To Hop or not on our trip?

[disnut8]

For just a 4 day trip, I don't think the hoppers are worth it, and I'm the type to hop every chance I get.

Agree with the PP who said it's a matter of personal choice. We go for three day weekends and always hop. We close every day at Epcot and would not be able to do that without the hoppers. When my son went with us last year, he immediately said to get hoppers. He didn't use it every day but it sure was nice when he wanted to have that option. Their last day, they were able to visit three parks to finish up what they hadn't seen yet.

 

[danceintherain]

I'm in the wait and see group. I pretty much always plan my trips without hoppers, and adjust accordingly. Actually, for my 10 day honeymoon, I added PHs, and I think we only ended up using them once.
I think with shorter trips they can be more helpful, but it's definitely preference based.

For our trip coming up, I initially thought we would skip the hoppers and Epcot. We're doing the Armed Forces Salute tickets, so we're limited to 4 days in the main parks and our tickets automatically include either PH or WP&M. Since we'll be traveling with a 2 1/2 year old, I made the hard decision that we would skip Epcot, in favor of extra time at the Magic Kingdom. It's just the park that falls out for us. I knew that we would go there again at some point, but it didn't fit into that particular trip. We were going to get Water Park tickets instead of Park Hoppers, because we knew that we would have an extra day, and we've never done the water parks.

On further perusal of our options, I realized that it's going to be the Flower & Garden Festival when we go, so we at least need to enter Epcot for a little while. Also, DH gets a free ticket to Universal, which we haven't been sufficiently drawn to in the past, so we're doing Universal and Park Hoppers instead of Water Parks.

Anyways, do whatever works best for you. I also always plan to skip EMH, because it's hard enough to get DH out of bed in time for Rope Drop and the evening ones are after DS's bedtime.
If I was planning on EMH, I definitely would want PHs, so I didn't have to be in the most crowded park before or after everyone else gets there.

Keep in mind, that if you're planning on EMH you won't end up at the "recommended" parks by pretty much anyone, because all the crowd calendars seem to use a similar formula. EMH = heavy crowds

 

[wisblue]

In addition to length of stay, time of year is also an important factor. If you are going during a relatively uncrowded time of year with shorter park hours, one park a day may be the way to go. But, at busy times with long hours, hopping makes more sense, at least for us.

For example, when our kids were all in school most of our visits came over the Easter break. We would get to a park early, spend the afternoon at the pool, and go to a park (usually a different one) in the evening.

This Easter is a perfect example. I am staying with one of my adult daughters at BLT, and we have every intention of starting at least two days at MK at 7 AM for EMH. Our experience is that you can enjoy more attractions between 7 and 10 AM than you can in 8 hours in the middle of the day when the park is packed (as it will be that week). When we do that, we will be out of the park by noon or a little after as the huge crowds build up. After a midday break, we may go to DAK, which will be open until 9 PM and where you can usually do as much in the 4 hours after the parade as you can in the first 4 hours after the park opens. Or, we might go to EPCOT to enjoy the Flower and Garden displays or some of the attractions that don't get that crowded, or to DHS for some lesser attractions and/or Fantasmic.

If we want to see the electrical parade, the castle light show, or Wishes we can do that on a day that we started at another park.

We both have AP's this year, but if we didn't I would want hoppers to give us the most flexibility to spend our days.