Planning with hopping, any advice

[tink20]

If you have 6 full days, one 1/2 day (arrival day, which we will probably go to MK for a few hours) How would you plan your days. Personally, I'm fine without hopping, but DH wants the hopper pass.

In the past, we did AK without using FPs, but I don't think that will work now. So, do you do SB in the 1st park, and FP the 2nd? Also going to get the Express bus pass if it's still available when we go next year.

Any planning welcome

 

[Cinderella94]

I'll tell you what we have planned for our July trip (the same way we always tour).

We wake up, go to rope drop, and usually do the park that has EMH in the morning. We have our fastpasses starting around 9:20 - 10:20. We ride things on stand by with little wait and then use that first FP at 10:20. We then use our other 2 fastpasses as soon as we can (so, 10:20 - 11:20 and then 11:20-12:20). We then have lunch and go back to the pool and swim. We swim all afternoon and have a dinner reservation either in a park or at a resort. We'll pick up whatever fastpasses we can for our evening park, after we've used the 3rd one. But, if we can't get anything good, that's okay - morning is prime touring time for us and we would rather have our FPs then.

We couldn't go without hoppers-that's mostly because we want the flexibility for our dinner reservations, but we do like to mix it up each day as well just in terms of visiting the parks.

There are two days this year where we won't be doing it this way. One day, we're going to a waterpark in the morning, and then dinner and a park in the evening. Obviously, we booked our FPs for the evening on this day. The other day, we are going to Epcot in the morning. Initially I had three FPs booked: Test Track, Character Connection and Nemo (I think). (Mission Space will be down for refurb during our trip). Then we realized, why am I wasting three fastpasses when really we can just run to TT and then maybe Soarin standby? So we saved our FPs that day for the evening as well. On our arrival night, we are going to Epcot to ride Test Track. On our waterpark day, Epcot is our evening park, which is when we're going to ride Frozen. That's why not having an Epcot morning of fastpasses is okay for us. If your schedule will accommodate this, I would definitely not waste FPs on a morning in Epcot - you really don't need them for those tier 2 rides (unless Mission Space is open during your trip, and you want to ride it). You mentioned not doing AK fastpasses in the past - you will definitely want those now.

That was a lot to read - I hope it helps!

 

[barbliny]

We always hop!! It's almost essential since we like to take advantage of morning EMH, and the EMH park can get very crowded once you get to around noon. We are 2 adults with our early 20's daughters. We are not commando types - we like to get a lot done, but we stop to enjoy the smaller things and smaller attractions also.

In some cases I chose to book fp+ in the evening park - yes, I gave up the opportunity for 4th, 5th, etc fastpasses, but in some cases it works better to wing-it at ropedrop and have at least 3 headliners to look forward to in the evening without long lines. And, honestly in some parks the chances for extra fastpasses just aren't that good. We do not like to book a lot of ADRs, and we usually only have one big meal per day.

We ropedrop parks in the morning for maximum payoff.

This is our plan for the beginning of June ...
Monday - arrive to WDW late afternoon after driving in from spending the weekend at Daytona Beach
Monday - 3 FP+ for AK starting at 7:25 pm, including Safari scheduled for time of sunset, EE in the dark, Flight of Passage
Monday - see how long we can last in the AK for EMH that goes from 11:00 pm to 1:00 am

Tuesday - ppo BOG breakfast at 8:10 am, hopefully slip on 7DMT a couple of times before official opening
Tuesday - we have NO fp+ for MK, slip on the front of the line for PP, then standby until around noon - probably on the BTMR side of park
Tuesday - mid-day break swimming, etc.
Tuesday - go to Epcot with FP+, 1st one at 5:30, tier 1 fp+ is FEA, EMH until 11:00 pm

Wed - ropedrop HS, start with TSMM and see what we can get done by noon-ish.
Wed - mid-day break swimming, etc.
Wed - MK with fp+ for Space, 7DMT (in the dark), BTMRR (in the dark)
Wed - MK EMH from 10:00 pm to 12:00 am, hoping they extend closing time at MK and it moves back EMH!!

Thursday - Epcot EMH at 8:00 am - NO fp+, start with Test Track, then Soarin' and so on
Thursday - ADR at Biergarten at 12:30
Thursday - mid-day break swimming, etc.
Thursday - go to HS with first fp+ at 6:15 pm
Thursday - HS EMH from 9:30 pm to 11:30 pm

Friday - MK EMH at 8:00 am - start in Tomorrowland, fp+ for BTMRR 9:25, PP 10:25, 7DMT 12:20
Friday - ADR BOG at noon - trying to move it back to 11:30 am
Friday - no plans for the rest of the day

Saturday - AK EMH at 7:00 am standby for EE, KS, Dino, etc.
Saturday - ADR Tusker House 10:30 for ROL package
Saturday - fp+ Kali at 11:35 am intending to use it towards the end of the hour on our way out - this way we don't tour the park soaking wet
Saturday - mid-day break swimming, etc.
Saturday - AK fp+ EE 8:25 pm (in the dark), ROL 9:15 pm (passes from TH), fp+ Na'vi 9:30 pm (obv. using towards the end of the hour)
Saturday - AK EMH from 11:00 pm to 1:00 am

Sunday - flight home at 8:30 pm
Sunday - hang around the hotel in the morning
Sunday - 3 fp+ at Epcot, tier 1 is Test Track this time
Sunday - hang around Epcot World Showcase
Sunday - go back to the hotel, collect belongings etc. and leave for the airport around 5:30

This was our general framework last summer and it worked great - and we were there during peak August crowds.

 

[stenmarks]

We always park hop, because we like to keep our options open .

We don't schedule FPs during the first few hours if park opening. For this trip I scheduled some days with FPs at our first park starting around 11 am and other days with FPs after our breaks. It just depends on which park we are visiting.

 

[Accident]

My first recommendation is don't park hop just because you can.. When there is a reason it fits in really well but just trying to find spots to park hop you tend to get yourself in a situation where your spending more time on transportation than enjoying the place..

Some places it works really well:

- Half day touring schedule. This is basically where you have parks you already know that what you want to do will only take half a day or less and you are a resort break type of family. You can do 1 park, break, a different park. Some parks or a certain night entertainment I just prefer so I tend to keep ending up most evenings in the same place.MK is different in day and night with different things happening. So one morning instead of rope dropping for rides, you can rope drop for main street entertainment, riding the vehicles, things only around in the morning. then you can head to another park for the afternoon instead of doing a 3rd or 4th mk full mk day. When done, you see the park all day just no the same day

- Rain delay. Weather isn't always on your side and maybe there is an important fireworks or parade that you didn't get to see. Keep some room to hop back or if it's really a must do, work out your plan so you have more than 1 day at the park at that time so weather is less impacting.

- Your family is just moody, tired or day dreaming about another park or ride. I think some families stick it out and just make the best of the day. If your finding yourself just doing things because that's were you are, or maybe you just really need more time elsewhere you can just move on to something better. you can't really plan for this one, but you can keep an eye out. One way you can plan for this is to make a list of what attractions everyone doesn't care about. I used to plan attractions that I thought my daughter wanted to see, the second we had a list of what we don't care about half of our plans got tossed out, we went in more relaxed, crowds didnt' really matter, we weren't doing rides nobody wanted and most important, we started to see things we never noticed, had more time for street performers and even rediscovered some old favorites we were just skipping and it's been some time she we tried it last. (as well as confirming why we skip certain rides).

- Your fastpasses didn't line up with your adrs. It happens, it sucks how you don't plan them together. when your able to hop and don't mind a half day schedule you can usually fit in reasonable hopping for meal reasons.

- Weather in general. Some parks are just better in different weather. annoying sun and ak can really suck. a lot of rain and many places aren't that friendly. hopping gives you the flexibility of moving elsewhere although this would not be planned out in advance but leave some slots where you can go where you feel like it in the event that where you picked didnt' work out.


When should you get fastpasses???

I always recommend going after the must do items, even if you think you may not need it. You know roughly what time you start to get them now and just look at your day. Where is your must do, we might want to fastpass and get back into standby rides? Generally rope drop is fruitful if your rope droppers so most would get them for afternoon.. If your hopping i nthe afternoon then the second park is probably the better place to get them for.