Planning park days - what a puzzle! Opinions please:)

[Surgie2]

Trying to plan order of park days for a first week of May trip, 6 adults, 4 kids ages 1-5 staying onsite at Poly. Will have hopper tickets (maybe not necessary but got a good deal on UT) and will use Disney transportation when kids are involved; Uber if just adults. We have options to add evenings at different parks for anyone in the group interested. It will be during F&G.

Trying not to have to take a bus to parks our first morning. Trying to not have evening activity backed up to morning RD. Trying to do EMM if it is offered our week. Trying to push AK back a bit to improve chance of FoP for adults. Ditto a MK day so we can do BBB and CRT. Arghh!!! If you can take a lot at my rough draft plan and give input it would be appreciated. I can't even think about "what if EMH mornings are offered".

Also considering 9-ticket instead of 8 so we could see MK at night on arrival day since we won't visit until Sunday.

Fri.: Arrival before noon- (early dinner at 1900, no parks or MK at night?)
Sat.: EP - RD if possible (FEA FP)
Sun.: MK EMM at 7:45 (Illuminations cruise for some adults, no kids)
Mon.: MK (BBB at 8:00 and CRT later morning)
Tues.: AK (Safari RD, FoP FP, Tusker ADR late morning; P&P fireworks cruise evening)
Wed. HS - later start
Thurs. MK at RD (HEA dessert party for adults or adults+older kids, not the baby)
Fri. EP (RD or later start; FP Test Track)
Sat. MK (RD or later start; parade @ 2:00)
Sun. Departure - no parks

 

[GillianP1301]

I would consider doing the P&P cruise on the Monday MK day. You only have the one day for AK, so it may be nice to not have to worry about cutting that day too short to get to that cruise. Then, to satisfy your requirement to not have a late night followed by an early start, I would then swap your Tues AK day (now with no night cruise) with the We HS later start day.

Other than that, I would definitely recommend adding the 9th day for your arrival. Personally, I am always super anxious to get to a park once I check-in and I'm usually not checking in until 3:00pm and I still do a park for a few hours that day. So arriving at noon gives you plenty of park time and MK will work well with your 1900PF dinner since it's on the monorail. Plus, the cost to add a 9th day is nominal, so I say go for it.

 

[Surgie2]

I would consider doing the P&P cruise on the Monday MK day. You only have the one day for AK, so it may be nice to not have to worry about cutting that day too short to get to that cruise. Then, to satisfy your requirement to not have a late night followed by an early start, I would then swap your Tues AK day (now with no night cruise) with the We HS later start day.

Other than that, I would definitely recommend adding the 9th day for your arrival. Personally, I am always super anxious to get to a park once I check-in and I'm usually not checking in until 3:00pm and I still do a park for a few hours that day. So arriving at noon gives you plenty of park time and MK will work well with your 1900PF dinner since it's on the monorail. Plus, the cost to add a 9th day is nominal, so I say go for it.

Thanks for all of that advice. I was leaning toward 9 park days but then I start thinking...will kids be tired from travel, etc. etc. but I always overthink - and for a few more $ just need to add a day! Then we at least have the option. And I do think we will want more AK time than just a day so that may work in with a MK morning and AK afternoon on one of the days.