Touring Plans first few days after West Coast arrival?

[SFMommy]

Coming from San Francisco, arriving at about 6:00 p.m. on a Saturday night.

Sunday we will sleep in, walk to Epcot (from BC/YC) around 11:00 to enjoy the WS and some late-afternoon FP+ for attractions in FW. We will also see Illuminations on Sunday night.

Monday will be AK day. Debating whether we should RD or sleep in again and arrive to AK around 11:00. Have some FP+ scheduled for the afternoon then have dinner at Sanaa and the cab back to BC/YC after dinner. We really want to eat dinner at Sanaa and see AKL. We will only have 1 day at AK. But from Josh's easywdw plan, it seem reasonable to see AK from 11-5, more or less.

Thoughts from those of you who travel to WDW from the West Coast? Will we want to do another sleep-in and later park arrival on Monday? What time would you scheduled dinner at Sanaa?

 

[SFMommy]

Bumping this! Any West Coast vets with good advice?

 

[SplashMo]

Sounds wonderful...

I have done the opposite. Red eye and then AK and it did not go as well as I thought it would. . And hitting the parks after flying all day does not work well either...

You should be fine with a late arrival to AK. Hit Safari before 2-3 to be safe. You should have much longer but they do shut the ride down early. If you want multiple rides on EE then you should have an easy timee with it after 3. I would FP+ Kali and Safari.

 

[LJSquishy]

We live in WA state and I don't think you'll need to sleep in at all, but definitely not more than one day unless you're out really late at night and do a morning EMH park. We try to avoid EMH parks most days. Remember, when you land at 6pm, your body thinks it's only 3pm...so if you plan to be back in your room for bed by say 9-10pm, you shouldn't have any trouble getting up in the morning. If you still want to plan to sleep in that first morning, that's fine...if you end up getting up earlier than planned, it'll just be a bonus. We found we were able to make RD almost every day without any problem being too tired. Don't stress about it too much, though...one of our trip days we were awake and planning to do RD but just decided to take our time that morning. We still arrived within the first hour of RD and were in a great mood because we didn't feel rushed!

 

[LJSquishy]

Sounds wonderful...

I have done the opposite. Red eye and then AK and it did not go as well as I thought it would. . And hitting the parks after flying all day does not work well either...

You should be fine with a late arrival to AK. Hit Safari before 2-3 to be safe. You should have much longer but they do shut the ride down early. If you want multiple rides on EE then you should have an easy timee with it after 3. I would FP+ Kali and Safari.

Oh my gosh, we did the EXACT same thing!!! We had a red eye flight that arrived at MCO at 6am, our room was surprisingly ready so we took a 1hr power nap (terrible idea, I didn't want to wake up) and then headed to AK! Once we were there it was fine because we were so excited, but it was ROUGH. Never again! This trip we arrive at around 5pm.

 

[SplashMo]

Oh my gosh, we did the EXACT same thing!!! We had a red eye flight that arrived at MCO at 6am, our room was surprisingly ready so we took a 1hr power nap (terrible idea, I didn't want to wake up) and then headed to AK! Once we were there it was fine because we were so excited, but it was ROUGH. Never again! This trip we arrive at around 5pm.

That is too funny... It seemed like a good idea a the time

 

[HydroGuy]

From Mtn time for us so not quite as bad, but I try to make the first day a bit easier. If you are doing the late Epcot WS start I think you will be fine by day 2. Since you are doing AK day 2, park hours are usually short anyways so take advantage of that and have a short day and try to get to bed earlier that night. Also same thing after Illuminations on day 1.

 

[bumbershoot]

Remember, when you land at 6pm, your body thinks it's only 3pm...so if you plan to be back in your room for bed by say 9-10pm, you shouldn't have any trouble getting up in the morning.

The question is...how do you convince yourself to fall asleep at 6 or 7 at night? That's what my family canNOT do.

Which is why in my family, we sleep in the first few days. Though no matter what we do, jetlag hits HARD the third full day. So you'd think we could just do whatever we want, but sleeping in is more pleasant the whole time vs getting up early, so we go the pleasant route.

Rope drop is great and we love to get there for it, but it's very very unpleasant to do so for my family the first few days.

 

[jackieinJuneau]

We fly from Alaska so we deal with the same issues. We take the red eye otherwise its a two day trip! We are unorthodox and go to a water park first. After all that traveling nothing feels better than a lazy river. Then we spend the evening in a park mostly for dinner. We don't nap because if we do our brains just keep saying its 6pm when it's 10pm being good and tired is the only way we have been able to re-set our clocks to the new time zone.

 

[TowMater92]

Coming from San Francisco, arriving at about 6:00 p.m. on a Saturday night.

Sunday we will sleep in, walk to Epcot (from BC/YC) around 11:00 to enjoy the WS and some late-afternoon FP+ for attractions in FW. We will also see Illuminations on Sunday night.

Monday will be AK day. Debating whether we should RD or sleep in again and arrive to AK around 11:00. Have some FP+ scheduled for the afternoon then have dinner at Sanaa and the cab back to BC/YC after dinner. We really want to eat dinner at Sanaa and see AKL. We will only have 1 day at AK. But from Josh's easywdw plan, it seem reasonable to see AK from 11-5, more or less.

Thoughts from those of you who travel to WDW from the West Coast? Will we want to do another sleep-in and later park arrival on Monday? What time would you scheduled dinner at Sanaa?

We fly from WA State and we use to arrive between 9-10pm now we have a better option and arrive between 4-5pm. The day we arrive we get to the resort, check in, go to eat(usually off property we get a rental car) and then we usually crash from the long day between 9-10. Our first day at the parks is usually later in the day around 11-noon and after that we are set on Florida time and we do our usual WDW touring starting the second day but we aren't rope drop people either. Your plan seems reasonable for AK if you want to sleep in again, it all depends on the crowds and what you want to do at the park if you want to do everything you'll have a hard time doing it in 6 hours.