Time Outs vs Day off

[Cochise]

How are peoples experiences with young kids (6 and 4) and whether taking a few hours break in the afternoon back at the hotel room/pool is better than taking a full day break e.g. Take in a bit of I drive for the day. Then back to the parks in the evening. If we take the best part of the day out we could visit a park in the evening on the Flexi ticket and if we do the morning/evening use a disney day.

What do people think ?

 

[vernon]

I've usually found mixing in busy days (or two) then having an easy day works better. Obviously much depends on your ticket options but I've found if you plan your "busy" day in the park to have a few breaks ( nice sit down lunch and a couple of shows straight after) while physically in the park is a more economical use of the time available. Even if you're staying on site it takes at least 30 minutes from hotelroom to park. If you take a break mid day that adds at least an hour travelling ( making it 2 hours minimum per day). Kids that age should have a reasonable amount of energy, but do need a quiet hour to recharge their batteries. A relaxed lunch immediately followed by, for example a sit down show ( Lion King, Muppets, HISTA, Beauty and the BEast, Hall of Presidents etc) mean they should have had a couple of hours to recharge.

Maybe it was my kids, but my youngest seemed to recharge about an hour after getting something to eat if she didn't immediately start charging around again. Could be blood sugar highs and lows affecting them so that eating ( and digesting it) is as much of an issue as getting some sleep/ a nap. Just eating didn't seem to have the same effect, she needed to have a relatively inactive hour as well, then she was fine till evening.

All kids are different, some need a full on sleep for a couple of hours, some are OK with a quieter hour, some don't need any break at all and are like the duracell bunny LOL. Trial and error is the only way you're going to find out what works for yours.

 

[Cochise]

Thanks Vernon,

We have a 5 day hopper plus disney and 5 park 14 day flex. I like the idea of the one hour recharge. My two are the duracell PLUS bunnies, i worry about me and sarah.

 

[gilld]

When we travelled with children, though not quite as young as yours, we would take a whole quiet day after a long park day. Now we go without them, we like to visit for a few hours in the morning and then go back, or to a different park in the evening, but we ALWAYS stay on-site so it is much easier to pop in and out.

Given your choice of hotel location and the ages of your children, I'd definitely take a whole day off from the main parks...but a water park would be fine.

Have a great time.

 

[Disney owl]

Our 3 are all teenagers now & we take mid afternoon breaks &drive back to the villa. DH & i usually have a rest & the kids hit the pool/ Tv or a combination of both. We then have a snack & return to the parks. We eat later on leaving the parks but as i said ours are older.

we also are believers in getting to the parks as they open.

quiet days we combine waterparks & shopping.

 

[Celestine]

We used both tactics, e.g. on the day we went to MMVCP, we did nothing, and on our Epcot day, we did EE (arriving at 8am), left at 12, returned at 4pm. DD was just 5. Admittedly on this day, the break actually ended up involving DD & DH swimming whilst I napped (13weeks pregnant, so I had a legitimate excuse!) The biggest problem was that on a non park day, e.g. shopping, her behaviour was uncharacteristically bad because there wasn't the same level of stimulation she had been having!

 

[AndRu]

All kids are different. During our last visit my kids were 8, 6 and 5. We thought they would never stop, up early and staying up late - all very excited. But by week two it was murder getting them out of bed, even the lure of theme parks arnd rides wasn't budging them.

if you can plan in some free days or just breaks from the parks then do, it'll pay huge dividends and hopefully lead to a more sress free trip.

 

[allie5]

As you are staying off site, you may find it difficult to do a "quick recharge". It takes quite sometime to exit a park (especially MK) and it can take some real effort to be bothered to go back again once you have left!

Our kids are totally different. The eldest (4 -nearly 5) has done 4 trips to WDW and has never needed naps or breaks. She can go on all day if we let her. Our son (2) is the opposite, and gets incredibly grumpy if out for too long without a nap. We also stay offsite, so we found that flexibility was the key to keeping the whole family happy. If we had evening things planned like MVMCP or a later PS, then we had a low key morning, possibly shopping, and let DS have a nap before venturing out later.

On days when we wanted serious park action, we would get there at opening and stay as long as we were having fun. We usually found 4pm was when the Magic started to wear thin and we left. We never made it back on those days.

As I said before, leaving the park can take well over an hour, sometimes 2 if you staying on I-Drive or further out and real effort is required to go back in again....well, thats what we found anyway! For our family, doing early starts and leaving when we had enough worked well. Evening events and later nights were complemented by light mornings and afternoons. Do what works best for your family. Just remember, if you arent having fun, its not worth forcing yourselves to "do just one more thing". Go home, recharge, relax, come back another day.

 

[Cochise]

Thank you all, taken note of everything.