Quick and dirty trips: Anyone do them and enjoy them?

[Queen of the WDW Scene]

It seems to be the way my family does WDW in recent years.
We've really narrowed down our must do's, our if there's time, and our skip it completely attractions.
Give us as little as a party ticket and a 1 day PH and we can do our favorites and have no regrets.
Give us 2-3 day PH and its more than enough.
Would we like more time to relax? Sure but we don't NEED it.
I feel like this is how our trips will be for the foreseeable future especially because it gives us the chance to go more often as we keep the overall price down with minimal night stays and minimal park tickets.

Has anyone else done and enjoyed quick and dirty WDW trips?
Would you consider making it your new routine or only once in a while?

 

[DisneyWishes14]

We've done a few of these, but typically not more than once a year as the airfare can add up pretty quickly. We've only done them when I could get a good resort discount and we have AP's or used some non-expires we still have, otherwise buying multiple sets of short-length tickets gets pricey as well. As I recall, we've done about 5 of these. Once for a birthday weekend primarily to do the AM AK tour that AKL CL used to offer, once to ride Maelstrom one last time, one to catch a Magic/Golden State basketball game at the Amway Center, plus a few more. We probably won't do any in the near future as I prefer some down days during our trips.

 

[Disneylover99]

I do them and enjoy them with an AP.

If you want to go on short trips often within a year, purchasing 1-3 day tickets each time is probably not a cheap way to go.

 

[gatorlisa]

Most of my trips have been quick ones...2 or 3 park days. On these quick trips, we pretty much go rope drop until park close, focus on the stuff we like the most, and have even skipped an entire park if we just didn't feel like going (AK has been the park to be skipped on more than one occasion). I kind of like the quick trips. I always leave wanting more. I just returned from my first ever week-long trip (cut a day and a bit short due to Irma). I enjoyed it, but my feet hurt so bad the last couple of days and I was so tired, I was only a little bummed we had to leave early.

 

[AngiTN]

I've tried to make short trips but always end up adding a day or two by the time it's all said and done.
I prefer our 10-14 day trips so when DH and I take a 5 or 6 day trip that is quick and dirty. I prefer stretching out and having short days vs. quick days crammed full of a lot. 4 if my absolute minimum and some has to do with the travel effort to get there. I don't want to deal with flying all the way down for 2 days

 

[loves to dive]

I think the shortest we have done was last Christmas we did 4 nights 5 days. It was a last minute trip booked about 3 weeks before we went. We go often so we just went to get away from home. I wanted to see the decorations in all the deluxe resorts so we took time out of 2 days to just do that. We had no plans and didn't really do a lot in the parks but we did go to at least two parks every day. We don't like going full on all day, never have and never will. Like AngiTN, I tend to plan on going for less days and end up adding on an extra day or two just about every trip. I have one coming up week after next (if it doesn't get blown away and the roads are passable) that started out Monday - Friday, then I added on staying Friday night, then I added on going down on Sunday.

 

[BigAlsGal]

We love love love our short trips. Just DH and I go and leave the kids with grandma. We have a direct cheap allegiant flight that leaves Thursday morning and comes back Sunday morning. So basically 3 nights and 2 1/2 park days. We always start the half day with AK or HS. First full day is Epcot. Last day is MK.

We have a blast!!! It is plenty of time to get the stuff done that we want. Sometimes you just need a taste ya know? We're getting ready to go for F&W at the end of this month. So flipping excited.

 

[Tatertot75]

I did one last December... I had about 2.5 park days when it was all said and done. I think I spent a total of 13 hours in my room the entire weekend! I met up with some friends who were in the middle of a 2 week trip. They're late risers, so I had from RD until about lunchtime in the parks by myself. I saw almost everything I wanted to, except I skipped AK. I even had a few at Trader Sam's!

Next trip is another short one - only 3 days. We'll probably get to see most of what we want.

I can't wait for my next longer trip. I long for a pool day and a DS night!

 

[LittleMissMagic]

That's all we ever do anymore. The last time we stayed a week was three years ago. Our trips are usually 3-4 days, 3-day PH, but we'll take a couple a year.

 

[elaine amj]

We've spent the last few years doing just 1-2 park day trips. It was fun and would give us our Disney fix. But we really like our big, long trips with 10-12 days. we just got back from 2 weeks in Disney and it was awesome. Soooo many things that were new to us or that we haven't done in a long, long time. I find with quick and dirty trips, we only do our very favourites. With long trips, we relax and ride many minor attractions too and have a really good times taking things at a slower pace.

 

[persimmondeb]

We really only do short trips, for multiple reasons (mostly budget and lining up the schedules of three working adults) and we love them. A week onsite might be fun, but we wouldn't want parks every day if we did that.

 

[keepswimming76]

Most of our trips are about a week but last year we made a last-minute trip in December. We booked off-site at a very cheap hotel and grabbed a low-fare from Frontier. We spent one day at Epcot, one day at Seaworld and then went to MVMCP. We were only at the hotel at night. It was a whirlwind but a lot of fun.

 

[HeyIt'sMe]

We did our first "quick and dirty trip" in May. It was just me & DH and we were there to celebrate my 50th birthday. It was one of the best trips ever!

Wed - our flight arrived at MCO at 8:00am, arrived at Beach club around 9:00am (we used a car service), ate breakfast at the resort, spent the day touring Epcot (our favorite park), dinner at Yachtsman Steakhouse.
Thu - did the Keys to the Kingdom Tour at MK (awesome!), after the tour used the 3 FP+ I had scheduled for our 3 favorite attractions and did the PeopleMover, then we walked to the Contemporary to have a drink, then headed to Trader Sams at the Polynesian for a couple drinks, dinner was at Flying Fish that night
Fri - spent the morning at Epcot, went back to Beach Club for a swim, then went back to Epcot for dinner (Spice Road Table)

Like your family we have a list of "must dos" - we know what we want to do and where we want to eat. Instead of doing one trip a year for a week we are going to start going a couple times a year for 3-4 nights each.

 

[tlmadden73]

I've taken my family 3 times since 2014. Each trip has been "quick and dirty" .. 4 night stays (twice offsite, once onsite) with ONLY 2 parks days (with hoppers) and 1 day off for pool or resort exploration.

It's great because we know we will be back so we aren't "panicked" to do it all.

I also chose to do it that way because I was going with young kids. My son was 2, then 3, and on the last trip (this past march) he was 4 1/2 and we had his baby sister who was 5 months old.

We have a few "must dos" like Buzz Lightyear (my son's favorite ride), but mainly just explore and hit whatever is new or whatever we didn't do last time.
(like our first two trips there was no Star Wars Launch Bay, so we hit that this last trip).

We'll do the marathon trip some day, but since we live 9 hours away by car, these "quick and dirty" trips are nice because we can affordably go every 1 1/2 years.

Probably do another trip in Fall of 2018 to see Pandora and Toy Story Land - (My son will be 6 and daughter will be almost 2).

(NOTE: What also has made it affordable is getting the 10-day no expiration park hopper tickets in 2014 before they stopped selling those). That purchase has made each park day only cost $75/person rather than $100+.

 

[Disnsyncey]

I don't really get that dirty when I go

 

[bobbiwoz]

Did a two night stay in August to ride Universe of Energy and The Great Movie Ride for the last times. We enjoyed BB as well. It was a wonderful trip!

Did a 3 night trip once to see the Frozen fireworks, they were spectacular!

 

[tzolkin]

I've tried to make short trips but always end up adding a day or two by the time it's all said and done.
I prefer our 10-14 day trips so when DH and I take a 5 or 6 day trip that is quick and dirty. I prefer stretching out and having short days vs. quick days crammed full of a lot. 4 if my absolute minimum and some has to do with the travel effort to get there. I don't want to deal with flying all the way down for 2 days

We are similar. (Past trips were 11-12 days). I tried to plan a short weekend trip for November (my kids have a long weekend off), but somehow wound up extending it out. So now we are doing a few hours on arrival day and then 4 full park days.

The only truly quick trip we have done was one year we stayed two nights and only bought tickets for the Christmas party. That was very fun and something we would enjoy doing again. However, not sure it would be worth the travel cost for the entire family.

 

[Jdismom]

We have always done trips like this. That's why we were so sad when the non-expiring tickets were discontinued! A 10 day park hopper could last us A few years! Nothing lasts forever.

 

[elaine amj]

(NOTE: What also has made it affordable is getting the 10-day no expiration park hopper tickets in 2014 before they stopped selling those). That purchase has made each park day only cost $75/person rather than $100+.

Yep - that's what we have. I bought a 10 day hopper with WPF&M. Since I valued the waterparks entitlement at about $25/day, my tix worked out to be about $45/park day in my valuation. I would flip out to pay $150 to go to the parks for 1 day. But am OK with $45/day.

BTW, I suggest you go on MDE and check your NE tickets. Mine is now showing that I have 8 days remaining - based on my records of what I used, I should only have 6 days left. I've heard that it is possibly as compensation because they are now valid only until 2030. That's only 13 years away...which I am not entirely pleased about but am mollified by the additional days. I do expect to use it up over the next 10 years, but who knows? I paid double to get them nonexpiring precisely to hedge against future ticket inflation (and mostly so I could justify a one day visit that year haha!)

 

[GeneralTso]

My husband had to go to Orlando for work for a couple of days. I tagged along to hang out at the parks by myself for those days. He joined me in the evening. I think it was 3 days total. It was awesome!
An unplanned trip, just hanging out and chilling. Hard to pass up when his flight, plus hotel and food was paid for.
We got into all the restaurants we wanted, rode great rides (booked FP week before we arrived) and got everything. Maybe because during the day it was just me, so no problems.

A highlight for me was walking through all the shops (alone!) and spending as much time as I wanted looking at all the stuff. Just browsing and strolling. I loved it.