Park-hopping for first-time visitors?

[Hilary]

We enjoy park-hopping and feel we get more from dipping into a couple of parks each day rather than staying put and trying to do everything in one place. We use the time travelling between parks to sit back and take a breather.

When we visit WDW in October we'll be going with a large family group, some of whom have never visited before. Their schedule means that they'll have only four whole days in WDW parks during their two week trip to Florida. (We're hoping to fit in a couple of extra evening / last morning visits as well, but I'm trying to make sure they get to see as much as possible during those four main days.)

When we get together soon to come up with some kind of a touring plan, should I advocate the park-hopping approach that works for us, or do you think it will be easier and more straightforward for the first-timers to stick with one park per day?

 

[UKDEB]

Will you be doing exactly the same as them? If so, I think I'd be inclined to do whatever you would normally do and just let them tag along. In any case, mixing it all up a bit during the first few visits to each park allows for some flexibility later depending on how they feel about them. I think I would prefer to have the option of going to all the parks more than once even if, overall, I didn't actually get to see or do any more.

 

[Penny12]

Yeah to everything Deb said

 

[Janice]

Hi Hilary

On our first trip - there was just me, Chris and Katie, we didnt have Park Hoppers (Didnt even know you could hop! ~ How green were we???)

We were on our own, so didnt have the benefit of being escorted by seasoned travellers, but I do think we got more out of that trip <i>because</i> we stayed in one park all day. I think if we had hopped about, we would have missed so much - because we were there all day (from about 9am till closing, and we went on Boxing Day so it was a fairly busy time) we could really take in all there was on offer, looking at everything and just taking our time to savour the atmosphere.

I suppose, because you and your family have been so much then having their own Tour Guides may be preferable to your travelling companions, knowing that you are going to take and show them the best bits and highlights of each park first.

The second time we went, we had hoppers and took our friends with us who hadn't visited before - again, we spent whole days in one park. I think we only hopped last thing to Epcot to catch Illuminations.

When we went on our Millennium trip - we had been several times by then, but it was James & Emma's first trip - I often wonder if they feel they missed out on some of the wonder of it all because I was frog marching them everywhere?

Not much help really - just thought I would share what we did on our first trips.

 

[Mrs Dazzle]

I'm with Janice - purely because I think for first timers it's such a unique experience that "too much information" at once, ie more than one park each day, could prove too much - but that's only my view. I think the exception could be if there weren't many "young" children, in other words Magic Kingdom could then comfortable be done in half a day, Animal Kingdom the rest of the day.

It's a shame that the parks aren't open later in October - it will be our first time as a family this October and I'm still trying to completely rejig my itinerary because we're used to May/June hours when the parks are open late . . . and then we do visit more than one each day - we got to one park for the best part of the day, head back to hotel (and we always stay offsite) for swim/dinner then back to another park for the evening. The evening visit is normally a park we'd already been to, but just want to do fave rides or get evening ambience/parade.

At the end of the day, for first timers it's all a HUGE mind-boggling experience and I think to have ready made tour guides showing you the best is the best

 

[Olaf]

I'm for staying put at one park. Park hopping takes so much time, and puts lots of miles on your sore tootsies.

 

[Mpet]

I'm with the one day one park idea.

I can remember our first visit and we stayed at each park until closing - even then we didn't take in everything.

I may be on my own here but I think park hopping works better for the more experienced WDW visitor.


Maxine

 

[BevS97]

We normally just do one main park each day , but do like to pop into a park in the evening too - we tend to have longer passes so that would probably be a day when we didn't go to any park until 5ish, and then we would stay till late.

I think the evenings in the park have a much different atmosphere, and are very relaxing, but if you have just got 4 days and that's it, then I would probably do 1 park 1 day.

BUT - I don't know if I could just go to MK for one day - I just love the atmosphere in there,

and Epcot always takes us 2 days, one for the countries, and one for FW....

so really - I'm not being much help am I!

bev