Would welcome help on how to divide days

[MomToGandB]

We are heading to Orlando 9/29-10/7. We plan on having 7 park days. We will be a group of 5 adults and 5 kids, aged 6, 6, 4, 3, and almost 2. We'd like to do 1-2 days at Universal and the rest at Disney -- the adults are big HP fans and the characters at UoO are appealing to the kids.

I'd welcome any thoughts on how to divvy up our days. On our past visit, we ranked our Disney Parks as AK, HS, MK, and then Epcot. I think we'd consider skipping Epcot this round were it not for Anna and Elsa -- that will probably be a relatively short day for us. We are keen on seeing HEA and maybe Star Wars fireworks and/or Rivers of Light. I kind of want to repeat Fantasmic too, but it's my understanding it's pretty impossible to do both the Star Wars fireworks and Fantasmic in the same night. We don't have any interest in Illuminations. We are open to paying for both Early Morning Magic in MK and the HEA Dessert Party to make things run a little more smoothly. I also don't think we'll be crushed if we can't get a FoP FP.

With all of that being said -- I'm thinking we probably want 2 days at MK, 1 day at Epcot and 2 days at either AK or HS, with the other one getting 1 day. That would leave one day for Universal -- I'm not sure if we need a full two days though, would love thoughts. We can probably manage to skip naps for the baby 2-3 days in the entire stay -- other days we'll need a midday break and we're staying in Windsor Hills.

What do you think? I think I'm leaning toward 2 days at AK and 1 at HS, although that means giving up Fantasmic. And is 1 day at Universal acceptable? Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Tksolomom]

I love Universal, and am spending 3 days there our next trip, but with the ages of your children they might not be able to do a lot (i am not sure of their height). I think one day would be enough. I don’t think you will be able to do both shows at HS, but with Toy Story land opening, they might have made ten shows so you can see both. I would do your plans, 2 days at MK, 2 days at AK, and 1 day at the other parks.

I hoe you have a great trip!

 

[webcreatrix]

If you actually had 7 full days, I would do 5 at Disney and 2 at Universal. I think those are my ideal minimums. At Disney we would do 2 MK, 1 AK, 1 EP, and 1 HS.

 

[Artygal90]

You can do most everything in both Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure in one day with the right touring plan. Two days to fully experience both parks at a leisurely pace would be about perfect for me but one is definitely doable if you really pack it in and/or skip lots of attractions. Express passes would help a ton, but as you're staying offsite you'd need to purchase them separately. You can probably still do both in 1 day without express passes if you're willing to skip some stuff, especially thrill rides that get long waits like Hulk and Spiderman. You can do the Harry Potter sections in about 2-4 hours each depending on the wait times and how much shopping and eating you want to do. I'd recommend doing Diagon Alley in the morning and Hogsmeade in the evening, or vice versa, to avoid the worst crowds in the middle of the day. What characters are your kids interested in? I think the wait for Minions is the one 'kiddie' ride that tends to get really long waits.

As for Disney, what if you did this (this is just a rough order, you would probably want your Epcot 1/2 day in the middle somewhere):
1) MK day 1
2) a full day at AK, see RoL in the evening
3) a full day at HS, see the Star Wars show
4) Return to AK, and then park hop in the evening to see Fantasmic at HS if you want. OR - use this day as a flex day and go to whichever park you want to experience again. Actually, since you're not all wound up about Pandora, you want to see Fantasmic again, and Toy Story Land will have just opened, one day at AK might be enough for your group.
5) Spend a 1/2 day at Epcot doing the Frozen stuff and then spend the other half of the day as resort downtime.
6) MK day 2 (if you want/depending on party* dates)

Or, take the half-day at Epcot to do Frozen stuff and then hop to HS to see Fantasmic that night. That's a really easy park hop to do and you could rope-drop and take a nice long afternoon break, or sleep in, do Frozen in the afternoon, and go straight from EP to HS.

*I believe the Halloween party will be going on while you are at Disney, which means that MK will be closing early some nights and will be very packed on nights when it's open late. So if you want to see HEA from front and center the dessert party would probably be a wise purchase as the Hub will be extra-packed on non-party nights. If you end up deciding to do 2 days at Universal, adding in Early Morning Magic would help you fit MK into one day if you wanted. You'll want to check the party dates against your trip dates to schedule when exactly to slot in your MK day(s) to work around the party schedule. I believe the conventional wisdom is to go on a party night since the higher crowds on other days make the extra hours less useful for doing stuff. But I'm not sure how the timing on that would work out with naptimes and staying offsite. Someone else with more experience on this topic please chime in!

 

[MomToGandB]

These are all so helpful responses. Thank you so much. I do like the idea of splitting some of the days -- that way our group can also split up as needed to prioritize different things. Thank you!

 

[Wild4Walt]

I agree with ArtgalI90 - it's summed up greatly there.

We did both Universal parks in 1 day May 2015. We spent time shopping in Harry Potter's side of things in both parks but only did the Forbidden Journey, but even the wait time there was only about 30 minutes. We didn't do every show but did about half. We caught all the highlights and felt like one day was all we 'had' to have.

 

[Artygal90]

These are all so helpful responses. Thank you so much. I do like the idea of splitting some of the days -- that way our group can also split up as needed to prioritize different things. Thank you!

Glad I was at least a little helpful With 5 adults splitting up is probably a great idea both so everyone can get their priorities done and also so you don't get on each other's nerves too much (we had a party of 6 and it was just like herding cats)

 

[michbaron]

Our kids are young and we still love universal/islands of adventure, whenever we’ve gone they’ve been less crowded than Disney and we can hang out in Harry Potter world and the days are just more low key so we try to alternate them with our longer Disney days...

Universal parks typically close a little earlier than the Disney parks so if you did two days at universal and since they don’t have much night time entertainment right now you can leave at like 4 one day and then see fantasmic or the Star Wars fireworks that night... also if you’re willing to add on HEA dessert party or EMM it might be worth it to just add an extra day to use it to see fireworks at night after a universal day bc it usually isn’t much more to extend the amount of days