Oct 2013 plan (doable?)

[GooniesScott]

Thought I would ask some pros. My wife and I are arriving Thurs Oct 4 leaving Friday Oct 11. That being said we have 3 day P2P US, 1 day SW, and 5 day hoppers at WDW. Tentatively I am looking at doing US/IOA from 3 pm to close on arrival day, knowing early close for HHN. IOA on Friday, and then SW on Saturday heading over to US after to finish up anything we missed, again w early close for HHN. This would leave is Sunday through Friday for all WDW parks. Is this feasible and still enjoyable?

 

[hydrotony]

As long as you have a car to get between parks and don't mind paying $15 to park each lot. However, I think you are short-changing Universal Studios by only going there late in the day. The first few hours of the day has lots of characters walking around for photo ops, live street music shows and the parade is at 2pm. If your tickets are 2-park 3-day, take some early time on IOA day and go to US for the early hours. HHN is only at US, IOA stays open later. If you do this, then you can stay longer at Seaworld and go to IOA afterwards instead. Seaworld should not be short-changed either.

 

[Metro West]

You'll only have a maximum of two hours at the Studios on arrival day so it's hardly worth it. You should study park hours for your trip and make plans accordingly. You'd be better off going to IoA arrival day since it stays open until 7PM and then doing the Studios first thing so you can spend the day there.

 

[DCTooTall]

You'll only have a maximum of two hours at the Studios on arrival day so it's hardly worth it. You should study park hours for your trip and make plans accordingly. You'd be better off going to IoA arrival day since it stays open until 7PM and then doing the Studios first thing so you can spend the day there.

To add to that, around 3 is when you will start seeing people with the "scream early" tickets entering the park too, so that would be 2 hours in which you MAY get a couple rides in, but the crowds would be building because of people arriving for HHN in the studios..... and you likely won't be able to catch any of wonderful shows within the park because of how close to park closing you'd be getting there.

As Metro said, Go to IOA on arrival day. You'll be able to get more done over there as it'll be open later and you won't be dealing with any pre HHN crowds. The WWoHP also looks amazing at night so it'll be nice to be in that area as the sun starts to set also. The next day you can start at the Studios park to better take advantage of characters around the park and the showtimes thruout the day. With the P2P tickets, you can then hop back over to IOA when they start clearing the park again for HHN or the pre-HHN crowds start getting too much for you. At this point you'll have probably seen most (or all) that both parks have to offer as October crowds can be pretty low (outside of HHN)... so your final day you won't feel rushed to get back to Universal from SW... and will be able to go back and do anything at IOW/US that you may have missed or would like to do again

 

[bumbershoot]

Are you staying at one hotel the whole time? If so, I would rather do a WDW park the day you get in, because they'll be open later (probably). Save the Universal days for non-HHN days if possible, and not sharing them.

Now, I haven't been to Orlando's SW, but it took me half the day just to warm up to San Diego's version. If I had left before I started to like it, well, I wouldn't have liked it. (captain obvious here, LOL) I would want to give that park a full day, too.

If you're paying the prices for these short tickets, you might as well get the most for your money and dedicate as much of the days to them, especially when they have short hours!

 

[GooniesScott]

Wow great input! We are staying at one hotel in the LBV area. Initially I had planned on doing an intermixing of WDW and US based on the day and on crowd calendars, then I started second guessing myself and trying to get US/IOA/SW done before entering the WDW portion of our trip. With all the info available it can be quite overwhelming. Still trying to gauge crowds and how bad they will actually be. If we were to do IOA on arrival would we be able to accomplish much, given a max of 4 hours and a late start? Wife really wants to see WWHP, that's why I was leaning towards IOA on our first full day so we could be there at rope drop, but all of your advice makes complete sense. Glad I am getting lined out now, can't imagine not having a plan.