Will Park Hopping Be Necessary?

[Minerva]

I'd like a little advice from you veteran visitors. I'll be taking my two children who will be 12 and turning 9 on the trip to WDW next year Nov. 26-Dec. 3. This will be my second visit but the first was in 1977 so we may as well say it's my first and their first. Arrival day I don't plan to get park tickets. The kids are all excited about riding the monorail and I want to visit some resorts so the plan is to check out the monorail resorts. I'm wondering if I really need to spend the extra money to add on hopping to our tickets. We'll have 7 days in the parks, even the last day we won't have to leave for the airport until around 5 if flight times stay the same as they are now. I plan to get MVMCP tickets one night to surprise my daughter for her birthday so basically we'll have one day for AK and two each for MGM and Epcot and two days plus a night for MK. Since we've never been there before and everything will be new and worth exploring plus we're not commando touring kind of people are we going to be ok with being limited to one park a day? I don't think with the dates we're going that we're going to run into huge crowds at any of the parks, which would make me want to get out and go to another one! LOL What do you think, are park hoppers something I can skip or are they necessary?

 

[gigi1313]

i think it will depend on the parks' hours and what you plan to do outside the parks... when we were there in sept, there were a few nights that mk closed significantly earlier than epcot, so we headed over to epcot for the evening... or the day when we did emh at ak and later went to mgm... if you don't mind being "done" w/parks at 5pm when ak closes (just as an example) then you should be fine not hopping... by 12 and 9 yo i would say that the kids could probably handle a full day, including the evening stuff w/out missing a beat... for us (the kids were 7 & 9) we found that splitting our day was better so we'd do an early morning, rest and go back for part two... but if the parks are open late enough, you could do pt 2 at the same park... or maybe have your pt 2 be a dinner at a resort or hddr or something... also, will you be getting any plusses? that would make a difference as well...

anyway, all that being said, i would probably go w/the basic ticket and then when the hours come out, finalize your touring plan and decide if you want to add the hopping feature...

enjoy!