To Hop or Not?

[scrapquitler]

My family and I don't hop. We pick which park we want to go to for the day, arrive at Rope Drop and stay there all day. We usually will leave after the fireworks or when ever we have done what we wanted to do in the parks.

For us, we don't hop because of:

1) The additonal expense. $68 more per ticket.

2) The times it takes to leave the park, get on a tram, get to the car, drive where we want to go, get on a tram, get in to the park. All that eats up a lot of time that we could have spent inside a park.

3) We don't want to!

The nice thing about Disney is that you can choose to hop or not to hop.

All good points. That said, We DO hop, almost every day. We figure its "only" $68 more per ticket (we figure that on a 10 day ticket, that's not a lot). And yes, transportation can take a lot of time, but we usually take an afternoon break and go to a different park after our nap than where we were in the morning. We'd be taking the afternoon break even if we were going back to the same park, so most of the time, it's a non-issue for us.

We like the flexibility that hopping gives us, and we think it's more fun to hop.

Really, you're in WDW, you are going to have fun either way, so do whatever makes sense to you.

 

[ChasingLeslie]

I really find the park hopping option beneficial.

We had seven day passes in July and spent three of the last four days hopping. It gave us the freedom to change plans and to return to some of the kids' favorite rides/experiences.

 

[shruley]

For us, parkhoppers are part of the price of the trip.

Here's what we do:

- We hit the parks at Rope Drop and get to the headliners.
- We have FPs starting at about 11 am. Depending on the park, that sometimes means a repeat of some rides we've already been on that day.
- At 1:30 or 2, we head back to the resort for naps/swimming.
- At 5:30 or so, we head to our evening park for a dinner ADR. Sometimes it's the same park we were already at, sometimes not. (Our last ADRs are always the harder ones to get, the dates that fewer people have had access to. So I don't sweat the crowd calendars or park hours when making ADRs.)
- We tend to get so much done in the morning that we don't sweat evening FPs; if we get them, we get them. Otherwise, it's the single rider line at TT and Spaceship Earth type of stuff. After dinner, we don't typically have tons of time before fireworks anyway, so FPs aren't a huge issue. We do most of our touring before lunch.

This is exactly what we do. Works well! We also go more in the off season, usually Sept when it's prime Party season, and nightly shows are not showing each night. It can be hard to fit in all the evening shows we want to see depending on arrival/departure days and how few nights each evening show is scheduled. It allows us to see Wishes for example, but not be IN that park all day long with all the rest of humanity who are there because it's one of the 3 days that week that the Magic Kingdom isn't closing early. The other perk, because we visit when it's hotter than Hades there. We utilize EMH for an 8 am opening when it's at least a little cooler, but can then hop to a less crowded park later, so we're not spending our entire day in the most crowded park!

Oh, and the last perk I thought of. Every year, even though we've been multiple times, our kids find a favorite ride or park that we never thought they would love. Usually the last day or 2 is spent hitting the "I HAVE to go back on that ride like 5 more times mom!" rides. We can then change our plans around, and hit a different park in the morning to do what they want, without disrupting our ADRs/shows we had planned for the evenings. Transportation time I don't really count, because we would be taking a mid day break either way. Because if I was still in the park past 1 pm in Aug and Sept, I would literally be nothing but a puddle on the pavement. I'm from Minnesota. We're at the pool in the afternoons!

 

[Barbara76]

We are hoppers, we do a morning park, an afternoon break and an everning park.

 

[Disney Khaleesi]

I am a one park per day kind of person. For me, hopping is too much work that I don't want to deal with and I like knowing that I'll have time to do what I want to in each park and have a certain time allotment for that park.

But it really is something you have to decide for yourself.

 

[Keyser]

Here's what I'd suggest: look at the schedule (and for what's not out, look at a previous year's schedule) for when you are going. In February, some of the nighttime shows will probably only be running certain days. Figure out which ones you really want to see, and then determine whether you want to visit those parks on those days. If the answer is "no" - then get a hopper, and if the answer is "yes", then skip it... In particular, if you want to see both Fantasmic and the Star Wars Galactic Spectacular, then think about whether you really want to spend two whole days in DHS, since that's probably the only way to see them both without a hopper.

On one of our trips, we had free park hoppers as part of a package. I think we used them one day total. We've never bought them since, and for the most part have never missed them. Even though we take a break and could hop, we almost never wanted to do so. In the old fastpass system, it was a disadvantage to hop (since you could use passes collected during the day at night). However, this last trip, we really missed them. Disney did their "release info just 2 weeks beforehand" deal and changed the timing for the Star Wars fireworks/show, so that it collided with Fantasmic. We could have adjusted so that we could see both if we had had a hopper (or if they'd announced early enough for us to switch all sorts of other stuff around).

One more thing to be aware of that caught us (and might catch you): when Disney raises ticket prices, the cost to add on to your ticket is not just the hopper option, it is the difference between the new ticket with the hopper and the old one without. On our most recent visit, we found that this was going to make the hopper option too expensive (for us) to add on last minute. Instead of $68 it was going to be over $100 each. Disney often raises prices in the early part of the year, so if they do so before your trip, you could be in the same boat as we were.

A couple of other reasons to maybe get a hopper:
- We like to take an afternoon break and then in the evening return to a park/resort for dinner (plus sometimes one or two "headliner" rides, and/or a show). Epcot can be a good place for dinner, even if you spent the day somewhere else, and that would mean a hopper.
- In addition to the strategies some others mentioned, I know people who go to the Early Entry park, but just for Early Entry (and maybe an hour after), then switch to a different park. They get FPs at the second park. The usual advice is to skip the EE park, but if you only go for EE, it's the best of both worlds.