When do you decide which park for which day

[vtfretwell]

Going to Walt Disney World in 259 days for 18 daysI have already decided to what resturants and all that info just not the actually days to go to which parts. Thining I should wait to closer because I know things can change on the websites I am researching for best park days.

I know that it is a ways away but I am just too excited to just sit around and do nothing.

What is your "timeline" for getting everything ready for your trip. When do you start deciding what days for what parks?

How do you decide which resturants for what days.

 

[chelseabun76]

Wow, 18 days that is awesome!! Most we can ever do is 7 nights, I would LOVE a 2 week Disney trip!!

We booked in August, and it was not 180 days away from our trip, we booked 5 months out. So I didn't get the full window for our adr's. That made a bit of the decisions for me, as a few of our 'must do' things were only on certain nights, etc. So I went through and booked our adr's for the nights that worked and we could get, and then planned our park days accordingly. I wasn't going to park hop just for adr's, but we do have 2 days where we go from Epcot to HS one day and vice versa on the day after to accomodate an adr and the EMH for those 2 parks. So the days we were able to snag a BOG dinner, and the Wishes dessert party, were made into 2 of our MK days. We're going at a 'slow' week in January so the crowds aren't super high, so the crowd calendar didn't make much of a difference in my planning.

 

[HizMinnie2015]

We are 348 days away from our 8 day/7 night trip. Our ADR day is April 28th. We did get the park hopper, but we are letting our ADR's decide which park is which day. I know I should be looking at crowd levels and what not, but our trip is so far out, most of that is just a guesstimation anyhow.

We are striving for early (EARLY) TS breakfast/buffets and late night dinners. That way we can hopefully do rope drop and do several things during the day. I think we have only planned 4 TS inside a park...

I'm new to all this so hopefully it will work out well for us.

 

[seelyt2]

We take into account extra magic hours, regular park hours, MK's parade's and firework schedule, Fantasmic! schedule, park crowd calendars, specialty parades, etc.

 

[tbia]

If I were doing your trip....

I think there are about 8-10 in park ADR restaurants that would be must dos. For those, I would go ahead and figure it out, so I could reserve at 180.

The other days I would try and resolve about 75 for planning FP+. Now obviously hoppers or other ticket types affect these in some ways.

 

[minnie mum]

Our Disney trips only happen every 1.5 -2 years, so I have plenty of time to plan. Like the OP, I usually have already figured out how many days we'll spend at each park, how many non park days we'll have, and what restaurants well want to eat at. Josh at easywdw usually puts out his new crowd calendar at least 2 weeks before the 180 day for the first of that month. As soon as that happens, I plug my park days and restaurant choices into the calendar, almost always going with his most recommended park. This way, I'm ready to go on the morning of my 180 day to make all of my ADRs.

I also have a plan B in case one of my ADR choices isn't available. Unlike many Disers, there are very, very, VERY few Disney restaurants that are worth the bother (for me) of haunting the reservation site or cancelation threads for a particular ADR. And once I've made my ADRs I walk away and just let it be.

As for FP+, I'll make a list of our picks for each day based on Josh's cheat sheets on day 61. I'll probably book them at midnight on day 60, only because I'm a night owl anyway. I'll take what I can get and then just leave it alone. I refuse to complicate my vacation any more than that by fighting with the complexities and frustrations of trying to tweak things with MDE.

 

[bookgirl]

At 61 days. I care more about FP then ADR's as far as being tied to a park. Then I usually change it at least once or twice LOL. Last trip I changed about a week before hand.

I tend to not make ADR's until round 60 days or less as well just because when I make them earlier I almost always end up changing them, luckily I don't do much in park ADR eating so I can do resort ADR's without worrying about which park I'm doing that day. I tend to skip lunch or just grab CS while I'm bopping around the parks. Also I've had park hoppers or an AP for the last year or so and that means not being tied to a park.

The only time I make sure to do it early is if I'm trying to get a particular show or event. But I don't do those often.

 

[Mikie]

It's hard to imagine planning for 18 days! We always get "only" 6-8.

We like one table service meal per day as our rest time, so I start looking at crowd calendars about 7 months out. I use those to prioritize my dining choices and make ADRs at 180 days, which pretty much dictates our park days at that point. I don't know if it's typical, but this year Disney made a lot of changes to park schedules (extra magic hours days, park hours, shows like Fantasmic, ) which changed the predicted crowd levels a lot, all WELL within the 180 days I had already made my dining. Luckily, it didn't change park recommendations drastically and our trip went well, but if ADRs and Fastpasses didn't lock me in quite do much, I'd have changed my park days a little.

With 18 days, and depending on your party size, I'd probably pick about 8-10 restaurants, get those reservations aat 180 days, then try to just "wing it" on my remaining days. . . Trying to capture a balance between doing some favorite things and also allowing some spontenaity!

 

[poohfriend77]

At 61 days. I care more about FP then ADR's as far as being tied to a park. Then I usually change it at least once or twice LOL. Last trip I changed about a week before hand.

I tend to not make ADR's until round 60 days or less as well just because when I make them earlier I almost always end up changing them, luckily I don't do much in park ADR eating so I can do resort ADR's without worrying about which park I'm doing that day. I tend to skip lunch or just grab CS while I'm bopping around the parks. Also I've had park hoppers or an AP for the last year or so and that means not being tied to a park.

The only time I make sure to do it early is if I'm trying to get a particular show or event. But I don't do those often.

You make an interesting point. We've always decided park days just before the 180 mark (assuming calendars/EMH has been announced). But we are doing fewer table service meals these days, now that both kids are "adults." So I do see FP+ becoming a more important factor when planning our days!

 

[vtfretwell]

We are DVC members and do big trips every 2 years. I have not used the fastpass + yet so excited to see how the works and I am sure that it will change a lot of my plans. But that's ok. Really just looking forward. It is taking too long to get here

 

[whitney37354]

I make ADRs first & that will usually decide which parks we're going to on those days.

 

[marauder]

We did our critical ADRs first around ADR time period (Be Our Guest and Akershaus), that defined two days of our trip. Then we branched out from there. For other days I tended to make ADRs at resort locations instead of theme park so I could easily switch things around. A reservation at Kona, O'hana easily lends itself to either Epcot or MK. A reservation at Boma, Sanaa lends itself to either AK or HS. I then looked at things like Undercover Tourist crowd level calendar and made the Fast Pass+ reservations based on that and a combination of things like which parks I think my kids would want to go to first.

 

[POOHsie]

I start out with a list of ADRs that I wanted. At 180 days, I called Disney to get the toughest ones booked. Then I started to see where the easier ADRs might fit in with visits to the four separate parks. We had Park Hoppers, and that made it much easier to split our days as necessary to include an ADR. Our last trip, we ended up at AK, MK, EP, DHS then the same order again (each park visited twice). We ended up switching EP and DHS the second week because of Food & Wine. We moved EP to Monday instead of a crowded Sunday.

In previous visits we have taken the monorail from Epcot to MK just to view Wishes and MSEP, then back to Epcot for EMH. Another visit, we went to DHS just for Fantasmic, then back over to EP. Park Hoppers are a must.

 

[lustergirl]

I like to look at the park hours and schedules and book my food ressies around that and what park I would like to visit that day or night.

 

[HatboxHaint]

I pick park days first then make ADRs based on which park I will be in. I use touring plans, operating hours, etc... to select the best park. Then make ADRs and readjust.......course then it gets down to 60 days out and you realize you could only get certain FP+'s at certain times and it blows your 180+ ADRs to bits.

 

[U2_rocks!]

Yeah, it used to be easy: make any hard-to-get dinner reservations at the 180-day mark (and hopefully park hours would be out by then). Then plan your park days based on park hours (are you EMH do-ers or avoiders for example). Then you can fill in other meal reservations. It also depends on if you're planning park hoppers or not - for such a long trip I usually wouldn't bother, so it would be more important to get the park days right before making ADRs.

Now of course with FP+ being only 60 days out (vs 180) you can totally ruin your park days plans if you have any hard-to-get FP requirements! I can see it being hard to line up popular restaurants and FP+ rides in the same park on the same day if your trip was shorter - I think with an 18-day trip you will be OK.

 

[SarahJC]

The majority of the time, I just wing it (park hopper.) If I have a ressie at HS in the evening.. that's where I'll be for the rest of the night. And my FP for the morning (or whenever I feel like waking up) will be in the MK. Whatever I feel like.. I'm on vaca

 

[mi*vida*loca]

At the 6 month mark I know we always start and end our trip with MK. I know when our off day will be and I know we want to do MK PM EMH.

Then I will make our 4 must do ADR's around those 4 days at the 180 day mark. CRT (DD's pick), Chef Mickey's (DS's pick), Cali Grill (adults only pick) and BOG. For a 10 night trip I'm pretty sure these are the only ADR's I'll be making. I plan on going more with the flow and picking ADR's the day of or the night before. Looking forward to trying new places and being more open to new places.

Once I get to the 70-61 day mark I'll get serious with picking our park days to tie into FP+. I look at crowd calendars and EMH.

FP+ is a priority over ADR's for us.

 

[ophelia2002]

We always have to start at the Magic Kingdom because to me, that park just IS Disney. Other than that, I actually base the parks on dining reservations. My family really enjoys the dining experiences so I make dining reservations at our fav places first and then we go to the parks based on that. So, for example, we really love the Prime Time Cafe at HS so if the best reservation I can get is for the 3rd day of our trip, then day 3 becomes our HS day.

 

[Kristina4109]

Since we travel from the West Coast, arrival day is really just arrival NIGHT. So we look at the resort we're staying at and enjoy arrival evening at the closest park. (When we stayed at the BCV, we enjoyed IllumiNations at Epcot. When we stayed at the Poly, we enjoyed MSEP and Wishes at the MK, etc.)

The rest of the trip I plan as soon as the EMH hours are announced for each park. I like to go to a park the day AFTER it has evening EMH when possible. We do not have the steam to stay late at a park (we're rope drop people) and I find the parks that have evening EMH has relatively low attendance the NEXT day.