Rope Drop every day?

[Summer2018]

We typically go rope drop to close all 10 days of our trip. Usually, we have one non park day in the middle, where we get up a bit later. It is tiring, but we never regret it. At home, I am usually up at 6, sometimes 5, and seldom get more than 6 - 6.5 hours of sleep.

I'm impressed by people that have the energy and endurance to go go go go go!!! My get up and go has gotten up and gone!

We tried that on our first trip when DD was 7. We tried to experience everything at WDW in one trip which is impossible. We burned out halfway into our trip, had blisters on our blisters, and found ourselves not really enjoying the vacation. The last three days, we added the afternoon break at the pool before returning to the parks at night, and ended our vacation on a high note.

Now that I'm 53 (have a torn meniscus & arthritis in my knees) and my husband is knocking on 60, we will do rope drop with an afternoon pool break or nap. We are staying deluxe so we will see fireworks from our resort most nights. One night we will view fireworks when we have dinner at the California Grill, and another night at Narcoossees. We have only one night planned at MK, the last night in WDW. DD is now 20. She and her friend will have their own room, and they can go back to the parks at night and stay as late as they want. I've even decided to have a resort day to myself when they venture off to AK and Pandora. I'm thinking about the Grand Floridian Spa...

 

[Nancyg56]

We plan a combination of RD days and later arrival days.

 

[ChimCher-ee]

The one thing I'm struggling with is the night time shows. We've never seen fantastmic so that's one I'd like to fit into our plans.

Like you, I'm an early riser, and DD was too before she hit her teens. We hadn't seen fireworks or even the inside of a park after dark until the last two trips!

I think the key is to not burn the candle at both ends. Now that DD likes to sleep in, I still get up early, go walking, open up the food court for coffee, then go back to the room and read and doze until mid/late morning, when DD gets ready. Then, we stay late at the parks, knowing we can rest in the morning.

We recently took a long weekend trip with friends to that other place down the road from Disney, and we came away exhausted and a little grumpy. Our friends are true commandos, opening the parks at early hours and staying until the last parade or light show. It was so hard to get up and out again the next morning, after so little time to unwind enough to fall asleep!

So, we're really an either RD-or parks close family. Can't handle both!

 

[kwdw]

I'm also a morning person - and the hard part about Disney for early risers is that it doesn't really open early - and the fireworks shows are late for early risers. Disney is not early riser friendly. It pretty much discourages it.

One trick - is to either have a late night before a break day - or have a late night on your last day so that you can catch one or two of them while there.

 

[AFwifelife]

We always RD, take a mid day break when crowds and temps are highest, then go back for dinner and a couple more rides. Even if we stay for fireworks, my kids are still up way before the parks open.

 

[Alpineslide]

We rope drop most days and generally end the day at whatever park is open the latest. My youngest will sleep in the stroller part of the day, but we go non stop.
Disney is not a relaxing vacation for us, but it’s still a lot of fun.
We get far more sleep in our day to day lives than we do at WDW.

 

[PollyannaMom]

We are early risers, alarm goes off at 4:30 when we have to work. Even on weekends I'm up early, hardly ever sleep past 6:00, I just wake up. So since that's our normal routine, would it be a bad thing to hit rope drop (a couple EMH in there) every day? I won't want to wear us out, but I also know we'll probably be up so might as well hit the parks early. On the flip side, we don't stay out late. We're normally in bed between 8:30-9:00. Most days we'll be done by 7:00, and we won't be going from rope drop until then, I have breaks scheduled too. I may even have one day when we don't do the parks and do other things.

Am I crazy to go with this plan, or should I rethink it?

We are going May 29 - June 5, staying at BWV. It will be me and DD11, this will be our 5th trip (first mother/daughter trip though).

Like you, I'm an early riser, and DD was too before she hit her teens. We hadn't seen fireworks or even the inside of a park after dark until the last two trips!

We used to tour just like that when DS was young, too! Late nights just did not work for our family, but early mornings were easy and natural.

I say your plan is fine!

 

[Tomh]

I'm impressed by people that have the energy and endurance to go go go go go!!! My get up and go has gotten up and gone!

We tried that on our first trip when DD was 7. We tried to experience everything at WDW in one trip which is impossible. We burned out halfway into our trip, had blisters on our blisters, and found ourselves not really enjoying the vacation. The last three days, we added the afternoon break at the pool before returning to the parks at night, and ended our vacation on a high note.

Now that I'm 53 (have a torn meniscus & arthritis in my knees) and my husband is knocking on 60, we will do rope drop with an afternoon pool break or nap. We are staying deluxe so we will see fireworks from our resort most nights. One night we will view fireworks when we have dinner at the California Grill, and another night at Narcoossees. We have only one night planned at MK, the last night in WDW. DD is now 20. She and her friend will have their own room, and they can go back to the parks at night and stay as late as they want. I've even decided to have a resort day to myself when they venture off to AK and Pandora. I'm thinking about the Grand Floridian Spa...

We only really go go go in the mornings. The afternoons and evenings, we take it much easier, enjoy long rides, shows, shopping, table service meals etc. At 48, while a bit behind you, I am past the days of really going at it all day. We've tried afternoon breaks, just not for us for the most part.

 

[Gehrig1B]

We set up all our fast passes at rope drop +2hours. If we get up and make it to rope drop, so be it. If not, que sera sera. We enjoy the evenings more than the mornings and we always take our time, no commando trips for us. We love the fireworks and know if we decide to stay late we can skip a.m. festivities as our first FP window doesn't close until 3 hours after park opening.

 

[RocketCityMama]

We rope drop most days and then sleep in and stay late other days, however we always take a midday break too, unless we sleep in and swim that morning then we just hit the parks in the late afternoon and stay for night time shows and emh. This time we have 9.5 park days, day 1 is a half day, we'll have a late day start and probably not stay too terribly late because we have an early morning reservation at CRT right when the park opens, so we'll get there early for that. They also have late emh that night, so we will take an extended midday break before heading back in the late afternoon. The next morning we probably won't rope drop since we'll be out so late the night before.

Do what works for you and you family. We all like to sleep in on a normal day but when we vacation at a park, we like to get up and go early and ride the headliners early with little to no waits!

 

[BellaandMickey]

We only really go go go in the mornings. The afternoons and evenings, we take it much easier, enjoy long rides, shows, shopping, table service meals etc. At 48, while a bit behind you, I am past the days of really going at it all day. We've tried afternoon breaks, just not for us for the most part.

We feel the same. We don’t like the travel time involved in taking afternoon breaks away from the parks. So we just do a lot in the mornings and then take it easy in the parks the rest of the day. We take long table services lunches or see indoor or sit down shows etc. Then we leave when we want or stay to see the nighttime shows (and then take the next day off).

 

[disneylover102]

I never even consider having a day without rope drop. The morning is by far the best part of the day and a lot of the fun is trying to beat people to the rides. I always stay until closing and usually don’t even take a nap, so you should be fine especially with leaving early in the evenings.

 

[slpeters]

We rope dropped (and EMH'd for that matter) every day and also closed out a park each night. But we took mid-day breaks and actually took naps. It's funny I'm planning the next trip and I was telling my husband that Universal will be a little more laid back, his response was "but, we're still going to do stuff, right?" It turns out while I was worried that we had been a little too go! go! go! he thought it was pretty relaxing. As he put it "I mean we took a nap every day--we don't even do that in Puerto Vallarta."

 

[RocketCityMama]

We rope dropped (and EMH'd for that matter) every day and also closed out a park each night. But we took mid-day breaks and actually took naps. It's funny I'm planning the next trip and I was telling my husband that Universal will be a little more laid back, his response was "but, we're still going to do stuff, right?" It turns out while I was worried that we had been a little too go! go! go! he thought it was pretty relaxing. As he put it "I mean we took a nap every day--we don't even do that in Puerto Vallarta."

Universal for us was a whole other ball game, so much more relaxing, less parks for one, smaller parks, and able to do everything we wanted multiple times We still took midday breaks, just not as long as when at WDW since their hours tend to be shorter.

 

[bigbabyblues]

We always RD every day on our trips. We take a break in the afternoon most days, but it is usually at a water park, so not a real resting break. We return to the parks in the evenings and stay until close almost every night. I am not an early riser at home (hubby and 2 teenage boys are) but I am at WDW.

 

[Tomh]

We feel the same. We don’t like the travel time involved in taking afternoon breaks away from the parks. So we just do a lot in the mornings and then take it easy in the parks the rest of the day. We take long table services lunches or see indoor or sit down shows etc. Then we leave when we want or stay to see the nighttime shows (and then take the next day off).

Yes, the travel time is a big part of it for us. We tried afternoon breaks, and naps. The kids would never settle down, as a result, the adults never got to settle down. We wound up back in the park every bit as tired as we would have been if we had just stayed there the whole day, and feeling like we had wasted 2 entire hours travelling back and forth. Completely not worth it to us.

However, what you do at home certainly will dictate what you are able to do at Disney. My typical day goes 17.5 to 18 hours, with 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep. I'm up on my feet for much of that time, and it is not unusual for me to walk 10 or more miles in a day while I work. Doing that on vacation is not a challenge, and feels pretty normal to me. Even when I try to sleep in on vacation, I am usually up and going by 7:00 anyway.

In the parks, usually our lunch is a counter service, but we take our time, and that kind of recharges our batteries a bit. Then, for supper, we will have that long leisurely table service meal, usually a bit later than the typical supper time, and that again gets us rested up, cooled off, and recharged for the evening entertainment.

Typically, we do 4 to 6 days in the parks straight, then one day out of the parks, then the remainder of our 10 park days, followed by perhaps half a day at Disney Springs, before starting the drive back to NY.

 

[Momma_Lanier]

We are early risers so we LOVE doing rope drop. I get up at 4:30a on a regular basis. (Stay at home Mom who homeschools.)

We are going in September for 2 weeks and most of those are rope drop days. There are a couple of late arrival days but late arrival to me is arriving at 10:00am LOL!

We don’t do midday breaks as it takes too much time traveling back and forth but we eat dinner around 5:00ish and then go back to resort for baths and kids are asleep by 9:00 so it works out! Kids are 6,4 and 19 months and rarely sleep late.

Out of the 14 days, we’re only doing one full rest day and that will be the day after MNSSHP.

 

[fely1st]

We rope drop every morning too. At home I have to get up early to take care of my horses, so I'm also awake at vacation. We can do so much in this first hours. We even plan PPO breakfast if we have a day with no EMH parks. But we are usually done around 7 or 8 pm. So I only plan one night time show every third day or so. I would love to do more but I know that I will be tired no matter how hard I try. We usually do Fantasmic and the Star Wars firework. I think it is the best to tour the park in your own way, some peope are early riser, some are nightowls. The first years I tried to stay out late, and was grumpy. I thought I would miss something, now that I stopped thinking like this, I have more fun.

 

[KenHutch]

I also rope drop every day. As a former Marine I walk up at 04:30 every morning so I can wake up platoons I no longer have. I drive my teen crazy (not a morning person) we sometimes get more done in the 1st 3 hours than we will in the rest of the day.