open later and the other parks close earlier (now pretty much all the parks close at 8 or 9pm)).

 

[saskdw]

Our typical stay is 14 nights with 10 day tickets. We always work in non park days.

We usually go with the hoppers, but rarely use them. Maybe for dining.

 

[Carolynleanne]

If you are going while the Canadian deal tickets are valid I would definitely go for at least 4 park days. If not, I am not sure. I know we have a hard time not going to the parks. Even when we stay at Yacht Club. There are other things to do if course but it seems all the ones we want to try cost money, like hoop de doo or that one at Poly, or even the pirates cruise to see the fireworks at MK. I guess it depends too on when you go. We is usually go late August and storms close the pools a lot.

We are doing January 2020, so we've got a year to go I highly doubt theyll offer that Canadian discount with Star Wars land having just opened at that point.

 

[Carolynleanne]

We've been so many times that we don't feel the need to do RIDES, RIDES, RIDES. We have our favorites in each park and will aim to get FP+ for those. Other then that, we mostly spend time enjoying the sights and doing the rides with shorter lines.

 

[Donald - my hero]

We are the ones who will go for an extended holiday and only get park tickets for a few days. 3 years ago we spent a week at the Dolphin (last minute sanity break and hubby only had a single week open) and only had 3 day tickets -- was plenty of time in parks. 2 years ago we were there for almost 3 weeks and originally bought 5 day park hoppers (yes, you read that correctly five day). When our adult children informed us they would be joining us for a week in the middle we upgraded to a 7 day for hubby and an AP for me (so we could get the discounts on food, merchandise and the photopass). We still found that was plenty of time. HOWEVER big caveat here, we don't have kids, we're quite happy wandering around the entire resort to look at different things and just people watch. You will be wanting to do more park time for sure but as others mentioned the hopping just gobbles up a ton of time anymore with the required bag checks and transportation between parks. In your case i would probably be going with a 5 or even 6 day non-hopping ticket. You will be dealing with travel days, jet lag, and young kids (you mentioned you're veterans so you know all this!) so you really only have the 8 days. If you go with the 6 days you won't be too upset if you need to spend only 1/2 day in a park due to a melt down, bad weather, or simply exhaustion!! There are excellent pools at both of the resorts you have requests in for so that will fill in some time as well.

Whatever you decide, you'll have a BLAST!

 

[deedubb]

Everyone is different, but there is no way I would travel all that way and only do a few park days. We used to have one rest day but lately, we're in the parks every day. We also never did hoppers in the past, but now with new rides like FOP, Slinky Dog, etc, I feel that hoppers are a must. I want at least 2 days in AK and DHS for the rides, but don't want to do full days there, and would rather get back to MK or Epcot for fireworks at night. Illuminations is gone soon, so you might want to see it a few times. If you're staying at Boardwalk, it's so easy to hop from Epcot to DHS. We did 6 park days this past NYE trip and we were able to see Holiday Wishes, Fantasy in the Sky, Illuminations x3 (once with the Epcot NYE fireworks), and HEA x 3. We also did one evening Extra Magic Hours at Epcot. All of that made the hoppers worth every penny.

 

[Carolynleanne]

Everyone is different, but there is no way I would travel all that way and only do a few park days. We used to have one rest day but lately, we're in the parks every day. We also never did hoppers in the past, but now with new rides like FOP, Slinky Dog, etc, I feel that hoppers are a must. I want at least 2 days in AK and DHS for the rides, but don't want to do full days there, and would rather get back to MK or Epcot for fireworks at night. Illuminations is gone soon, so you might want to see it a few times. If you're staying at Boardwalk, it's so easy to hop from Epcot to DHS. We did 6 park days this past NYE trip and we were able to see Holiday Wishes, Fantasy in the Sky, Illuminations x3 (once with the Epcot NYE fireworks), and HEA x 3. We also did one evening Extra Magic Hours at Epcot. All of that made the hoppers worth every penny.

Oh man! We would never do two days at AK or HS, haha. The only park we often do more than once is Epcot. We could spend every day there, haha.

 

[cix00]

We dont go to WDW unless we can stay at least 2 weeks. This approach significantly reduces the per-day cost overall. Past two trips we stayed 18 nights and 17 nights, respectively. We do anywhere from 8 to 10 park days, with the rest being resort days, exploring non-park attractions, and a hotel transfer day (we split stay so as not to get bored at one resort). This has been great in terms of allowing us LOTS of downtime to explore sights and restaurants that we wouldn't have otherwise included in our plans - e.g., visiting the Tri-Circle-D ranch (where our toddler would be happy to spend every day of the trip), touring all the different resorts, lots of arcade time for our little one, and having at least two full Disney Springs days for shopping and trying as many restaurants as we can. The more relaxed pace also allows me more flexibility to get work done in the evenings and on non-park days.

 

[SG131]

I vote for more park days. As an adult if I had to I could fill up those extra days wandering around. But I wouldn’t want to try that much down time with kids. As a kid that would be torture to know the parks are right there and not be able to go!