No hoppers?

[nascargirl]

DH and I have Annual Passes. For our upcoming trip this May, my sister in law and my Mom will be joining us. To save them both money, we suggested they do non hopper passes. I understand how the OP feels as we usually stay at the BC or BWI and have 2 them parks available to us.

 

[sponica]

Everyone does Disney different. For me, park hopper is a must! Except with magic kingdom, I’d never want to just stay at one park all day. I love hopping around. Much more exciting for me.

But alas, I don’t have kids. Last trip I did was solo. Upcoming is with my mom!

I hopped with a 20 month old, but I just built the hops into the plans. Like Morning MK, Evening Epcot, Morning DHS, Evening Epcot, Morning Epcot, Evening MK. (We really like Epcot).

 

[samsonjs]

I know you're wanting to save money. I'm all about saving money

What I said was (and this is IMO) your touring style is set up idealy for Park Hoppers, all the things you described you want to do, how you like to do them, wanting the flexibility of coming back again, your FOMO (lol sorry just had to) is coming across to me etc.

You may not want to purchase/spend the money (which is totally understandable) on park hoppers which is why I then suggested dropping a meal or two if that helps pay for it or close the gap.

Maybe reprice everything out. Is there something you're missing that can help bridge the gap? I don't want you to feel like you have to break the bank to get Park Hoppers just didn't know if there was something else in the trip that can be adjusted to accommodate the expense of them.

In 2011 and 2017 we went in September. It's hot hot hot there so I get the heat comment. We personally eat less filling foods because of the heat, we drank 90-95% water, took some time out for a show or someplace inside to cool off a little bit, rested our feet at time, etc.

On the note of the DDP I know it's crazy!. We won't get the Dining Plan because it doesn't work for us.

Along this line, if you decide to drop two higher price meals you normally do you can put that money towards PH. It sounds like OP likes to eat at higher end restaurants. Maybe if you get the PH you can enjoy some of the better QS options when you PH. Such as park hop to Epcot at night, to get some of their better QS dinners.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

We decided that for our upcoming trip, we wouldn't get hoppers like we usually do- to save the money. But now we are having a very hard time trying to plan our park days and dining
We are going in August, and want to avoid the heat of the day. Trying to consider EMH and such.
Basically we are going for a week, and want only one day at DHS and AK. Prefer park nights but also like RD as long as its not the morning after an EMH night. Help!
How do you all plan without the hoppers?

We always have gotten park hoppers but during our last 2 trips we have found we were doing only 1 park a day. Making hoppers a waste of money. I didn’t plan it that way, it’s just the way it turned out. So we’re probably not going to do hoppers going forward.

 

[Mango7100]

We don’t get hoppers. On our last trip, we made stayed at the hotel and swam in the morning then did HS in the afternoon since it is a 1/2 park for us. We did pair an afternoon at AK with a DAH at MK so I guess that was kind of a hopping day. We RD and don’t take a break since we stay offsite, and I don’t want to waste the time going black to the hotel to maybe get 1 hr of pool time in before it’s time to clean up and head out again. On MK days we will book a meal at a MK resort as a break.

 

[DisLiss]

We really love our Hoppers. We'd almost certainly drop a day from our trip rather than give up the Hoppers. But we're not "We want to do as much as humanly possible every day." Disney-goers. We're more "Things are getting busy here, let's go someplace else now." or "Phew! Animal Kingdom's a sauna! Let's leave at lunchtime and hit a water park instead." Disney-goers.

For our upcoming trip we do plan on having one all day MK day, and maybe we'll have an all-day EPCOT day, but otherwise we'll split all of the other days. We really love to end our days in EPCOT, so most of our days are more like AK, then a water park, then EPCOT. Or HS, then the resort, then EPCOT.

If we were to go without them, I think we would opt against being in any park with EMH, and we'd avoid MK during the MNSSHP, if you're there during that part of August. (Unless you're attending the party, of course!)

I hope you have a great time!

 

[2boysmommy]

OP here-
We usually hop, do water parks, and do split stays, but it’s over $300 so we thought let’s not do it this trip since we were taking a water park break...
Here’s where we are finding it tricky-
We are at AK for three nights, then BLT. Our first two nights have EMH at Epcot and MK, so we want to take advantage of this. We are definitely not all day commando people and need to avoid the extreme midday heat, and like to avoid crowds, so do several RD mornings.
We don’t want to do much at HS, so that would be one day. We’d like to see new toy story stuff and love sci fi, so that could be either a RD day, or midday- evening, again, avoiding the heat.
We haven’t seen anything Pandora and would like to at night, and would also like at least one am at AK park, there’s a lot for our family there, plus we want to do the elephant tour...not thinking we can do all of this in one day, so need two here.

You may want to rethink your park days - it sounds like you may be planning your days around EMH rather than proximity. I would definitely do AK when you are at AKL and MK when at BLT, regardless of EMH options. (The only thing that may change this is a MK party night which, without hoppers, makes MK a no-go on that day.) I would also suggest HS when at AKL as you could enjoy the great pools there in the afternoon if you don't think HS will be a full day for you.

Also, you priced a regular park-hopper and not just the one that includes the water parks, correct? It seems you are lumping them together (above) so just wanted to make sure you knew there were 2 options!

I totally get the budget issue. I have took out DDP for our 9-night trip due to cost. I ran numbers and with our DVC or AP discounts, we can eat for way cheaper! I then used the money to justify a GoldAP (because it worked out cheaper than an 8-day hopper plus Memory Maker for the 4 of us anyway) allowing us to visit parks on both our arrival and departure days, opening up more relaxation time during the week. It's all a numbers game. Thankfully I enjoy that side of it...and all the other Disney planning!

 

[scrappinginontario]

We've had them the past few trips due to needing them to qualify for FD. Although we used them a couple of times, never felt we 'needed' them.

One thing we've done a couple of times with PH though and loved both times is a 4 parks in 1 day challenge. Had a blast visiting each park and using so many different modes of transportation.

 

[Farro]

We are part of the "won't go without hoppers" group.

We never just go to one park a day. We either are at one park during day, then Epcot for dinner. Or one park for a while, then we want to just go to another park for night-time ambiance.

Too much freedom for us to give it up.

 

[littledebbie335]

We've done both ways, and prefer not to hop. I think planning is much easier without hopping!

We always do MK first, so the first day is already committed to that park.

Then we make a list of "must-dos." These aren't rides, but are food, shows, special tours, etc. Break it up by park (or DS or resort). This helps us figure out how many days will be needed for each park.

At this point in time, I usually use food to guide things. You mentioned being interested in a lot of restaurants at Epcot. Are there certain meals you want to eat at a certain place? Maybe you could do GG breakfast, then hit up Mexico for a light lunch, and finish off with the French restaurant. We have a similar problem of always wanting to eat all the food at Epcot!

Then we look at park hours and ADR availability to pick our designated park days. We don't worry too much about EMH. If we can use them, great, but if it doesn't work out with our plan, that's ok too.

We do FP last, but also travel at off-peak times and there are only two of us, so it's pretty easy to get what we want. If you decide you must have a FOP FP, for example, maybe use FP to guide which day you visit each park instead of ADRs.

Something else that we did on our last trip was to buy a park ticket for our rest day. We used to just go to DS or hang out at the resort, but it was so cheap to add on another day that we ended up with part of the day to spend to Epcot, which was nice (and allowed for a second round of Tipsy Ducks in Love ).

I think for people who usually hop, the hardest part of planning a non-hopping trip is selecting which days to visits which parks. There's no wrong answer on that one...you're still at Disney regardless of which park you choose!!

 

[jkh36619]

We really love our Hoppers. We'd almost certainly drop a day from our trip rather than give up the Hoppers. But we're not "We want to do as much as humanly possible every day." Disney-goers. We're more "Things are getting busy here, let's go someplace else now." or "Phew! Animal Kingdom's a sauna! Let's leave at lunchtime and hit a water park instead." Disney-goers.

For our upcoming trip we do plan on having one all day MK day, and maybe we'll have an all-day EPCOT day, but otherwise we'll split all of the other days. We really love to end our days in EPCOT, so most of our days are more like AK, then a water park, then EPCOT. Or HS, then the resort, then EPCOT.

If we were to go without them, I think we would opt against being in any park with EMH, and we'd avoid MK during the MNSSHP, if you're there during that part of August. (Unless you're attending the party, of course!)

I hope you have a great time!

Yeah,

Same here. We have AP's but if not, we'd get the hoppers. If we make dining reservations, its maybe once per a trip. So we just go where we feel like it after our FP's are used. We would rather be free of dining reservations and just grap QS where ever. Like you say, if a park is geting crowded, we may go back to our room then hit another park in the evening. I look back at my early Disney days and they were too rigid. I don't like having to be here or there because of plan x.

 

[Elephantay]

We really love our Hoppers. We'd almost certainly drop a day from our trip rather than give up the Hoppers. But we're not "We want to do as much as humanly possible every day." Disney-goers. We're more "Things are getting busy here, let's go someplace else now." or "Phew! Animal Kingdom's a sauna! Let's leave at lunchtime and hit a water park instead." Disney-goers.

This is us! If theres a long wait, we just don't do it. If its crowded or crazy hot, we get out of there. I think out of all the helpful posts this has helped the most- I don't want to feel like we don't have these options. Getting the hoppers, and you can bet I will make sure we hop!
Thank you!

 

[Elephantay]

You may want to rethink your park days - it sounds like you may be planning your days around EMH rather than proximity. I would definitely do AK when you are at AKL and MK when at BLT, regardless of EMH options. (The only thing that may change this is a MK party night which, without hoppers, makes MK a no-go on that day.) I would also suggest HS when at AKL as you could enjoy the great pools there in the afternoon if you don't think HS will be a full day for you.

Also, you priced a regular park-hopper and not just the one that includes the water parks, correct? It seems you are lumping them together (above) so just wanted to make sure you knew there were 2 options!

I totally get the budget issue. I have took out DDP for our 9-night trip due to cost. I ran numbers and with our DVC or AP discounts, we can eat for way cheaper! I then used the money to justify a GoldAP (because it worked out cheaper than an 8-day hopper plus Memory Maker for the 4 of us anyway) allowing us to visit parks on both our arrival and departure days, opening up more relaxation time during the week. It's all a numbers game. Thankfully I enjoy that side of it...and all the other Disney planning!

I am, for the first couple of days. My son needs to avoid extreme heat, so we love the nights, and during our week there are only two nights where any park is open past 9, so we are planning for those ( 2 teenage boys). The EMH mornings help us get a fair amount in before crowds/heat, too.

 

[samsteele]

We decided that for our upcoming trip, we wouldn't get hoppers like we usually do- to save the money. But now we are having a very hard time trying to plan our park days and dining
We are going in August, and want to avoid the heat of the day. Trying to consider EMH and such.
Basically we are going for a week, and want only one day at DHS and AK. Prefer park nights but also like RD as long as its not the morning after an EMH night. Help!
How do you all plan without the hoppers?

I have hopper included (ie must buy) as part of my Fall Free Dining. I only use it once or twice during my vacation. It's a lot of extra walking and time wasted to and from the bus.
My preference is always no hopper. There are so many good, tasty restaurants at WDW that the key is to look for (1) what is in park and (2) what is at Dis Springs and (3) what is at a nearby resort that can easily be reached walking - like the restaurants at Yacht Club, Beach Club and Boardwalk from Epcot or at Contemporary from MK OR by ferry eg Wilderness Lodge restaurants from MK OR by monorail from MK to Poly's 'Ohana & Kona & GF OR by bus from AK to Sanaa at Kidani or Boma at AKL OR soon by Skyliner eg from Epcot and HS to Sebastians at Caribbean Resort. A bit of advance planning can net you some great ADRs. Remember that travel to and from most parks to restaurants will take at least 1 hr transit time.

 

[bobbiwoz]

I picked the park based on the FPs I could get. On a five night, four day trip next week, I first went for SDD, then FOP, finally 7 Dwarfs, Epcot was picked on our first day because the Spinners are there.

My friend did not want a hopper, so I worked with her.