Park Hoppers or Not?

[JenCl456]

We have our first Disney trip for our 7 year old planned for March. As of now we have 5 single park tickets for our stay. My plans are a park a day with MK twice. My question is why would I want to change to a park hopper? I am thinking time lost with traveling to multiple parks on the same day and just enjoying one park until we are ready to go back to the resort.

 

[trouttigger]

I agree with you. Your plan sounds wonderful. Unless there is a reason to change parks, I think your time is best spent enjoying one park in a day.

 

[BrianL]

The main use for Park Hoppers for me is when one park is open later than others or there's a special even that forces one to close early then I can hop to another park to maximize my time. That said, a kid may not be able to handle the open to close commando style that I prefer, so it may not be something you want to mess around with. It's really just a personal preference in that regard.

 

[FCDub]

You don't have to decide right away. If you'd like to hop, you can go to a ticket window at any park and add the option.

 

[JenCl456]

You don't have to decide right away. If you'd like to hop, you can go to a ticket window at any park and add the option.

That is good to know!

 

[StacyStrong]

Some people take midday breaks and go to another park after the break. In that situation you're not having extra travel time because you take a midday break anyway.

You can then hop to a park closing later in the afternoon.

They aren't necessary, but I like the flexibility personally.

 

[vicb]

Personally I would not travel to WDW without a hopper. Love the flexibility it gives us. Even when my kids were little we would do one park at rope drop, maybe leave for a late afternoon swim then into another park for a few rides or evening shows/fireworks. We usually stay at an Epcot area resort (BC 1 time, BWI twice , Dolphin 3 stays) so we like to hop into Epcot for dinner. If you have a hopper you can do one park during the day then hop to the park having eve emh. We did alot of morning emh when our kids were little, then a swim and hop into a diff park. One trip (pre Pandora) we hopped into AK from Epcot just to ride EE which the kids rode 3 times! It is even easier to hop with Lyft and Uber, we use that alot to return to our resort and save some time. Last trip we rode Monorail from MK to Poly to visit Trader Sams then took a Lyft back to our hotel to get ready to go out that night. You can hop with the monorail between MK and Epcot. You can hop with the boat between HS and Epcot and soon the new gondola will connect HS and Epcot. Plus kids enjoy those transports more than the bus which can grow old.

PS. Hoppers are great if you miss an attraction or show in a park on your primary day, you can hop back into that park another day just to see what you had missed.

 

[NJ Goofy]

On your 1st trip you may not need them because there is so much to see and do at each park. With that said, we always get them. We go to our 1st park @ 9:00 am and stay until @ 2:00 pm, we take a mid-day break at the pool and then return to a 2nd park in the evening. We try to go to each park one morning and one evening, that way we can see the nighttime stuff without being dead tired. The break is especially nice when it is extremely hot in WDW. As others have noted you can decide to upgrade when you're there, have fun !

 

[LA Poolboy]

We almost always use park hoppers, but this particular trip we are on now we did not. We enjoy MK more than the other parks and tend to always want to go back there. Park hoppers allows us to do that. We usually don't spend much time at HS but do want to go do a little (same for AK). We can do that and then take a break and go over to MK later in the day. Or to EPCOT and walk around the World. We make full use of park hoppers on most trips.

 

[JennyDrake]

I am a big believer in park hoppers - like others, I take a midday break, but the BIG reason is crowds at MK and AK--for some reason those two parks don't seem to handle crowds as well and I will stay there until it gets insane, about 1:00, then I take a break and head back to a different park.

 

[NH-to-FL]

I think StacyStrong has the best reason for hoppers. If you are planning for or just find your family taking midday breaks then the hopper gives you the flexibility of deciding to go back to a different park.

When we took our on site vacations we always got hoppers (or APs) since we stayed at the Boardwalk. We rope dropped the morning EMH park and took midday breaks. Hopping over to Epcot was a typical evening occurrence. Same goes for staying in one of the monorail resorts and ending the day at the MK.

Can you have a great trip without hoppers! Absolutely!

 

[wcw57]

back when I was a youngster, and there were only 2 parks, we would buy the hopper....

heck, MK used to stay open until midnight if my cloudy memory serves me well....maybe it was 1?

Anyhow, I was up for that kind of adventure then. Now I check into the price of renting a scooter........

 

[Finerfam]

I've had two successful trips without park hoppers my husband and young son (1.5 yo on first trip, 2.5 yo on second trip). We went commando style for the most part (open to close) and never took midday breaks at our resort. I never felt like I needed hoppers because I put a lot of thought and time into my daily park plans, making sure to plan enough down time, whether it was an ADR or show. Don't get me wrong, we were all exhausted at the end of each park day, but I loved dedicating 1 full day to each park because it gave me time to really enjoy the experience. On our first trip, we did exactly what you're planning - 1 day in each park, and an extra day in MK.

Have an awesome first trip!!!

 

[Disneymom1126]

We've only used hoppers once and it was because we had a three day trip but wanted to hit all of the parks. I don't find them necessary for the way we plan our trips, but I could see them being nice for certain times of the year/certain reasons. For example, during Food & Wine it would be nice to hop over to Epcot at night or when the Halloween and Christmas parties are happening MK is pretty busy on non-party days, but not as busy on days with a party, so you may want to do MK during the day on a party day and hop elsewhere at night, but then on a non-party day do a difference park, but hop over to MK for the fireworks (since you can't see them on non-party nights without a party ticket)...so for things like that I think it's helpful otherwise, it's just an unnecessary added expense for us.

I also agree with others - for a first trip, there will be so much you want to do and see in each park, that you really won't have any reason to hop. Most people are hopping cause they know what their favorites are and they want to do them multiple times in a trip.

 

[david joyal]

While I am in my early stages of planning to involve my kids for the first time. I am pretty much completely against park hopper.

Every time I go my Wife and I always enjoy a park for the entire day. We plan our food around that park, and everything around those.

Overall I agree, you lose a lot of time trying to go from one to the other even if you use some of the fastest transportation available.

That being said, if food is very important to you, and there for reservations, or if you plan on leaving part of the way through the day anyway for naps/breaks, than park hopping is a good option as you can leave for your nap and then choose a different park afterwards depending on how busy the first park was.

 

[Chris Connelly]

My Mrs and I find that our two girls (5 and 7) don't react well to the "commando style" day. We will spend a full day in a park, but not often as we were at WDW last year for 2 weeks and are travelling back this year for 3 weeks, so the hopper ticket makes a lot of sense to us because our kids don't enjoy being out and about active for 16 hours for 21 days in a row and neither do we for that matter. Our extra time at WDW affords us the time to be flexible with our time and the park hopper affords us that flexibility.

As for dining, we wanted to maximize our reservations and make sure that we got a reservation for all the character dining experiences that we wanted and then built our plan around that. sometimes that meant that we are splitting days between HS and Epcot, but our preferences are suited to that.

Basically, the necessity of a hopper ticket depends on your needs and preferences for how you want to structure your days and also how many days you have to spend at the parks. That being said, the hopper can be just as useful to someone who is staying for 4 days as someone who is staying for 30. It's all down to what you need and what you would be willing to spend to make that happen.

Hope you have a great time at WDW whether you get a park hopper or not.

 

[JenCl456]

My Mrs and I find that our two girls (5 and 7) don't react well to the "commando style" day. We will spend a full day in a park, but not often as we were at WDW last year for 2 weeks and are travelling back this year for 3 weeks, so the hopper ticket makes a lot of sense to us because our kids don't enjoy being out and about active for 16 hours for 21 days in a row and neither do we for that matter. Our extra time at WDW affords us the time to be flexible with our time and the park hopper affords us that flexibility.
.

3 weeks?!? Can I be your child?

 

[Chris Connelly]

3 weeks?!? Can I be your child?

hahaha, we are from Scotland so anything less than two weeks wouldn't really be worth the travel, 3 doesn't actually cost too much more than the two weeks, but it will be a LONG time before we will be able to do anything like this again.

 

[MonaMN]

We prefer one park per day. We would rather do park open to late afternoon or arrive later and stay later - and not mess with a midday break and the extra traveling. We do not go in the summer when it is miserable hot - we would probably choose differently at that time.