Oct 1 crowds for Festival of Fantasy & 4 parks in 1 day

[Raya]

We have 1 day to be in the parks on an upcoming trip - Oct 1, the 51st birthday. We had initially planned to go to Disney Springs, but one of group is desperate to see the Maleficent Dragon in the Flight of Fantasy parade. To check my understand, since the parade happens before 2pm we will need reservations at MK. If we get Genie+ we can use one of slots for a dedicated parade viewing area. Will we need to get up at 6:55 to reserve the parade viewing for noon? If we do, would we be able to use Genie+ for anything else before the parade? I think we would, and we'd be able to get the parade and something else first thing, but would then have to wait 2 hours before making a third selection. Could someone tell me if that's right?

Now that I've told everyone we could do the parade, they want to get park hoppers and try for 4 parks in one day. Will the crowds make that completely impossible? Or is this whole idea is crazy?

 

[MantaRay]

I can't give any insight into G+, but we've done all 4 parks on Christmas Day. One of the busiest days of the year, but also extended hours. MK to Epcot on the monorail; then over to Hollywood Studios makes 3 parks easy. Since Animal Kingdom will close earliest, that should be your second park instead. Hop over to enter at 2pm; estimate 1 hour for hopping between AK & other parks. Then head to Studios or Epcot, whichever closes earlier first. It's a quick hop between those two with skyliner or ferry or walking.

If you can stack G+ reservations for attractions at the second, third, fourth park, you have a good chance of hitting at least one great ride in each!

 

[ars0525]

October 1st is Epcot's 40th. Not sure what will be happening or if that will change any crowd levels, but just throwing it out there.

 

[RoseGold]

MK was full on the 50th and blocked hopping. If Epcot is full, then you'd have no way to get to the Skyliner in the back of the park for the next leg to HS. I bet the Epcot fireworks that night will be incredible. Epcot is huge, so this is very unlikely, but it is possible.

 

[craedaisy12]

My husband and I loved doing 4 parks in one day. I believe we’ve done it twice. But with the hopping starting at 2 we aren’t going to try it.

Our route would be AK bus to HS boat (no skyliner then) to Epcot and Monorail to MK. We loved ending the day at MK. We got AK done first because it was the furthest.

We also made sure to get one ride in at eat park.

I hope it’s an awesome day!