Planning 180 days out....how do you decide where you'll be on each day?

[kangaroodle]

Starting to plan a trip for the end of July and my 180 day mark will be here in a few days. I have used easywdw.com in the past to try and decide which days we'll be in each park. That's how I would plan to make my ADRs.

How does everyone else do it? Open to amy suggestions that might make things easier!

 

[Airship Ariadne]

I plan based on EHM's (we try to use all the evening ones we can and avoid the morning ones) and the park schedules...I generally know we like 2 days at EPCOT and 2 at MK, then try to fill in HS and AK so we aren't doing the same park two days in a row.

 

[DISNEYD14]

I plan by crowd calendar and know that my opening day always has to be MK.

 

[imthegoose]

Well....

The first and most important thing to do when deciding on which park to go to on which day is to see which planet is most closely aligned with Venus. Using an advanced algorithm created at MIT, you can then determine which park as the best aura.

That being said....

I use the easywdw crowd calendars and use his recommendations. In addition, days at AK, I will try to hop to either EP for dinner or MK if they have evening EMH.

 

[Candleshoe]

I plan by crowd calendar and know that my opening day always has to be MK.

Yep!!

Although we are going with newbies this year and I considered AK as it's a more manageable park. I did end up planning it to MK.

I have a spreadsheet. Dates across the top. Next line is the recommended park(s) (I input both UT and EasyWDW). Next row is me taking a stab.

I walked away and came back and thought about fireworks and how tired we might be one night followed by a morning next. I'm one who doesn't like to plan completely off days, but a shortened day is okay for me. Epcot works well for the "morning after" a show night.

I take a break and come back and see how it feels again. If it feels right I'm ready. (Hey we just did AK 2 days ago do I want to do it again, type things)

I may have two rows of acceptable plans.

Then I try for my ADRs. Usually it's pre 180 days when I start. This time I started inside of 180 so I could start checking with ADRs right away.

I like an early CP one MK day -- preferably the first MK day. If I can't get it on the day(s) I have marked for MK I check my B-Schedule MK days.

It starts to fall into place. Only two of my ADRs are pre-paid so I can move things around.

This year my hardest to get ones were SWW specific ADRs.

Now I have a breather until aFPs. I will work on Touring plans first to see where I want to have my FPs fall in the day.

 

[Sophie_2003]

Avoid any emh
Since we're with young kids plan an easy day after wishes, illuminations or fantasmic
Leave a couple things unplanned...

 

[hops&dreams]

I also use Josh's recommendations at EasyWDW too. I like his because he puts explanations, and they make sense. We also follow his common sense advice: MK is more crowded on weekends (more locals), the more Fantasmic shows there are, the more crowded HS will be, etc, etc.

We generally start at one of his recommended parks, and avoid AM MH, just because they do tend to crowd the parks. We park hop, so after dinner, we go to whatever park is open latest. We go in the winter-time, so the parks generally close pretty early... AK at 5, HS at 7, Epcot at 9, and MK usually at 10.

 

[heybravo626]

We hop at times so we start by splitting each day in half and deciding how may mornings & evenings we want to do for each park. For us, the ratio usually ends up being 3-4 MK to 2 EP/DHS to 1 AK. If it’s summer, we throw in water parks and/or swim breaks. In cooler weather, we won’t break or it will be shorter. At the same time, we compile the list of where we want to eat on each trip.

From there, we use the easywdw.com crowd calendar as the primary guide to try to map our days. I do look at other crowd calendars as well and mark the days that are totally in sync as far as recommended or not recommended. We don’t follow the crowd calendars totally because we like to hit the MK emh even though it’s not recommended because we get through a lot the first few hours and them get out of the park by lunch time and hop to another park later. While grouping the days, we consider our FP+ strategy which at a top level is to loosely only use FP+ at MK and DHS and not use them at EP and AK (because we RD and get through fine without them). That strategy is not set in stone either because there are cases where we won’t need FP+ in MK or DHS all the time (i.e. evening visits to see parade, fireworks, Fantasmic, Osborne). Once we have all of the park trips mapped out, we fit in the dining choices. In general, we eat a sit down every day and a sit down breakfast or lunch about ½ of the time. That’s just our preference since we are not big quick service fans except for a few places.

All this planning is adjusted based on where we are staying & time of year. As an example, for our upcoming July trip, we are split staying between BLT and BCV so the trip is more heavy on MK visits whole at BLT and heavier on EP/DHS while at BCV.
Once we get the plans all in line, we add them to a spreadsheet. From there, we will eventually add the touring plans, FP+ times and ADR times for each day. We print it and save it as a pdf to our phones.


Just another perspective. There are many ways to plan so you can be as efficient as you can when you get there.

 

[poohfriend77]

I plan based on EHM's (we try to use all the evening ones we can and avoid the morning ones) and the park schedules...I generally know we like 2 days at EPCOT and 2 at MK, then try to fill in HS and AK so we aren't doing the same park two days in a row.

This is basically my strategy, but in reverse. We like morning EMH and tend to avoid parks with evening EMH because we don't stay out late enough to utilize them. However, after my kids were going strong past midnight for 3 nights in a row over Christmas break (not at WDW, just at cousins' house and NYE party), we decided maybe we should switch strategies to focus on late nights next trip!

Oh, and I pretty much always put AK in the middle of our trip. We don't park hop or take whole days off at the resort. So we use that as an early evening to relax and recharge our batteries a bit.

 

[HollieS]

We're staying in park and not hopping next trip.

I planned my days by deciding what our group wanted to do at each park, that way I knew the number of days to spend in each.
Then I looked to see if anything we had planned only occurred on a certain day.
The parks we were only spending one day at I looked at crowd calendars and scheduled them for the most recommended day. We have 3.5 days at MK this trip so those I filled in around the other parks.

For us it ended up being MK DHS EP AK MK MK MK which is nice because we start and end at MK.

 

[smiths02]

First, I had decided that arrival day would be Epcot so we could kick off our trip with a Mickey meal at Garden Grill (and get in an extra ride on Soarin'). Also, our departure day is always a few hours at MK. Then, I plan how many days in each park. Then I planned ADRs. This done right when we booked...months before 180.

Then I looked at park hours. We have very young children, so morning EMH works for us (especially in heat of summer). PM EMH are avoided because we will never utilize them. Then I looked at easywdw.com
We either go to park with AM EMH or a recommended park, trying to balance park days...if I have two days at Epcot, then I don't want to do them consecutively. Also, we will do 2.5 days at MK, but it is only recommended one day of our vacation, so we had to just pick another day.
I had no problem getting every ADR when I wanted at 180 days (including BOG dinner, CRT pre-park opening, Ohana dinner), so I did not have to do any tweaking for that

I should add, we don't park hop, and we basically only do partial days because of our kids. I also would have planned a rest day/non-park day, but I felt compelled to at least spend 3 hours every day in a park to get FP+ and ADRs

We ended up
Arrival Epcot (eat dinner and ride Soarin and The Land)
DHS (AM EMH to lunch-Jedi training for older son?)
MK (CRT pre-park to around lunchtime)
Epcot (late afternoon to evening-focus world showcase)
DHS (just a few hours in evening for dinner and FP+)
AK (am EMH to lunch)
Epcot (recommended park -opening to lunch-Future World)
MK (2nd recommended park)
Departure MK

 

[DisneyFive]

First, based on our number of vacation days, we decide how many times we want to be at each park. Then I use touringplans and easywdw to determine low crowd days for each park that week. Then I start populating the days of our vacation with park days. It can be tough sometimes not to have a certain park on back to back days, etc...

Then we book ADR's once the schedule it set, then later FP+.

Dan

 

[yeheyprincex2]

We use easywdw calender.
Mk is our first park day and last park day, its become a tradition for us.

 

[MrInfinity]

Starting to plan a trip for the end of July and my 180 day mark will be here in a few days. I have used easywdw.com in the past to try and decide which days we'll be in each park. That's how I would plan to make my ADRs.

How does everyone else do it? Open to amy suggestions that might make things easier!

Hi, *wave*! We're in Lisle.

I just look at how many days we're going to have in total and at each park.

Upcoming trip: 7. 3MK 2EC 1AK 1 HS.

So, I'll try to spread them out. One MK day toward the beginning, middle, and end. An Epcot day toward the beginning and end, most likely falling in between the MK days. Try to get no same two park days in a row. I'll look at where to fit in AK and HS, cuz where we put these pushes the MK/EC by a day. I might try to get Epcot to fall on an evening EMH day if we plan to stay late, or MK to fall on a morning EMH day. I tend to avoid EMH days at the AK since I've never found it to be tough to do everything we want here in a shorter day, and I think those days when it closes earlier have lower crowds. I tried to get AK near the middle of our trip, cuz it's kind of a relaxing break. I try to put HS near the front, since this tends to be hectic and a park we want to do while people still have energy left. Then I figure on if we'll do any special events like a show or something, and see what days that's offered. An evening show should fall on an AK or MK day, cuz these tend to be our early days back from the parks. HS/EC we tend to stay later and eat there. I'll make sure not to back a late day up to an early morning. Have to factor in Party days too, so you don't end up at the MK on only party days or non-party days. I like a mix of both.

Then it just kind of all falls into place once I visualize where we'll be.

So on our upcoming trip, we ended up with:
1 MK
2 EC
3 HS
4 MK (Early day)
5 AK
6 MK
7 EC (Late night)
8 Check Out

I try to mix it up, and not do the same thing on any given trip. One trip we opened with HS. Another, we closed with HS. This time it's kind of toward the middle. So there isn't a whole lot of theory to it. It's just what works based on when we'll be there and what we want to get done!

 

[Dan Murphy]

Use Josh's recommendations, always good. Not too many DR's, so not too much to do in that area.

 

[Bullseye]

Just before the 180 days mark we look at park hours. Then we plan our parks based on the EMH's we want to utilize. We always like to do a late MK and EPCOT. After the parks are picked we make our ADR's accordingly.

 

[holden]

We don't use any calendars to plan. We don't plan our ADRs around park days either, since we always shower before dinner. It doesn't matter where our ADRs are if we are leaving from the resort. We go in August, so a shower before dinner is a must, especially because we like to eat at the nicer restaurants (Jiko, etc).

Our first day is always MK.

Some days we do EMH, some we don't. We have APs, so we can hop if a park is too crowded.

We always do our FP+ for the morning. That way we can get more FP in the afternoon, even if it's at a different park.

The more we go, the less were plan...

 

[StirlingSilver83]

I usually try to plan around the crowd calendars. This year I used easywdw predictions. I honestly build our whole vacation around our adrs bc u have to book them at 180 days. So once I have our park days down then I go through and decide which adrs I want. I got all the adrs on all the days I wanted except for BOG. I wanted that adr for our first night. No such luck so I just flip flopped it with CRT which I wanted for our last night. We were still happy to have a castle on the first night and a castle on the last night lol

 

[HatboxHaint]

Determining the best days to go to MK is a big one.

Honestly, the day that I could get 8 FP+'s for A&E was my first factor in making the final plan, then came the ADR rearranging.

1. What days are best in each park according to TP and EasyWDW
2. When can I get ADRs for things we want at 180
3. How successful was I at getting FP+ res for the days I had already planned.

 

[mshanson3121]

We figured out first how many full days we had, and what we wanted to do. I knew we'd want at least 2 days at MK, and a day for HS and AK. We also wanted to do Sea World and Discovery Cove. I knew that I wanted our first and last day to be at MK.

Then, we tried to think of what sort of extras we might want to do - in the way of character dinners, watching the fireworks, parades etc...

Then we sat down and looked at the crowd calendar and figured out which days were the best for which parks.

Then, I started figuring things out. My kids don't do well with late nights, so I knew that say, on a night when we were going to be at MK on the Pirates & Pals cruise watching fireworks, it'd likely be midnight before we got back and into bed. So, I knew that the next day, we would need to let the kids sleep in, rest etc... and wanted to plan something that wasn't going to require an early morning (ex. Discovery Cove is only open 8-5, so that wasn't a good choice for the next day. Animal Kingdom in the summer is only open until 7, so, same thing).

Then, I also knew that we would want a "down day" in the middle. Be that either an entire day for rest, or, a day where we do a park that is slower.

So, all of that went into consideration for our schedule:

Day 1: Hoop de Doo show 4:00 pm (no parks planned that day, as we're driving 27 hours to get there, and we will all need a break)
Day 2: Magic Kingdom (recommended park), Pirates League that morning, Pirates & Pals cruise that night at 9:00
Day 3: Hollywood Studios (open until 8:30, so not a big deal if we don't get there until 11 or 12 after our late night)
Day 4: Discovery Cove (this is our "down day"), Epcot that evening for a few hours
Day 5: Sea World (open until 9:00, so not a big deal if we don't get there till later)
Day 6: Animal Kingdom (recommended park, more leisurely pace here, good for in between the busyness of SW and MK)
Day 7: MK with BBB at 5:00 and CRT at 6:50