VIP Tour at Start or End of a 6 Day Trip?

[dieumeye]

With FP+ no more, and the battle to get Genie+ times and Individual Attraction Selections and Virtual Queues I’m going to do a VIP tour for one day of our trip in 2023. We’ll have 6 park days Sunday-Friday, where should we put the VIP tour?

Option 1: VIP tour on the first or second day. PRO: we hit as many of our “must do” attractions early in the trip so the stress of getting them done is gone and we have the rest of the days to leisurely explore the parks. CON: we probably can’t fit ALL of our must-dos in one VIP tour day, so we’d still have some must-dos left to tackle, but we’d already have our park reservations locked in for the rest of the days, and they might not line up with what we still need to ride.

Option 2: VIP tour on the last day or the trip. PRO: we visit the parks leisurely riding the easiest to get rides and also tackling as many of our must-dos as possible but don’t stress about it since we know the VIP tour will be there at the end of the trip to pick up anything we haven’t been able to do. CON: if we have must-dos remaining at all 4 parks, that could mean a lot of time driving around. Also, we’ll likely be the most tired on the last day so that may not be the best time for a VIP tour.

For reference, this is our list of must-do attractions. It may be a little different than normal since we’re Disneyland regulars (no need to prioritize the duplicates). I’m also interested in how many of these attractions we could feasibly hit in one VIP Tour day. I’ve bolded the attractions that we’d possibly try to hit on a VIP tour (leaving the rest to our other parks days) – although I would probably want to limit the VIP tour day to 2 or 3 parks, not all 4.

MK: TRON (if open), 7 Dwarfs Mine Train, BTMRR, Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, People Mover, Carousel of Progress

EP: GotG Cosmic Rewind, Remy, Frozen Ever After, Test Track, Mission Space, Spaceship Earth, Gran Fiesta Tour, Living with the Land, The Seas

HS: Slinky Dog Dash, MMRR, Rockin Roller Coaster, ToT, Muppet Vision 3D

AK: Flight of Passage, Navi River Journey, Expedition Everest, Kilimanjaro Safari, Dinosaur, It’s Tough to Be a Bug

Edit: see below for updates to plan and some additional questions.

 

[HeiHei2018]

Have you checked pricing for the different days of the week? One day costing an extra $300/hr might make the decision easy.

 

[ultimatefans]

My personal choice would be to schedule the VIP tour early in the trip - maybe day 2. My reasoning:
- you will likely have more energy than you will at the end of the trip
- you can enjoy the VIP tour and not get stressed out if you don't get to everything as you'll still have several more days
- you have the option to pay for ILL on future days for must-do attractions that you missed

I would recommend skipping AK for the VIP tour as those attractions are easy enough to get to on a regular day even without G+. Also, I personally love wandering slowly around AK and taking in the atmosphere which is harder to do on a VIP tour focused on attractions. The paths around the Tree of Life are beautiful. I think starting HS and EP and then ending the day with MK if there's time. (or if Tron is open making sure MK is in the mix)

Have a great vacation and have fun planning!!

 

[wnwardii]

I did a VIP tour last October. I did it the last day of my WDW trip and then headed to UO for HHN. I had other friends that were still at WDW. My group of people consisted mostly of AP and Cast Members, all Adults. So we didn't have to do everything. Your list, in some ways, is very similar to what our list was. We ended up being able to do all 4 parks and 15 attractions. I will say this, it was exhausting and it took the entire 6 hours. One thing you need to remember is that there is travel time to get between the different parks.

Our tour started at Animal Kingdom at 10am. We ended our day at DHS around 4pm. We had no lunch/meal break, but we did get ice cream when we got to MK and then was able to order Starbucks on our way out of MK. Here are the attractions that we were able to get on:

• Animal Kingdom
  • Expedition Everest
  • Flight of Passage
  • Na'vi River Journey
• Magic Kingdom
  • Haunted Mansion
  • Peter Pan
  • Seven Dwarf Mine Train
  • Space Mountain
  • Buzz Light Year
• Epcot
  • Remy's
• DHS
  • Rock 'n Roller
  • Tower of Terror
  • Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway
  • Slinky Dog Dash
  • Smuggler's Run
  • Rise of the Resistance

Even only doing Remy's at Epcot was challenging due to where the VIP transportation had to park and then having to walk to the France Pavilion. Adding in Test Track, Frozen and Guardian's will eat up a lot of time just getting between these attractions. The VIP guides have specific locations to park. So once in the park, you will be walking between the attractions.

At AK, while the Kilamanjaro Safari is fun, that is a potentially long experience and will greatly eat up the time for the tour. Same with some of the non-bolded items you have at MK (e.g., Carousel of Progress and People Mover).

Our goal was to hit most of the bigger attractions or attractions that tended to have really high wait times (e.g., Peter Pan and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train).

We started at AK and went to MK since that has the biggest travel time/distance. Then we could back track to Epcot and DHS. Just try to minimize the travel time as much as possible. Talk with your group and try to prioritize which attractions you must do. Then talk with your VIP guide and let them know what you want to accomplish. They can really help you. If your tour is longer than 6 hours, you may have a bit more flexibility.

 

[loves to dive]

I would do it day 2. Your list doesn't have a whole lot that you couldn't hit by yourself with the exception of Cosmic Rewind. The ones you might miss could easily be hit with a combination of EE and Late hours if you are staying deluxe. I don't even think you would need Genie+ to hit what you miss. Heck with a Sun. to Fri - even assuming you don't go to the parks on Sun. and with park hoppers you could hit all those without Genie+ or the VIP tour. Would you have to stand in line, yes. Most of that would be easy with Genie + and even paying for the individual LL without a VIP guide.

 

[2Lunds]

Hmmm... how are you going to feel later about waiting in standby lines or setting alarms for LL if you take the VIP at the beginning of the trip? Full respect to all the strategies posted - I would be salty if I had already had the luxury experience and had to "downgrade" for the second half of my trip - so I'd save it for the end.

 

[dieumeye]

Thanks everyone for the input. Currently I’m think we go with the tour on our second park day.

One thing I’m not sure about is ILLs. Should I prioritize those on the tour or actually skip some of them on the tour day knowing I can purchase them on a subsequent park day? I don’t necessarily want to rely on ILL in cases where the ILL is hard to get because it sells out in seconds. (Also, there’s the kind of aggravating idea that I’ll pay for a VIP tour and yet still be paying for ILL access on subsequent days. But that’s Disney for you, I guess).

Anyway, at this point, there’s not really any way to plan for next spring because the ILL and Genie+ Attractions mix will probably change by then with the August changes and if Tron opens by then.

 

[scrappinginontario]

A VIP tour won’t be something we’ll be able to do but I would put into play the novelty of rides at the beginning of your trip that may be lessened by the end.

Personally I’d like it towards the beginning of the trip but I’m sure it will be amazing whenever you go.

 

[snikki]

I would do the beginning and then focus on what we didn’t do for the rest of the trip.

 

[SkyGuy]

As others have mentioned, I wouldn’t waste time doing the Safari on your VIP tour. We made that mistake once and were held up by a giraffe that refused to move out of the driving path. We wasted 45 minutes of our tour sitting in the ride vehicle while the caretakers came in with food to lure the giraffe out of the way, which only led to more giraffes coming over to partake in the snacks. All in all we wasted over an hour on safari. Now, if we do AK at all during a VIP, we only hit FoP, Everest, and Dino before heading out.

 

[holden]

I would do whichever day is cheaper. If they are both the same price, I'd do it early in the trip. That takes some pressure off and you can relax more on the rest of the trip.

 

[R&RsMom]

We did a tour last October on day 3 of 6. I would have done day 2, but it was several hundred dollars an hour more expensive (weekend). Our tour was a Monday. I vote for early in the trip. What we found was that the rest of our trip was much more relaxed; we had plenty of time to do any attractions not on done on the tour, and also to revisit. No stress.

 

[dieumeye]

Current plan is to do tour on second day of the trip and try to hit these attractions:

AK: Flight of Passage, Navi River Journey, Expedition Everest, Dinosaur

HS: Slinky Dog Dash, MMRR, Rockin Roller Coaster, ToT

EP: GotG Cosmic Rewind, Remy, Frozen Ever After, Test Track

Any suggestions on what order to do the parks?

That’s 12 attractions which seems within the realm of what others have done leaving time for travel and hopefully not requiring an insane pace.

I’m still curious whether TRON will be open by the trip in March 2023, and what attractions will be ILL and which ones will be G+.