Suggestions for Park Hopper Planning

[Rita007]

Hello all from FREEZING Ontario!

In August my family has 10 days booked, staying at Pop with 10-day Hopper and more tickets and free dining (upgraded to regular dining). It's my husband and I with our 3 daughters (11, 14, 16) We have been to Disney many times, but this is our first with hopper tickets. How do you make plans with your hoppers? We typically do 5 park days in a 10-day visit so this is giving me some trouble. I have a couple of days figured out:

ie. Day 1 - we arrive early, check in and hit up a water park. Back to Pop, change, and hit a park for a TS dinner and fireworks.

Another day we want to plan the 4-parks in one day challenge - no table service.

I'm at a loss to figure out how to do this. I've picked out our list of table service and will be doing some that are 2 credits so that means we don't need a dinner reservation every day.

Any tips for an experienced Disney visitor who is new to the hopper?

 

[DisneyWishes14]

If you typically do 5 park days during a 10 day visit, why not downgrade your tickets to 5 day PH+ and save some money? Also, I'm assuming you have two rooms at Pop? Honestly, I would plan out your days in a way that will best suit your family. I know you had to purchase the hoppers in order to get free dining, but, if it doesn't suit the way you typically tour, you don't have to hop. You will certainly get some value out of the tickets on your 4-park day. I just really wouldn't sweat making yourself use the hopper option if it doesn't suit your typical touring style.

 

[wdw&sonny]

Yeah, confused by the 10 day PH but only planning 5 days.
We love the PH. Soooo many options. We like to plan one park in the morning through lunch. Then back to resort for pool/rest/read/relax. Then to dinner at a resort or park and evening park. With 10 days you could do some days with a morning park and take the rest of the day off. Have another day to sleep in and do an evening park. I would avoid afternoons in the parks in August b/c of heat and crowds.

 

[TwinkleKS]

We normally use our PH's to eat dinner in Epcot. Otherwise we pick a park and stick with it until we are done for the day.

 

[Rita007]

Oh yes, we went for a 10-day ticket for more flexibility. It was not that much of an expense to upgrade from 5-10 days in the grand scheme of things.

As a family of 5 we had to get 2 rooms, but that means we have 2 bathrooms now too.

 

[kiramay]

We usually do a 7 or 8 day hopper, which includes arrival and departure. I’ve never done the water parks.

Typically we plan two days of fastpasses at each park. I try to book them as early as possible. MK like 10, 11, 12, and other parks like 9, 10, 11.
We do as much as possible in the morning at Park 1 and usually a late TS lunch. This is MY time to go-go-go.

After lunch we decide what we want to do and see what FP are available. This is my husband’s relaxing time. Usually we hop to Epcot. Or we’ll stay in MK for Fireworks. The afternoons are flexible. CS or snacks for dinner. Pool if the kids want to go back to the resort.

We’ve done 3 parks in one day multiple times, but not 4. Start with morning EMH. Do prebooked FP at the 2nd park. Grab additional FP for park 3, and end at the park with evening EMH. No time for TS that day.

 

[GillianP1301]

I've done 10 - 11 trips in August for the last several years and always with the 10 day hopper pass

I do my touring plan by splitting my day into 3 chunks, morning, afternooon and evening/night. I focus mostly on the mornings and nights and fill in which park I think I"ll want to be in. Then I fill in my meals and then I fill in the afternoons, often times the afternoons will be at the resort. For the morning chunks, I figure out what fastpasses I want and for the evenings, I determine if I will want to take in a nighttime show.

Once I am there, I take advantage of the hopper for flexibility. After we finish our morning plan, we sometimes will hop to a park based on fastpass availability or just what we're in the mood for. If I'm getting about halfway through the trip and thinking I may want to up the time at a park then I look to the days left and adjust my afternoon/evening plans.

I find having a more structured plan for the mornings and staying flexible with the rest of the days works really well for us.

 

[WhitneyMB]

Typically we plan two days of fastpasses at each park. I try to book them as early as possible. MK like 10, 11, 12, and other parks like 9, 10, 11.
We do as much as possible in the morning at Park 1 and usually a late TS lunch. This is MY time to go-go-go.

After lunch we decide what we want to do and see what FP are available. This is my husband’s relaxing time. Usually we hop to Epcot. Or we’ll stay in MK for Fireworks. The afternoons are flexible. CS or snacks for dinner. Pool if the kids want to go back to the resort.

This is similar to how we vacation. In the mornings we use our scheduled fastpasses and then relax with a table service restaurant in the park. After lunch we're flexible & see what rides are available as additional FPs or with little wait. We then head back to our hotel for relaxation, swimming or a nap. In the evenings we head back to a park--sometimes the same one and sometimes different. We schedule this based on where we want to eat a (table service) dinner and making sure we have a chance to see the evening entertainment at each park. We schedule two evenings at HS, because we really enjoy both Fantasmic and the Star Wars projection/fireworks show. One night we'll eat at Ohana and watch the MK fireworks from the beach & see the water parade. Another night we'll actually be in MK at night--hopefully scheduling this around evening EMH. Good luck working your schedule out!

I would consider adding 1-2 days to your theme park tickets. It wouldn't be too much more expensive. It would kill me to be at Disney 10 days and only visit the park 5 of them!

 

[piglet1979]

When we get the park hopper we go to one park in the morning, leave at lunch and head back to the park in the afternoon. Sometimes the park in the afternoon is different in the morning. It depends on where we have ADR's at. Our last day we leave open and only plan an ADR for dinner. We ask the kids where they want to go. What rides they missed that really want to ride and go from there on that day. This last trip Dh and myself split up with the kids because they wanted to do different rides. Well DS wanted to ride thrill rides and and DD just wanted to sleep and relax so I stayed with her.

 

[tex1989]

No advice but I had to say that reading the topic for this thread threw me off track from the start. Park Hopping and planning generally don't belong together in the way we do things. Now granted it is just the wife and I now days and we have AP's and go three to four times a year, but even when we were taking the kids we always bought PH tickets before our we graduated to AP's a couple of years ago. Our strategy was always the same, three FP+'s for early and then decide do we want to get more where we are, or can we get good ones at another park? We go where the wind takes us. And now since it is just the two of us we find different ways to go from park to park. Say we are AK and want to go to Epcot. We might hop a bus to Swan, Dolphin, Beach Club, Yatch Club, or Boardwalk. Take our time walk through the resort, look around and then take a stroll over to Epcot International Gate. Going to MK, bus it to Poly, go have some Dole Whip in their food area shiop a little and take the monorail over to MK.

I guess our style is just have fun go with the flow and see more than just the parks. Of course with our AP's we know we are coming back and we don't feel rushed to get every penney we can out of each days ticket.

 

[DavidNYC]

Oh yes, we went for a 10-day ticket for more flexibility. It was not that much of an expense to upgrade from 5-10 days in the grand scheme of things.

Unless you're planning on getting advanced FP for 10 days, you don't need the 10-day ticket for flexibility as you can always upgrade the ticket when you're there.

As for hopping - some general tips but this REALLY depends on your touring style:

1. If you're planning on doing morning EMH and getting there when the park opens - start with that park each day until crowds build and then hop to another park where you'll use FP in the late morning / early afternoon. If not - avoid that EMH park.
2. Obviously work your chosen restaurants into hopping plans.
3. Decide which night time shows you want to see and plan to end evenings there as needed.
4. Add'l MK fastpasses are fairly easy to get so MK is a great 2nd park after a FP morning park.
5. World Showcase is a good afternoon/evening hop after using FP in morning at another park (and then hopefully pulling 1-2 FP for some of the Tier 1 rides which is usually possible with refreshing).
6. Generally - I recommend doing your FP in your first park of the day if you're spending more than a few hours there to open up as much possibility to get extra FP rest of day. (Of course, if you're set on riding FoP or Slinky Dog after hopping, you'll need to use them in those parks.)

 

[Rita007]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Some very good ideas to think about and work with. In the past we've really packed a lot into our part days. I like the idea of breaking the day into 3 chunks - having a plan for which park to start with is a good suggestion.