Objective: Optimize a touring plan that makes maximum use of FP+ and park time at minimal cost.
Description: This will be a 7 day plan that will utilize park choice, FP+ availability, high crowd days, and additional off-site options to increase vacation yield.
Required: WDW Annual Pass (Why? We are hoping to save enough to cover the costs of another trip during the summer)
Optional: USO Annual Pass
Lodging: Offsite
Meals: Offsite
Note: This trip involves airfare for 3 ($756), a week's rental car ($86.24), and corporate hotel reservations at a premium hotel, three items that significantly inflate the cost. Consider it a test run for the real "More for Less" trip in June that will involve driving to Orlando and a week's stay at a 3-Star condo for $242.
DAY ONE of Park Strategy "More for Less"
We'll be arriving in Orlando 3/6 and can begin reserving FP's tomorrow. Late flight doesn't land until 7:50pm so the agenda for the first evening will be fairly light. We won't be able to take advantage of EMH at Epcot but MK is open until 11pm for all so I'll make our FP reservations there. Per ArwinMarie's advice, we'll eat on the plane.
Staying at Rosen Shingle Creek resort, Google Maps indicates it is 14 minutes from MCO, and then 15 minutes to the MK gate. I estimate we can collect luggage and rental car, head to Rosen, check into and leave the Rosen and be thru the gate at MK by 9:20pm. EasyWDW has the day at a Crowd Level 6 with MK recommended.
7:30am at the 30 day mark I was able to reserve FP's for:
Haunted Mansion: 8p-9p (this is our sacrificial FP)
7DMT: 9p-10p
Space Mountain: 10p-11p
It took several iterations of time and order to get these FP's to look this way. At first, it didn't appear there was anything available for 7DMT after 7p but once I was able to move SM to the end of the night it introduced several new choices for the other two. So definitely move the times of your choices around to see what new ones are revealed.
This will finalize our first night's itinerary as follows:
Arrive at MK and proceed directly to 7DMT, exit 7DMT and watch Wishes at 10P, proceed to Tomorrowland for SM, catch CoP or PeopleMover on exit (doubtful there will be time for this but we'll see) and proceed to main Hub for MSEP at 11p.
Not too bad for 90 minutes at MK on our first night. Net cost in the park: $0
DAY TWO of Park Strategy "More for Less"
Saturday 3/7 will be a busy weekend at WDW and Epcot is our park of choice for the evening on a Crowd Level "6" day per EasyWDW with Epcot recommended.
Saturday morning will begin at Universal Studios as we have AP's for that as well. I don't want this to turn into a Universal vs. WDW thread so insert your park of choice for Saturday AM, whether it be a WDW park or USO or Sea World or Larry's Lizard World.......
Breakfast/lunch will be light snacks as we aren't big on three meals a day.
We'll have an early dinner at one of several choices along International Drive before heading to Epcot:
$ = Chili's, Golden Corral, Ponderosa Steakhouse
$$ = Lighthouse Lobster Feast, Great Western Steaks & Buffet
$$$ = Texas de Brazil, Capital Grille
At 9am the morning of the 30th day, I reserved FP's for:
Spaceship Earth: 5p-6p
Mission Space: 6p-7p
Soarin: 7p-8p
Reserving FP's for Epcot is somewhat of a humorous experience. What was the logic behind putting Living with the Land in the top tier with Test Track and Soarin and making you choose only one? And the second tier choices are their own stand up comedy act with most of them being remembered as walks on's pre-FP+.
But the strategy behind the above choices was to hit SE upon park entry, take a left and knock out MS, do single rider at TT, and then head over to Soarin. Call me anal but I like having my FP's start at the top of each hour, it's easier to remember them that way, but
MDE insists on returning some goofy times on the first attempt. At least all of the "Option 1 - Best!" choices were already in the evening - I guess HAL is getting to know my touring patterns. It again took several iterations to get them in the order I wanted at the times I wanted as the presented times would start at :05 and then :15 and then :30 until I could get one of them to come back as :00 and then the rest would start to follow and after what seemed like an hour I had all of them nicely ordered as you see above.
This finalizes Day Two's itinerary as follows:
9am - 3pm: Universal Studios
3pm - 5pm: Early dinner on International Drive
5pm - 7pm: Arrive at Epcot: FP SE, FP MS, Single Rider TT (skip if >30 minutes)
7pm - 8pm: FP Soarin
8pm - 9pm: Grab two beers and see/hear British Revolution
9pm: Illuminations
We'll try really hard not to feel like we didn't get anything done today. Net cost in the park: $20
DAY THREE of Park Strategy "More for Less":
Sunday 3/8: After realizing the previous evening that Epcot is having it's Flower & Garden Festival, I succumb to DW's demands that we return to Epcot in the morning. We won't waste any FP's there, though, instead reserving them for Hollywood Studios in the PM. EasyWDW has a day at a crowd level "7" with both EP and HS as recommended parks. On the morning of the 30 day window I was able to make the following FP's, again after several iterations to manipulate the times in order to provide an efficient path thru the park:
Star Tours: 5p - 6p
Toy Story Mania: 6p - 7p
Tower of Terror: 7p - 8p
Now our itinerary for Sunday shapes up quite nicely:
9am - 2pm: Epcot for SB morning FW attractions, then Flower & Garden Festival
2pm - 4pm: Leave Epcot for early dinner at Bahama Breeze (15 minutes from Epcot)
4pm - 5pm: Head to Hollywood Studios (10 minutes from Bahama Breeze)
5pm - 6pm: FP Star Tours, SB The Great Movie Ride, head to TSMM
6pm - 7pm: FP Toy Story Mania, head to Rockin' Roller Coaster for single rider line
7pm - 7pm: There's a reason they sell beer outside of RnRC
7pm - 8pm: FP Tower of Terror
8pm - 8:30pm: Potty break (just seeing if you're paying attention)
8:30pm: Fantasmic
Looks like Sunday is shaping up to be another pretty productive yet net cost in the park: $0
DAY FOUR of Park Strategy "More for Less":
Monday 3/9 finds us heading to Animal Kingdom in the morning and Universal/CityWalk in the afternoon/evening. EasyWDW has the day at a crowd level "7" with AK as a recommended park. Choosing FP's for this park is always interesting because of the 9 choices available, 2 are for shows, 1 is for a meet and greet, and 3 of the remaining 6 are for things that never needed FP before. On the morning of our 30 day window I could not reserve any FP's for before 9:15 even though the park opens at 8. Either the standby lines won't have to compete with FP for over an hour or they will because all the FP's are taken. I also could not get the times to adjust to the top or the bottom of the hour so we could squeeze in Lion King even after many iterations so I ended up making the following:
Kilimanjaro Safari: 9:15-10:15
Expedition Everest: 10:20-11:20
Dinosaur: 11:25-12:25
This will give us a nice clockwise transit pattern in the park. Our itinerary is now:
8:30am: Arrive at Animal Kingdom, standby for Tough to be a Bug
9:15 - 10:15: FP Kilimanjaro Safari, head to Expedition Everest
10:20 - 11:20: FP Expedition Everest, standby for Finding Nemo at 11
Noon: FP Dinosaur, laugh at people using FP for Primeval Whirl (just kidding).
1pm - 2pm: Lunch at Steak 'n Shake (15 minutes from AK, 15 minutes to USO)
2pm - 7pm: USO Islands of Adventure
7pm - 9pm: Dinner at CityWalk - Margaritaville
Not bad. Net cost in the park: $0
DAY FIVE of Park Strategy "More for Less":
By Tuesday 3/10 we've had four days of theme parks and have hit all of the WDW parks as well as both of the USO parks, so I've decided to use some of our savings thus far and splurge a little on a unique experience and a character buffet.
But not the typical WDW character buffet. For this one we are going to:
- Have lunch with an astronaut.
We'll head east to the Kennedy Space Center, about an hour drive. Our plan is to leave Orlando at 7:30 and arrive at KSC in plenty of time for opening.
KSC closes at 6pm and it's an hour drive back to Orlando. Just in case we miss our theme park fix for the day, MK is open until 11pm so I made the following FP's for an evening "coaster night":
Space Mountain: 8-9
7DMT: 9-10
BTMR: 10-11
Oh, and with Wishes at 10 and MSEP at 11, we'll be in the vicinity of great viewing spots for both.
Day Five's itinerary:
7:30 - 8:30: Drive to Kennedy Space Center
9:00 - Noon: KSC Tours
Noon - 1:00: Lunch with an Astronaut
1:00 - 6:00: KSC Tours
6:00 - 8:00: Drive back to Orlando, stop along the way for a light dinner
8:00 - 9:00: FP Space Mountain
9:00 - 10:00: FP Seven Dwarfs
10:00: Wishes
10:00-11:00: Big Thunder Mountain
11:00: Main Street Electrical Parade
We'll have spent $226 for parking, a day's admission, and lunch with an astronaut but another day of $0 net in-park WDW cost.
At this point we could call it a 5 day trip in which we've visited every theme park in Orlando as well as Kennedy Space Center - but we'll keep going for another couple of days thru Thursday.
DAY SIX of Park Strategy "More for Less":
Wednesday 3/11 and we've already hit six Orlando theme parks, had lunch with an Astronaut at the space center, enjoyed some pretty good meals off-site, and have managed to do so while only spending around $20 inside a WDW park.
So today we've decided to test a couple of strategies, one being Rope Drop at Epcot. It's been said that Test Track, Mission Space, Soarin, and even Figment can be accomplished in about 90 minutes without FP's so we'll drop Figment from that and see if it's true. Then we'll take the Epcot bus to Hollywood Studios because it's quicker than walking all the way to the boat dock and taking a boat. I managed to reserve the following FP's for Hollywood Studios:
Tower of Terror: 11am - noon
Toy Story Mania: noon - 1pm
Star Tours: 1pm - 2pm
We'll try standby for the RnRC single rider line if it's less than 30 minutes and The Great Movie Ride if it's less than 15 minutes. Once we've finished up in HS we'll take the bus back to the Epcot parking lot and head off-site for an early dinner before going over to USO for Escape from Gringotts and a butter beer in Diagon Alley.
Our itinerary is looking like this:
9am: Epcot rope drop
9am - 10:30am: Standby Soarin, standby single rider Test Track, standby Mission Space (Wisblue says it can be done in this order in about an hour).
10:30: Take Epcot bus to Hollywood Studios
11:30: FP Tower of Terror, single rider RnRC if less than 30 minutes
12:30: FP Toy Story Mania, standby TGMR if less than 15 minutes
1:30: FP Star Tours
2pm: Bus back to Epcot parking lot
3pm: Early dinner at Lighthouse Lobster Feast. I've seen mixed reviews on this place but I love seafood and you'd have to screw up unlimited lobster and crab before I'm disappointed. (16 minutes from Epcot, 14 minutes to USO).
6pm - 9pm: Diagon Alley for Escape from Gringotts, butterbeer, appetizers and a Hurricane at Pat O'briens at CityWalk.
Our last full day comes to a close after hitting two WDW parks (and $0 in-park cost), one USO park, City Walk, and hopefully some decent all-you-can-eat lobster and seafood.
DAY SEVEN of Park Strategy "More for Less":
Thursday 3/12 and we'll do the obligatory last-day-Magic-Kingdom visit after sleeping in for a bit. It's going to be another Crowd Level "7" day per EasyWDW with MK as non-recommended park. I can start to understand why it's not recommended because on the morning of the 30th day we hit our first FP+ snag as we couldn't get any FP's for 7DMT before 7pm and we wanted to leave the park by 3pm. After many iterations of the other two choices 7DMT wouldn't budge any earlier than 7pm and during a couple of cycles even lost that availability as it seems others were taking those slots. It's almost possible to visualize the days getting busier as the available time slots shrink even during the reservation process. So we were forced to abandon our 7DMT choice and sub Haunted Mansion instead for the following to keep with our counter-clockwise park rotation:
Space Mountain: 12:30 - 1:30
Haunted Mansion: 2:00 - 3:00
Big Thunder Mountain: 3:00 - 4:00
We'll arrive at MK at approximately 1pm and head for SM, leaving us almost 90 minutes before our next FP at Haunted Mansion. We'll look for anything that might have a standby line of 30 minutes or less as we head to HM. We should be ready to leave after finishing up with BTMR at 3pm.
Seven days, six parks, the Kennedy Space Center and lunch with an astronaut. $20 spent OOP in the WDW parks, $15 spent OOP in the USO parks. Hotel costs are much higher than desired but this was a half-business trip that we decided to extend in order to do this little exercise.
During and after our visit I'll post performance to plan and actual costs incurred and compare that to the cost of previous trips. And as I indicated at the beginning of this post this is a test run for the real "More for Less" trip in June that will involve driving to Orlando and a week's stay at a 3-Star condo for $242. We'll be able to amortize the cost of the AP's over two visits instead of one, lowering the effective cost to half on each visit and who
wouldn't want to go to WDW twice?
We'll be able to apply any lessons learned during this first week to that week in June and hopefully illustrate how "More for Less" is easily attainable for anyone who wants to take advantage of FP+ and has a flexible attitude.
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