WDW with kids who are late sleepers. . .

[Vijoge]

Visiting in January with four of our granddaughters, ages 17, 11, 8, and 6. These girls DO NOT get up early (not even on Christmas!) without a fight and that's not the way I want to start the day. This means I'm not planning to be anywhere at rope drop except the resort, no morning EMH, none of that kind of thing. I also anticipate the 6 year old will crash around 5 PM like she usually does. Once she gets her second wind, however, she's good until about 2 AM. The older girls are all nocturnal, also. Needless to say, this will be totally different from our previous visits.
How can I make the most of our trip?
We have five nights/six days.

 

[WIcruizer]

This is us, no morning people in our family. Have never been to a RD in my life, don't plan on starting any time soon. If you get your FP+ every day you, will have more than enough time to see/do everything you want to do, don't worry about it.

 

[jtopp]

Our family as well. Except for a few breakfast ADR's (even then, some we don't make) we are rarely out of the room before 11am. On the plus side, it is a quiet morning for me, as I get to have coffee and read the newspaper on the balcony. We usually only get light items for breakfast, and that also means our first order of the day is lunch(before the lunch rush). We also get an early dinner( again, avoid the rush), and enjoy a late night snack, as late risers also make for night owls. We enjoy the parks late at night, with smaller crowds, and later ADR's are usually easier to get, if we so choose. Starting later, even though not your normal vacation, does have its good points. Enjoy!!

 

[StitchMeansAloha]

Now that is a problem cause disney doesn't have alarm clocks. If you have breakfast reservations if you do go after the fireworks at the park are done and set a alarm on your phone.Have fun!!!

 

[loves to dive]

I'm an early riser but my son has always been a late sleeper. He is an adult now but we followed the same routine when he was younger. I get up when I get up, go out for an early morning walk about. When I come back to the room, as quietly as possible I take a shower and go get coffee and either sit on the balcony if we have one or somewhere outside at the resort and just enjoy. If he still isn't up, I head over to whatever park I'm in the mood to go to, he texts me when he gets up and gets in the shower then I meet him at whatever park we've agreed on. We never book a FP before 10:30 am.

 

[Mousemommy1]

This is us all of the time. We are not early risers so no rope drop for us. We did it once and it was torture, lol.
Now, with FP+, we see extreme benefit in that because we can plan our rides for when we would enter the park as opposed to arriving at the park only to find the FP's we would want gone. We get a heck of a lot more use out of FP now.

We typically arrive to the parks around 9:00 - 9:30, do our FP rides and a little more and then leave for lunch/nap/swim at the resort.

We then hit the parks again around 5 pm and stay until close.

 

[pa. dad]

I must be the meanie of the bunch then.
We explained WHY we would not be sleeping in all morning every day.
We always have some days where we will sleep in a little later. So we'd ask what ride do you want to do now? And the answer would be Space Mt or something like that. So I'd day that Space Mt has a 2 hour wait now- do you want to wait 2 hours? "Not really".
I'd always make a point to note the current waiting times for attractions that we had already done. It'd be something like "Look at that 100 minute wait for Thunder Mt. now aren't you glad we did that at 9:00"?
They don't like getting up early but they liked waiting in long lines all day even less so they could see the reason for getting up early most of the time.
This last trip we did the AK for our sleep in later day and we got the fastpasses for later in the day. For that park, it worked out fairly well as we got to do most of the things that we wanted to and still got to sleep in later.

 

[maranara]

I. Am. Jealous. My kiddo wakes up by 6:30 every morning except Saturdays/vacations when she is often up by 5. I would enjoy the quiet time at the hotel in the morning and plan on taking advantage of being in the parks at night. We'll be at RD...but will likely never make it to fireworks.

 

[WIcruizer]

They don't like getting up early but they liked waiting in long lines all day even less so they could see the reason for getting up early most of the time.

I get what you're saying, but it doesn't need to be an "either, or." Especially if you use EMH at night, I have never had an issue getting to a park late (even MK) and getting to ride everything we wanted, and our favorite attractions more than once. BUT, this only works if your family can still be going strong at Midnight, or in the case of some nights at MK, 2:00 AM.

 

[WIcruizer]

I. Am. Jealous. My kiddo wakes up by 6:30 every morning except Saturdays/vacations when she is often up by 5. I would enjoy the quiet time at the hotel in the morning and plan on taking advantage of being in the parks at night. We'll be at RD...but will likely never make it to fireworks.

That's not all bad, and it may change over time. Very often I may get up at 6:00 or 6:30, but I have some coffee, enjoy the balcony, or walk around the resort instead of RD.

 

[Claire&TheBoys]

While I definitely understand not wanting to force the kids to get up and out before they'd really like to be, realize that you're visiting in January which typically has shorter park hours than, say, July. Parks will close at 8:00 or 9:00, most likely. So if you're not getting to the parks until noon, you're not able to take advantage of the less-crowded late nights. Of course depending on which week you're visiting, the crowds may be lower and you will be able to do everything you want to in a shorter time.

We're usually rope-drop-to-close people. We'll take some time in the afternoon to sit in a cool spot with a Coke and a snack and rest our feet, but we try to squeeze every minute of fun possible out of our time at Mickey's house.

 

[LovePug]

We have never been early birds, either. Never done a rope drop. We have done exactly one breakfast ADR in all our trips (a late breakfast). It has never been an issue doing the things we want to do. We have probably the most relaxed Disney vacation of anyone on these boards and still enjoy ourselves. LOL. Our upcoming trip will be the first one with FP+ and I'm quite excited about being able to get Fastpasses for later in the day and being able to plan accordingly. We love the parks at night. Enjoy the evenings and have a blast. We've been in January and the crowds were low enough to do everything we wanted to do even without being in the parks early.

 

[TwoMisfits]

Visiting in January with four of our granddaughters, ages 17, 11, 8, and 6. These girls DO NOT get up early (not even on Christmas!) without a fight and that's not the way I want to start the day. This means I'm not planning to be anywhere at rope drop except the resort, no morning EMH, none of that kind of thing. I also anticipate the 6 year old will crash around 5 PM like she usually does. Once she gets her second wind, however, she's good until about 2 AM. The older girls are all nocturnal, also. Needless to say, this will be totally different from our previous visits.
How can I make the most of our trip?
We have five nights/six days.

Are you staying onsite or offsite? If offsite, I'd book a resort which has a beautiful lake to walk around with bench swings and take my coffee down to enjoy every morning. And/or I'd see if any girl who woke 1st would want to challenge me in a game of mini golf or take in a nice swim/hot tub (if it's warm, which it was in Dec this year) while the others slept. I'd plan to head to the parks after a nice relaxing brunch everyday (so around 11am-12pm) and I'd make my FP+ for 1pm, 2pm, and 3pm.

If the parks close early, I'd plan on having a fun evening activity for the night owls every night.

But that's me. And I've never hit a rope drop in my life - I'm your grandkids! I can stay up til 1am, but I better not be getting up before 8am on vacation (and 9am is better...

 

[pa. dad]

I get what you're saying, but it doesn't need to be an "either, or." Especially if you use EMH at night, I have never had an issue getting to a park late (even MK) and getting to ride everything we wanted, and our favorite attractions more than once. BUT, this only works if your family can still be going strong at Midnight, or in the case of some nights at MK, 2:00 AM.

We usually go over the summer or over a holiday. Our last trip was over new Years. So most crowd levels that we;ve seen don't allow too many late sleep ins.

 

[juliebee70]

I can completely understand this. We are on the west coast, so we have a 3 hour time deficit to begin with. My husband is an early riser and my son is so excited that he happily gets up early at Disney... but they have to drag me out of bed.

 

[charliesmom86]

We are not early risers at home but at Disney we are because we feel like we can sleep in at home.
But while at Disney my family feels like we need to get the most out of our trip. Rising early has gotten us to do so much and see so much and then we take a break and leave the parks usually between 2 and 7. Eat dinner then come back for fireworks and late night rides. Works for us well to be at the parks for rope drop.

 

[Nettester]

Now that there is FP+, it's so much easier to plan a great park day without getting there at rope drop. Just schedule your must-do rides for the afternoons. Personally, I'm so over nagging people to get out of bed. I'd just get up early and do my own thing until they got ready. If other people want to waste precious morning hours sleeping at WDW, that's their choice, but I wouldn't let it bother me.

 

[Hikergirl]

Our family as well. Except for a few breakfast ADR's (even then, some we don't make) we are rarely out of the room before 11am. On the plus side, it is a quiet morning for me, as I get to have coffee and read the newspaper on the balcony. We usually only get light items for breakfast, and that also means our first order of the day is lunch(before the lunch rush). We also get an early dinner( again, avoid the rush), and enjoy a late night snack, as late risers also make for night owls. We enjoy the parks late at night, with smaller crowds, and later ADR's are usually easier to get, if we so choose. Starting later, even though not your normal vacation, does have its good points. Enjoy!!

This is us too. I have never made it to a RD and have always been able to do what we wanted in the time we had at the parks.

I love my early morning peace and quiet with my coffee on the balcony!

 

[ariane37]

My kids are at an age where they don't like getting up early at all, and to be honest, I despise getting up early also I'm 45 and in a perfect world I wouldn't get up before 9.......or um, 10. I love snow days because I don't have to get up to get them ready lol!! Anyway, I see nothing wrong with sleeping in at Disney if you can still accomplish what you want during your day, but I think it depends a good deal on what time of year you're there. As pa dad said, over NY's and in the summer when it's crowded, RD or at least getting there somewhat early may be necessary. We attempted to do only one RD on our Thanksgiving trip last year so that my kids would be happy and I didn't have to listen to them complain about getting up early. After the first 3 days they realized what I'd been telling them about the importance of RD during busy times. Yes, we used our FP's, but we couldn't get additiongal FP's for any rides we wanted after that and the lines were atrocious, which also meant no repeats of their favorites, so they were miserable.

On the other hand, DH and I went on an adults-only trip in Jan. and did no RD's. Other than MLK day, we found getting to the parks anywhere from 9:30 to 11 still got us on everything we wanted with little wait, and the availability of more decent FP's after we used our first 3 was fine. We also stayed later at night since younger DS prefers not to be out late, which is another factor as a pp said - if you aren't going to do RD, can your party handle late nights?

Anyway, my 2 cents For January I think you can find a plan that works w/o relying on RD.

 

[pa. dad]

My kids are at an age where they don't like getting up early at all, and to be honest, I despise getting up early also I'm 45 and in a perfect world I wouldn't get up before 9.......or um, 10. I love snow days because I don't have to get up to get them ready lol!! Anyway, I see nothing wrong with sleeping in at Disney if you can still accomplish what you want during your day, but I think it depends a good deal on what time of year you're there. As pa dad said, over NY's and in the summer when it's crowded, RD or at least getting there somewhat early may be necessary. We attempted to do only one RD on our Thanksgiving trip last year so that my kids would be happy and I didn't have to listen to them complain about getting up early. After the first 3 days they realized what I'd been telling them about the importance of RD during busy times. Yes, we used our FP's, but we couldn't get additiongal FP's for any rides we wanted after that and the lines were atrocious, which also meant no repeats of their favorites, so they were miserable.

On the other hand, DH and I went on an adults-only trip in Jan. and did no RD's. Other than MLK day, we found getting to the parks anywhere from 9:30 to 11 still got us on everything we wanted with little wait, and the availability of more decent FP's after we used our first 3 was fine. We also stayed later at night since younger DS prefers not to be out late, which is another factor as a pp said - if you aren't going to do RD, can your party handle late nights?

Anyway, my 2 cents For January I think you can find a plan that works w/o relying on RD.

As you say, different crowd levels may allow different wake up call times.
I should add that what allowed us to sleep in later for our AK day also was that we were willing to skip a few things. We had done the Rafiki Conservation train and petting zoo before and it was okay but we skipped it that day. We missed the nemo musical as one of the sons preferrred the Lion King so we saw that show instead. We didn't do much of the walk through exhibits this time so we missed the tigers. But we got to do most of the other things that were our bigger priorities and we were content with that.
If you are willing to cross off some of the attractions because you've done them before and don;t have to repeat them or because they just don;t interest you, it becomes much easier to sleep in more. The parks that have less attractions also are much easier for that too.