Only three days -- help!

[zeke11]

Hi -

Since we're doing the land/sea vacation, we have only 3 days at WDW. We are arriving a day early so that our official first day is a full day.

Our kids are 17, 16, 12 and 8. All of them have been to WDW before, but it was 5 years ago.

Suggestions on a workable plan would be great -- we are staying on property at Port Orleans so that should help.

We are open to doing a day with half/half parks -- or would we be wasting our time?

We'd probably be satisfied with only a half day at a water park.

We've been to MK, Epcot (but haven't seen all the countries), MGM and Typhoon Lagoon.

A water park would be a necessity for my kids, so it would probably be Blizzard Beach.

Haven't seen AK, but hear that its nothing that special -- would it be feasible (or another waste of time) to just go there to see the Bug Life show?

Sorry for so many questions! Any suggestions and comments would be most welcome!

Thank you -
Kris

 

[B'rer Karen]

Wow, that's a tall order. You've said a water park is a necessity..personally I would skip that if I only had 3 days. You're going on a cruise so you'll get some swimming in (I know it's not exactly the same). I'm not sure where you got the idea that AK is a waste of time. There are people who say it's only a half day park, but there are people who think it's full day park. And even if it is only a half day, it's still a good half day. If you've never been I think you should plan half a day there. The safari and Festival of the Lion King alone are worth it.

You don't say when you're going. I think you'll have to do some park hopping, especially if you go when the parks close earlier.

I would think the best thing for you to do is to poll the members of your group on what things they absolutely want to do at each park. Maybe let them choose 3 attractions and rank them 1-3. This should then give you an idea of how to plan your time. If it were me and I hadn't been to AK as you haven't, then I would do 1 day at Epcot, 1 at MK (although they could be split up into half days and combined), and a half day apiece at MGM and AK.

It really does depend on what your group wants to do though.

 

[marybet]

AK is worth a half day, if you skip Tarzan Rocks and use fastpass you will see most of it. Arrive when it opens and plan to leave around noon and just do what you can. ITTBAB is our favorite, we were there in April and went to AK and that is all we did, Dinosaur was closed or we would have done that too.

It shouldn't be too crowded so you will probably be able to do alot. I second all of B'rer Karen suggestions.

When we took the grandchildren and their parents in May of 2003 we did all 4 parks in 3 days, (no crowds). We only spent about 4 hours at MGM but did everything but Indiana Jones and the backlot tour. Since we also went to Universal no one wanted to go back to MGM for a whole day, so we had one non park day.

If I remember right we went to AK on Sat., left at 4 and went to the MK for dinner at Liberty Tree and Spectro, but also did alot of rides. Sun. was EPCOT all day, Mon. IOA at Universal, Tue. MK in the morning and MGM around 4, had a Fantasmic dinner package at H&V, but we did Star Tours twice, TOT, RNR, the Muppets, with plenty of time to get to Fantasmic. Wed. we slept late and let the kids swim before going out to lunch and then DTD. On Thur. we did Universal Studios, and back to IOA so grandson could ride the Hulk again.

As I said, the crowds were low and we got alot done, and although I did not have a detailed plan, I knew what park we were going to on each day and what everyone really wanted to do if it was crowded. Had planned to do MGM on Wed. but as I said there was really only two things we missed, and I really should have planned a non park day so it worked out well.

Hope this helps. Enjoy the parks and have a great cruise. We did our first cruise last Oct. and thought it was the best vacation we ever had, hope you have as much fun.