What's your facorite time to check in? Check out?

[annainohio]

We are planning our first trip with our two year old and four year old. With little ones, what's the best time to arrive? Best time to leave?

 

[worm761]

Are you driving or flying?

We drive. But we only live 8 hours away. We drive most of the way or all of the way and then stay offsite that first night. Then get up, get breakfast, go to our resort, check in, hit a park. They will text you when your room is ready.

 

[annainohio]

Are you driving or flying? We drive. But we only live 8 hours away. We drive most of the way or all of the way and then stay offsite that first night. Then get up, get breakfast, go to our resort, check in, hit a park. They will text you when your room is ready.

We are flying.

 

[dprincessmom]

we are drivers also and typically check in around 8 am.

I would avoid 2 to 4 as most people feel that is when they can check in. It will be crazy. Same with checkout, keep away from the official check out time and you should be fine.

 

[luvmyguyz]

We usually get a 7 am flight from NJ, arriving at Orlando at around 9:30 and checking in between 10:30 and 11:00. We rarely see a big line at this time, but we also arrive mid-week, so that may be why the line is short. This gets us to Epcot by noon, which is where we always spend our first day.

 

[MandiC]

We checked in at 2:30pm...simply because our flight came in a little after 1 and that is what time it was by the time we made it to the resort. It was a little busy but overall went well. The timing worked well for us since our flight left at 9 am and the airport is a 2.5 hour drive from our house. I guess if I could have gotten an earlier flight it might have been nice and maybe in the future we'll try to get earlier.
We delayed check-out to noon. Magical Express came to pick us up at 12:30 for our 3:30 flight out and we went to downtown disney for the morning (which ended up not being the greatest idea since there are stores that don't even open until 11)Typical check-out is 11am, just depends on when you are leaving. I think if we lived close enough to drive it'd be fairly easy to pack up your car that morning or night before, check out right away in the morning and head to a park for however long you had that day.

 

[texasroni75]

The earlier the better! We don't mind leaving our bags in the car (when driving) or have the resort hold them (when flying) when we check in early. That way we can hit the parks for more hours on Day 1. We found out the hard way this last trip that the WORST time to check in is between 11am and 3pm. This is when everyone is checking OUT and they don't have separate lines, so you get caught up in a logjam of people picking apart and getting corrections to their room bills on their way out.
The only exception is if you do online check-in, which would cut your line time if you happen to arrive at your resort during the busiest time.