Short trips... what does your itinerary look like?

[Dallas_Lady]

I'm thinking of compressing our WDW trips in the future so we can devote more resources to other vacations but still get our Disney fix. For those of you who do shorter trips (~4 nights) how do you structure your days? A lot of the extras that used to draw us in (like dining) just aren't a big deal to us anymore.

 

[katt789]

For shorter trips we do as much of the following as we can
-Arrive as early as possible on arrival day
-Check into hotel, head straight to whatever park is open latest, including EMH
-Make sure you have park hoppers
-Utilize them and in the am, head to the park with the EMH, stay til you're done the highlights or it's too crowded (if either of those happens) and hop somewhere else that's less crowded, end the night with whichever park has pm emh
-Plan those fast passes in advance for the things you MUST DO
-Realize that there will be things you'll miss
-We usually hit up mainly MK, do a morning at AK, an evening at DHS mainly for Fantasmic, and MAYBE hit up Epcot for a bit during one of the afternoons, there's not a lot there for us, so sometimes it gets skipped altogether.

 

[GWhitten98]

If possible we try to squeeze in 5 park visits with a 4 night stay.

Arrival day -- arrive early enough to hit a headliner plus another ride or two at Epcot, have dinner, walk WS and see Illumination
Spend at 2 full days at MK
Skip AK or do a split day with AK/HS (preferably for us spend one whole day at HS)
Departure day -- do character breakfast before leaving or hit one of the parks for at least 2-3 hours

 

[Oneanne]

My last two trips, October and December, were both shorter than normal (4/5 days instead if 7/8), and I kind of took the opposite approach than the PP's. Knowing I wasn't going to get to do everything I would normally do, I didn't even try.

For October I made very few plans, not even ADR's, just FP+ half of which I ended up not using... I wandered around and did what struck me at the moment. I'm not ride driven, so I wasn't overly concerned about wait times, if is was too long I just skipped it and moved on. I didn't do any resort hoping and just went to the parks: got there early, took afternoon hotel breaks and stayed out late in the evenings. It was a wonderful trip.

In December my schedule was determined by planned events/parties almost every evening, so I had to plan backwards from when I needed to be at the events. Mornings were taken up meeting with friends so I had very little on my own/wander time... this was very different for me as most of my WDW trips are solo. I have to admit that if I hadn't just been there in October I would have been a bit mournful over all the things I didn't get to do, but as it was the evening parties were a special delight.

So I guess in recap, realize you won't be able to do it all and be flexible if some of the things you've planned out don't seem to be working out.

 

[HM]

I've been known to do a three day trip...four days is more likely. We gave up on week-long vacations as prices have multiplied on rooms, tickets and food over the last few years.
We have always paid for park hoppers until our last trip. Two summers ago (our last trip) we did four days and bought base tickets. We did MK, DHS, Epcot and MK. We spent most of each day in the parks from opening, but did spend one afternoon at the pool, returning to the park at night. We do the rides we love, try out new attactions if they look interesting, and fit in anything else we can. We eat only snacks and CS, with perhaps one TS restuarant, but prefer not to take the time out to do that.

On short trips, we basically become commando. We are going back this summer and likely will have three full days and one half day. I haven't decided on the parks yet as so much is closed, we''ll have to see what is open, what is new, etc.

 

[Scubee]

I'll echo some of what has been said.

We arrive early, check-in, and hit the park of choice (usually MK). On departure day, we are up early, pack the car, head to rope drop, and drive straight to the airport from the park. We find that we are willing to go a bit more commando style on the shorter trips: less sit down restaurant meals, fewer mid-day breaks, up early and stay late. It's joyously exhausting. We refer to our short trips as a "Favorites" trip. That mean we are hitting up our favorite attractions and favorite foods knowing that we can't do it all.

 

[mickeyfanachey1999]

We are going on a short trip Feb 18-20 after a cruise from the 13-18th. This is our loose schedule:
Thursday - dock at Jacksonville, get luggage drive to All Star Sports
Hop a bus to Magic Kingdom for FP+ BTMRR, Spash, and Wishes, eat dinner at Casey', stay until close at 10.
Friday - Drive to AK arrive by 10 ride EE at least twice for DS13 through single rider, Dinosaur 3 or 4 times for DS5, eat at Yak and Yeti walk up for
DW. Leave AK and drive to DHS, FP+ TSMM, Star Tours and TOT, catch the new fireworks show and F! if possible to do both. Stay until close at
10:30 and ride TOT as many times as humanly possible
Saturday - Bus to Magic Kingdom for FP+ HM, SDMT, Buzz, ride whatever else we want, I'm guessing Splash and BTMRR, POTC, maybe toss DS13
in line for Space and go hit Buzz a couple more times. Leave MK about 5 and get on the road at around 6. Hit a Mickey D's around Lake City,
feed the family and put them to sleep and cruise on home arriving around 12:30 or 1 AM.

 

[snowybelle]

My last two trips have been super short. They looked like this:

May 2015 (2.5 days): (stayed onsite at CBR, then switched to a Universal hotel after we finished at WDW)
Arrival day - headed straight to Epcot. Got to the park around 2:30pm. Toured Future World first, then WSC (snacked around the world for dinner) & Illuminations.
Full Day #1 - Pre-park open ADR's at Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom. Then basically toured the park, commando-style, all day. We had BoG ADR's around 4:30pm so that was a nice sit-down break. We caught Wishes and closed down the park. I think we were at MK a total of 14 hours or something insane.
Full Day #2 - Rope Drop Animal Kingdom. Rode Everest x2, Safari, Dinosaur & Primeval Whirl. Breakfast ADR's at Tusker House. Saw Festival of the Lion King and left. Headed to Hollywood Studios, FastPassed Toy Story, ToT & Star Tours. Late lunch ADR's at Sci Fi. We managed to get on RnR twice, standby. Did some other wandering around but decided NOT to stay for Fantasmic, and instead went BACK to Magic Kingdom and closed down the park again. (Rode rides during Wishes, walked onto everything, it was great.)

January 2016 (2 days): (stayed offsite at one of Universal's hotels and spent 3 days at their parks as well)
Full Day #1 - Rope Drop at Magic Kingdom. Then basically toured the park, commando-style, until about 1:30pm. Had a sit-down lunch at Skipper Canteen (no wait). Caught Festival of Fantasy parade. Did "anytime" attractions, plus our Fastpasses from mid-late afternoon. Left the park before Wishes because we were FREEZING, but aside from missing the fireworks we were able to accomplish almost all of our must-do's. Grabbed dinner outside of the park.
Full Day #2 - Rope Drop Animal Kingdom. Rode Everest x2, Safari & Dinosaur. Had some quick service snacks. Saw FLights of Wonder and left. Headed to Hollywood Studios for lunch ADR and Mama Melrose (Fantasmic Dining Package). Rode Toy Story, Star Tours & ToT on FastPass. Met Darth Vader & Chewbacca at the Launch Bay. Did One Man's Dream. Had a butterfinger cupcake at Starbucks. Saw Fantasmic. Saw Star Wars fireworks (LOVED).
^^ We were sad to skip Epcot on this trip, but something had to go. With Soarin' down and new Star Wars stuff in place, HS was the best choice for us.

These trips were definitely a bit exhausting, but we accomplished all must-do's on both without a problem, and it was just enough to leave us wanting more and excited to return to WDW. My next trip will be a solo 5-day in September, and I am looking forward to a more "stop and smell the roses" approach. It will still be a relatively "short" trip but my touring plan will be much less aggressive since I will be more focused on enjoying my very favorite things rather than trying to do everything once.

Edited to add: A general theme you'll notice is we used table-service ADR's, usually for lunch, as our sit down mid-day "break" rather than leaving the park. This saved us a lot of travel time and I think it is a really good strategy for a short trip, as other have noted below.

 

[Accident]

If I'm doing a short trip there is usually a reason for it and my plans will focus around that and sprinkle in other things that fit usually unplanned as we feel like doing it..

For example, in about 1 1/2 weeks we arrive for a short trip to apartment hunt as we're looking to move down. we're focused on that but we'll be hitting some parks and things as its time consuming but parks are opened after and DS even later than that.
Another example might be one of the weekend things disney does and we'll just make it a long weekend instead of a week down plus that.

 

[DonaldDuck77]

If you plan on going to the parks for 1, 2, or 3 days, you can save a little by letting a party ticket be one of your park days (if you are going during party season).

We got 10 day NE WPM PH tickets (no longer available) and used just one of the days along with a MNSSHP day and a trip to Disney Quest on our last trip.

 

[twinsmama]

Parkhoppers, character meals as breaks and in place of meet and greets, stay on site, FP+, planning! We stay in the parks all day, but my kids have never been nippers even at 2y.o. we take a long lunch, usually at a character meal, and then sit for parades or shows or more relaxing rides as our rest. Going back to a resort midday takes up so much time. By 8pm we head back to the resort and hit the bed, then wake up in time for rope drop the next day!

 

[Mousemommy1]

Honestly, we only have 4 park days on our upcoming trip because we also have a 4 night cruise as part of the trip. We go annually, so we know what we like and don't like, and we know we'll be back again next year for a full (11 day stay) visit.
So, we have hoppers. We are going to make our FP selections and basically do those in the morning (we're not rope droppers). We will go back to the resort mid day and swim/nap and then at night whatever we can get done will be icing on the cake.
No huge expectations, though we do have a couple of ADR's.
We are going to be pretty chill about it.

 

[MickeyWaffles]

Here's what we did on our 5 night trip.
I know it's different than 4 nights but thought you might want to see how we broke it up.

Arrival night: Disney Springs
Day 1: MK
Day 2: DAK/EPCOT
Day 3: MK
Day 4: EPCOT/DHS
Day 5: Boma breakfast and leave

We did only use hoppers on two days this trip because we had a 1yo with us and we wanted lots of consecutive MK time. Pre-DD we would have split all the days up.

We went to the park in the morning and stayed until close most nights. Granted, it was early January with early closing hours so we did that to maximize time in the parks.

 

[skuttle]

Our last trip in December was super short for us. We went for a 9 night stay over spring break. Then decided to do a quick December trip to see Osborne lights one last time.

Arrival day: Disney Springs/Resort hop
Day 1: MK rope drop (7am) until we couldn't go anymore (11pm)
Day 2: AK rope drop (7am) until close.
Day 3: DHS (only be cause it was Osborne lights) - slept in and stayed until close
Day 4: Boma breakfast and left.

We didn't do hoppers because we didn't think it was worth it. Three full days back to back was a lot for us. Too much actually. We tried to cram too much in, which is silly because we go to WDW almost every year and know we will be back. WE were just there for 9 nights in April, but felt we had to cram tons in over 3 days. Originally we were going to venture out and try Legoland instead of AK, but we got cold feet about Legoland, and we LOVE AK a lot so we went there instead.

We are planning a quick trip in October to try MNNSHP for the first time. Our plan is:

Day 1: Drive half way
Day 2: Arrive and do MNNSHP
Day 3: Resort day (we are staying at the Contemporary)
Day 4: MK
Day 5: character meal and leave.

Even though it's killing me to skip AK, we figure we'll make the most out of staying at the Contemporary and just go to MK. We don't want to deal with the F&W crowds on a weekend, otherwise we'd probably do Epcot since it's on the monorail and we skipped it in December.

 

[ktmo]

We have never stayed for a week. Most of our trips are 4 nights. I wish we could stay longer, but work schedules make it difficult. We always get hoppers.

Here is my rough itinerary for our trip in May:
Fly in Friday night
Sat - Magic Kingdom - early breakfast ADR for BOG stay until lunch, break at resort EPCOT for the evening
Sun - Hollywood Studios - probably all day
Mon - AK then Epcot or HS for the evening
Tues - Epcot or HS - hit a few rides before heading to the airport for a late afternoon flight

 

[Sona99]

Our upcoming trip is only 3 days. To reign in the madness we are doing one park a day only, dinner adrs to be sure we have a good break, and no big plan so we aren't rushed, and with the knowledge that we can't do everything. We're skipping AK this time.

 

[2Pirates2Princesses]

So do most people agree that park hoppers are the way to go with short trips or is skipping a park (or two) worth considering? I see our family getting to the point of doing condensed WDW trips as well. With our twins heading to high school this fall, our family wanting to do other vacations before the twins graduate, and dance and sports schedules limiting our availability during both the school year and summer, doing week long exclusively WDW trips may no longer be in the cards for our family. I know travel distance and airline ticket prices for our family of seven, as well as the cost to combine Disney tickets with other park tickets (e.g., Universal, Sea World), will make it hard for us to pull the trigger on doing a short Disney trip; but in reality it may be the only way to be able to do other things and still get our Mickey fix.

 

[lustergirl]

Park hoppers are a must for a short trip. We don't visit HS so that saves us alot of time for other parks.

 

[Mouselovejess]

We had 4 days last September. We did 1 park a day, and in the evening we went to dinner someplace nice, or relaxed by the pool. I def recommend that for shorter trips, with not much time its easy to get overwhelmed wanting to do everything.

63 days!!!!

 

[redsbe]

Day 1 mid day arrival, resort check in and dinner there, evening MK
Day 2 MK all day
Day 3 Epcot all day
Day 4 HS or AK all day
Day 5 HS or Ak (or MK) to mid afternoon, depart to airport

We followed this model for many trips, in recent years (including this May trip) we added additional day which gives us another full park day, we use RD and mid day FP+, no park hoppers, tend to stay in same park all day to close, and avoid EMH park