What time does your family wake up at Disney?

[CdnCarrie]

We go in off season so the parks usually open at 9 so try to be at the gates for 8:30 which means waking up around 7.

However we do a mix of RD and sleep in days as we go for 10 days usually. My family would not get up at 7 everyday.

As well we go to the EasyWDW recommended park and avoid morning EMH.

 

[Just Peachy]

I know that your post was probably directed at WDW visitors, but we go mostly to the West Coast and DLR. At DLR we stay mostly at the DLH but next time we are at the VGC. We never miss the EMH at either of the parks where I'm awake by 5:30 most mornings (typically without the aid of an alarm...my wife says I'm defective) so we can have our "happy" family in the park at 7:00. We take a midday siesta (starting about noon) and return to the parks about 4:00 or 5:00 PM and stay until close (typically midnight). It helps that all my kids are grown up (at least in years) and are major Disney fanatics like their old man.

Since we typically get a late morning brunch in the parks and that really isn't good on the metabolism, we thought that our next visit we would stock the kitchen at the VGC with morning goodies and eat breakfast prior to leaving for the parks. I'm thinking that I'll have to get up a little earlier to get breakfast going. This next visit will also include several "significant others" of my kids. It will be interesting to see how our early-to-rise and late-to-bed works out for them....
I probably am defective…

 

[pigletto]

When the kids were little and we were in a permanent state of not sleeping enough we got up about 2 hours before rope drop because that was around when we get up at home anyway.
Thankfully because they are older now (10 and 17) and have discovered that sleep is a nice thing, we only do a few rope drops and mostly stay for later evenings. Mind you, after 15 years of getting up early, I'm awake now and waiting for them most of the time.

 

[Mousemommy1]

We are definitely NOT rope-droppers, LOL.

Typically, we are waking up around 9 am while at Disney. We actually prefer to be at the parks later at night though.

This might change on our next trip because we will have a very small infant in tow, so I think sleep will be at a premium....since we'll be up already, might as well hit the parks!

 

[lmcarr49]

I made early breakfast reservations to make sure we're at the parks at rope drop.

 

[kittylady1972]

Our wake up time varies as well. My kids are normally early risers. My oldest (14) barely sleeps at all it seems. No matter how late he goes to bed, he seems to be up by 6am at the latest. My other two sometimes sleep longer. My youngest son (10) is the worst for mornings. He's hard to get moving.

On days when we have an ADR or a plan to make RD, we will set an alarm for 6:30am, depending on location and where we need to go that morning. I'd say the latest we ever leave our hotel room might be 8am, and that is mornings where people have had to shower (5 people/1 bathroom) and get ready. If we shower the night before, then we can leave earlier.

I generally keep cereal and milk in our room for the early risers who don't want to wait for breakfast. Hungry kids are MOODY kids!

This time around I do have some plans to do some late nights at the parks if possible, so the next morning we'll see what time everybody wakes, but I won't set alarms those mornings. It will be everybody waking up at their own pace. Still with 9 of us in a 2BR Villa, I doubt anybody will be sleeping too late!

 

[pigletto]

All these kids who only need a little sleep!! Hats off to you parents.. mine weren't very good nappers but they always slept a good 8-10 hours at night! Thank goodness.

 

[AngiTN]

I must be the only one that needs an hour just to get ready myself, not counting getting breakfast. Maybe I can speed it up to 30 min if I put my hair in pigtails. But make up takes 30 min, every time, no matter what.

DGD and I shower at night, DH in the morning. I typically wake him about halfway through my makeup application. I wake DGD up about the same time (she's very hard to wake). I have her clothes all together in zip lock bags, from panties to bows and she gets one and gets dressed.

We strive to be in the CL lounge for breakfast at 7:00 and try to be out to the buses by 8:00. That's an ideal day. Often we are about 15-20 min slower than that. DH's idea of being on time is leaving the room at the time we plan to be arriving somewhere. So if he is walking out of the room at 7:00 he thinks he's early

The next trip we are not staying CL. I plan to eat in the room which may actually take less time than CL does.

 

[ericstac]

I must be the only one that needs an hour just to get ready myself, not counting getting breakfast. Maybe I can speed it up to 30 min if I put my hair in pigtails. But make up takes 30 min, every time, no matter what.

DGD and I shower at night, DH in the morning. I typically wake him about halfway through my makeup application. I wake DGD up about the same time (she's very hard to wake). I have her clothes all together in zip lock bags, from panties to bows and she gets one and gets dressed.

We strive to be in the CL lounge for breakfast at 7:00 and try to be out to the buses by 8:00. That's an ideal day. Often we are about 15-20 min slower than that. DH's idea of being on time is leaving the room at the time we plan to be arriving somewhere. So if he is walking out of the room at 7:00 he thinks he's early

The next trip we are not staying CL. I plan to eat in the room which may actually take less time than CL does.

I'm right there with you.. I wake up an hour before I wake everyone else up. I drink some coffee check email etc.. just to get my body moving.. even on breakfast ADR days I will still eat something when I first wake up with my coffee.

The boys and wifey, they just crawl out of bed and into the car to head to the park. lol.. i cant roll like that.

 

[KimK2006]

On our June vacation, we were up at 7:00 most days. The first two days I had the character wake-up call because I thought I daughter would find it cute. But she was so sleepy that she never heard it!

When ours were little, we had the same experience. I later would get the wake up call for after they were up an going so they could "answer" and hear the call.

 

[StirlingSilver83]

We have 2 young kids...both my kids have an internal alarm clock that is set for 5:30 am every day regardless of vacations or weekends and regardless of what time they go to bed the night before lol, lol. So since we have this internal alarm clock we usually do all the early ADRs. 8:00am park ADRs and some 7:30am resort ADRs. Then we hit the parks for the morning and have lunch. After lunch we go back to the resort and I take my older DS to hang out at the pool and my hubby takes my younger son for a nap. Then we head back to the park around dinner time. It's a nice system.

 

[Frozen2014]

I must be the only one that needs an hour just to get ready myself, not counting getting breakfast. Maybe I can speed it up to 30 min if I put my hair in pigtails. But make up takes 30 min, every time, no matter what.

Me too...1hr to shower, do hair, face, etc....and that doesn't count getting the bags packed (which I'll try to do some organizing night before but there are still last minute checks)

 

[Boo Bear]

We will be waking up between 6:30-7:15 each day. DS usually wakes around 7:00-7:45 every morning so he usually wakes me up every day around that time. I'll be setting an alarm to wake him at AoA, but it's not going to be much earlier than our usual time anyway.

Since we won't have a coffee maker in our room, I'll have to make a little extra time to go get coffee in the food court before we catch our buses otherwise I'll be in zombie mode.

 

[JaimeA]

We do not get up early, have never been to see the MK opening show. We get up around 8-9 and then get ready and go to breakfast ADR. We then go to a park. We are always out late or up late at night. We don't do a park commando style anymore either.

 

[asbyrneva]

I see so many people going for rope drop and I was just wondering...what time do you and your family wake up while on vacation at Disney. It doesn't seem much of a vacation if you are setting an alarm for 6 am everyday!

My Husband swears the only time I'm ever out of bed before 6 am is on Disney trips! Im up at 5! We have gone at Easter, Thanksgiving and in August.
Regular 9 am start rope drop is super easy. Breakfast in the room, bus or boat depending on where we are staying etc.

The 7 am Extra Magic Hours are another story but kiddo crashes by 9:00 pm and the whole family is thrilled at what we can do in the first 2 hours. My motto if I was going to sleep all morning I would have vacationed at the beach!

That said I appreciate the night owls- the ones that roll in at 1 or 2 and stay till close. Keeps morning for crazy rope droppers like us less crazed during the super busy times. And they get the late night walk ons!

 

[PlutoTheDog89]

First day, bright and early. Last day, it takes someone pulling the fire alarm to get them out of bed.

Two years ago it was (I believe) it was NYE day. We decided to sleep late. We never do the parks during the day and we had an early flight on Jan 1st (luckily we decided to fly on Jan 2nd this year - thanks end of the week NYE!)

We said "we'll sleep till 10ish and head to DTD and the Boardwalk for the day. Then, the alarm went off around 7:30am and didn't go off until 8am.

 

[Jennasis]

We typically get up at 7-7:30 which is very much "sleeping in" for us...we're farmers. However, now that we own DVC we are looking forward to more leisurely trips with more sleeping in and resort time and not needing to it rope drop every day.

 

[GillianP1301]

I'm an early riser, so I'm up without an alarm around 6:30, vacation or otherwise. My son tends to wake on his own closer to 8:00 and he can be tough to wake up, but character breakfasts motivate him. So I would say half the days we wake up on our own and the other half I have to wake him up at around 7:00. We drive at WDW, so getting to an early ADR doesn't require us to wake up too crazy early, so 7am is the very earliest I wake him up and that's for the days I have an 8am ADR somewhere.

 

[Sparkly]

We usually get up around 8am. Don't really care for rope drop all that much.

 

[Satchmo128]

We stay off-site (about 30 minutes away with friends), so have to factor in drive time. We usually try to get to the parks around 10:30 or 11:00 and then we stay until around 7:00 or so (depending on our dinner plans). No mid-day break (since we aren't staying at a WDW resort), but we do usually park hop.

Just DH and I, no kids.