Too much touring with younger kids?

[mrsmagic]

I'm so excited! I just booked flights for our first trip to Disney with our kids from January 25-Feb 1st, 2006 (I booked so early because we are using frequent flyer miles). My DH and I are taking our 3 kids, ages 8, 6, and 2. We are also traveling with my parents, who are pretty fit and very helpful with our kids (I'm sooooo glad they are coming with us; they are really fun).
We decided to get 3 rooms at the Pop Century; 2 adjoining plus one for my parents.
My dilemma; how many days will we spend in the parks? My instinct would have been that we would spend part of every day in a park, but would make sure that we took a break in the afternoon for a few hours. We chose to go in January because the cooler weather doesn't bother us (we are from Michigan so it will feel like summer!) and the crowds would be down. However, as I read guidebooks, they usually recommend taking days off. But, what would we do? It will probably not be warm enough for water parks, and if we are going to walk around Downtown Disney or play mini-golf, I'd rather be in a park! Or, would 8 days straight really be too much? I haven't been there with kids, so I just can't predict. Our kids are not prone to melt-downs, and we are pretty good about recognizing when they need a break. Plus, with 4 adult and 3 kids, we can always split them up if 1 needs extra attention.

Does anyone have any advice?
Thanks!

 

[sanibelover]

Plan to take a couple of days off. If you find (once you are there) that you would rather do parks every day, you can still do that too. Just a warning, my kids' favorite parts of the VERY expensive WDW vacation were driving around in golf carts at FW and the hotel pool.

 

[jl3614]

I do not know the price difference between a 7 and 8 day ticket, but I am sure it is minimal. The difference between 6 day and 7 day ticket is like $2. I would suggest buy tickets for all your full days, maybe don't count arrival and departure days. At a couple dollars a day you have not lost much if you don't use it, and you may find that some or all of the party might want to go for a couple hours one evening, while the rest of the family stays home the whole day. With the MYW price structure - any out of the park activity would be more expensive than park day 6 - 10.

 

[AJKMOM]

You will be able to take your time touring the parks, but you could also plan for a day to stay at POP and swim. You just never know about January weather. We have been swimming many times in January.

 

[justcruisin]

You could spend an a few hours at Fort Wilderness; petting zoo, I think pony rides, playgrounds .... take the bus to MK, then the boat to FW.

Maybe the Pirate Cruise for the older two?

 

[Nicolepa]

We always take a day (sometimes just a 1/2 day ) off for the kids to go to the pool or whatever. Our last trip we were there for 7 days and by the end of the 5th day we had planned to go to MK for the fireworks (after a nap & dinner). We could not get them up! My son (2) said he wanted to go and then collapsed back into bed. My daughter (4) didn't even move. After a 5 hour nap they finally got up and we made it to Epcot for Illuminations.

We always take a break when they need it. We don't get to the parks until 10ish, always use a stroller, stop for lunch, back to the room for a nap & dinner and back to the parks until close (we stay on pacific time) and they still get very worn out!

 

[drakester]

We don't always take a day off, but I sure do make sure we have some time off. We like to hit the parks first thing in the morning and then around lunch head back to the resort for some rest and relaxation. Then we head back to the parks at nights. It works for us.

 

[onlyoneforme]

We tried to do day after day of straight morning to night at the parks and found that we all got sick after all of that. I don't know if it was the change in weather..we are from the northeast ... or the just exhausting hours we were keeping because we felt like we were going to miss something! My advice is to take a day off and just kick back and take it all in!

YOUR ON VACATION!!!

Enjoy your family, enjoy the laughter of the kids, enjoy your husband/wife! Go to the Boardwalk, rent a surrey...Go to DTD and take your time walking around...try a new resort pool...eat a different meal at different resorts...take a monorail trip...end the day at the Polynesian, on the beach, facing the castle around 9pm, find a lounge chair, bring the sand buckets, grab a frozen drink that reminds you of vacation, sit back and enjoy the electric water parade!

 

[Lisa Hale]

We've gone to DIsney every year since we were expecting our son. His first trip was when he was 10 months old, and then every 11-12 months thereafter, he's 11 years old now. Now, we have another little one that we've taken at 3 months and 15 months (and we've planned another for when she's 26 months). We've always had great experiences and I think it's mostly due to managing our expectations. We go to the parks everyday, we just go at a pared down pace. We go to the parks in the morning, stay for 3-4 hours and then after lunch, we go back to the hotel. We shower and change and have naps (my older son and husband will go to the pool while my daughter naps this year). Then we'll join them at the pool when she wakes up for a while. Then it's back to shower and get dressed for dinner. We'll go to either a resort or a park for dinner each night and then enjoy fireworks or a ride or two before we head back to the room. Our older son and my husband will probably go to the pool again while I put our daughter to bed. It's definitely not a "full-steam ahead" kind of trip, but we've always scheduled like this (since we were expecting our son and I had to take it easy). We enjoy everything we want to, we are relaxed and calm most of the time and don't put a great deal of stress on the kids or ourselves. As you are going to have the grandparents with you, it should be even better. If one child does need down time, there's more opportunities to alternate who would take a break with that child.

I hope you have a fantastic time, Disney is so wonderful when you experience it with little ones and it really pays to go at their pace.

 

[rifamtrav]

You're doing it the best way, with adults to spare! Whenever we took our kids to WDW we always had spare adults (in our case mostly my siblings) who don't particularly care about WDW but love hanging out with the kids. When you're there (late Jan-Feb) will be a slow time and the parks will be on their shortest schedule. That means you won't have a lot of choices for late nights, mostly just Epcot. That's actually good because you will have built in limits on your park time. I would definitely pay the minimal extra for tickets for every day and then play it by ear.
Don't forget, at least one night, I bet your parents would love to stay back and hang out with the kids so you too can enjoy a night out (make a ps for a nice place!!)
Enjoy.

 

[PKS44]

You can buy a 5 or 6 day ticket and if you decide you want more days it is no penalty to add those days to the ticket...I definitely think you will enjoy it more if you take a day off every two or three days of your trip.