When is your first park day

[Rod B]

This is for my out of towners who travel to WDW. When is your first park day?? My family and I are from NY, so we always fly down to Florida. We always book a early flight so by the time we arrive to Orlando, we pick up our rental car and head straight to the parks. Usually we get to the parks by about 10-11am. We leave our luggage in the car and have a full day. Normally we do animal kingdom as our first day because going to the parks straight from the airport can get tiring by the evening time, and since we have our fast pass set for the day once it hits around 7ish we head to the hotel plus animal kingdom is our "easiest park" because there's not as much shows and parades like the other parks. Soon as we do the lion king show and ride all the rides, we pretty much had enough for the day..

 

[SaintsManiac]

We had a mix of arriving late at night and going first thing the next morning, or flying/driving in early and going on arrival day. Usually the MK.

We won't be AP holders after this year, so we plan to fly in middle of the day, hang out at the resort and start park touring the following day. I can't justify arrival day for our next trip, because of our ticket situation.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

We drive down from dc area. On arrival day we do chef Mickeys at some point, hang out at our resort, and resort hop. The last two trips, since we were staying at Poly, we caught the fireworks at night from our balcony, with a glass of wine. We always do MK on our first (and last) park days. We arrive on a Saturday and do MK that Sunday.

 

[Daisy7425]

We do pretty much the same as you, OP. Catch a very very early flight from the midwest and are in the parks by 1:00 or 2:00. We do three FPs and pretty much head back to the hotel. The cost of the extra day is usually almost nothing because we stay for a week or longer, so we do it for the three fast passes.

 

[Rwsm0319]

We usually stay at the Beach Club and head to Epcot on the first day for a few hours because we fly in early like you do. This time, we're stay at SSR and because of all of the FP changes at HS, we're heading there for a few hours. We also have FP for HS on the evening that we are at Discovery Cove, as well as the day we have scheduled for HS. This allowed up FP for all three tier 1 rides.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

We are in NJ and get the earliest flight we can get. Usually 6 am out of Philly. We take DME to our resort, drop off our bags and hit the MK. We are usually in the MK by 11 am. We stay until it closes. This past trip we even did the HEA dessert party. We run on pure adrenaline that first day that we really don't feel tired until we get back to the resort.

When the kids were younger we drove a few times and would go to visit XH's uncle in Sanford and stay the night there. Then got up bright and early, checked into our resort and were in the MK by 9:30-10 am and we would stay until it closed.

Since we stay for 8-10 days adding a day of tickets isn't that much more money. Especially now with FP+ it makes complete sense to us to add on one day and go into a park even if it's only for the 3 FP+ rides.

 

[NickC]

We almost always do early flights, so we are ready to go by 1 or 2 pm. We usually go to a park on arrival day, but this year, we might do Disney Springs. We love The Void, and with dinner and the new Cirque de Soleil show, we should have plenty to do there now.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Usually we hit the parks first thing because the room isn't ready until afternoon anyway. Our next trip we arrive the night before and are staying in Orlando, then catching MDE the first day. That puts us in WDW after rope-drop, so we are doing something we have never done before, and are planning a non-park day. Should be interesting as we also won't have a room for most of the day. Really looking forward to just touring around the world on the monorail and Skyliner. We'll end the day in Disney Springs, maybe make it back to BLT in time to catch the fireworks from TOTW. I balked at the no-park day 1 but it's really looking like a lot of fun.

 

[marjorieeeee]

My flight from Seattle lands around four in the afternoon. My priority for arrival day is dinner. After 8pm Florida time is good dinner time for Seattle, and gives a lot of cushion for flight delays. Last trip I hit the food and wine festival, Fourth of July was California Grill for fireworks!

 

[jagafen]

This trip, we're landing at MCo by 7:30am, so we'll DME to BC and then head to Epcot until our room is ready. The gameplan after that is to head over to MK to finish out the evening. It's open until 10p, so we'll see how long we're able to hang in there!

 

[Farro]

We stay for 9 nights and buy 9 day hoppers.

Get earliest flight out of Chicago (usually 6-6:30 am) and can be in parks by 2 (probably earlier if everything goes smoothly) if we want! Usually we hang out at resort and make fast passes for 5:00 or later.

Fly out early on last day so we don't need park tickets.

 

[Mika02]

I'm from NJ and we usually do a resort day check in early if we can and hang out in the resort or hang out at Disney Springs

 

[Stinkerbell's Mommy]

My flight from Seattle lands around four in the afternoon. My priority for arrival day is dinner. After 8pm Florida time is good dinner time for Seattle, and gives a lot of cushion for flight delays. Last trip I hit the food and wine festival, Fourth of July was California Grill for fireworks!

Our flight from Phoenix arrives around 4PM as well. I figure by the time we get our luggage, get to our hotel and get settled it'll be about dinner time. We are in the Disney Springs area so I made a dinner reservation for that night. We'll hit the 1st park the next morning.

 

[calitook]

If I get in early, head to either MK or Epcot because those are usually the parks I go to 2x. When I stayed at the Poly I did a pool day and Spirit of Aloha on arrival day.

 

[loves to dive]

We drive down from north Georgia, it's about a 7 to 8 hour drive, depending on if I'm driving or my son is driving. We usually get to the resort between 1:30 and 3 just depending on when we leave. If our room is ready, we drop our bags off in the room, go to the bathroom, put the car keys and other stuff in the safe and head off to a park. If the room isn't ready, we either leave the bags in the car if we are staying at a value or moderate or store them with bell services if staying at a deluxe and head to a park. We don't really plan which park we are going to. If there is a festival going on, chances are it will be Epcot to get some food at the booths since we only snack on the way down. If there isn't a festival and we aren't staying at an Epcot deluxe, we just hop on the first park bus arriving.

 

[Shellyred8]

If we have an AP and a flight that gets in early-ish, we will hit a park the first day. Which park we hit will depend on where we are staying. We usually go to the closest park to where we are staying. If we don't have an AP, the first day will be a resort day or DS or Mini-golf day. I have to admit, I kind of like this approach better. It gives me a chance to wind-down a bit on arrival day before hitting the parks.

 

[Lovetherodent]

We fly from the middle of nowhere (I have a choice of just 3 flights out a day). Until this trip, arrival is pretty late due to connections. I make a late ADR for somewhere near the resort, and we start in on the parks the next day. This trip, however, we land between noon and 2:30 (all on different flights; one of us has to take the redeye to get in before evening), and we're staying at BWI. With two parks within walking distance, we are planning to get an evening in at DHS before MMRR opens and after the crush of people trying for ROTR boarding groups.

 

[Bullseye]

We usually land at MCO around 9:30am and check-in at resort within the hour. We don't do parks on arrival day. We usually eat lunch at resort QS and then we head to a waterpark for the day. Hoping/praying room is ready when we return in late afternoon....we refresh, drive over to Sweet Tomato for dinner, and then to Super Target for groceries. Parks start bright and early on day two!

 

[kiford]

It's always depended on when we get to our hotel. If we arrived before 3 pm, we'd go to the parks, have dinner and stay through fireworks/evening show. So we always purchased tickets to cover the day of arrival but not departure. We now have annual passes with the idea that we'll decide when we get there depending on how tired we are and what's open. Over the last year we have been arriving late (i.e., after midnight) so it's a moot point but when purchasing APs we figured that even if we arrived at a resort at 7 pm and we felt like it, we'd still go to the parks because we weren't "wasting" a ticket even if we just went in for food or the fireworks. It just hasn't worked out yet that we've had that option due to flight schedules. Pretty much right now our only options are to arrive late morning (which requires pick up at home at between 2-4 am which just isn't going to happen in this person's lifetime), mid afternoon (arrival ~2 pm) or arrival after midnight.

 

[winnieofpooh]

We typically fly in on the first flight in the morning, getting into Orlando around 10/11ish. We spend that day at Disney Springs and relaxing, and our first park day is the next day.