Park hopping strategies

I’m a big fan of this site and the book. We’ve taken a couple of trips to Disney World using touring plans and guidance, and they’ve been great. We are going for a short trip this spring and I find I have different questions now that I’ve been to the parks before. My question is, what is the best strategy for park hopping, once you’ve been to the parks and know what you like? For example:

  • get fastpasses for the second park of the day, arrive to the first park early and ride a lot before the crowds arrive
    OR
  • get early morning fastpasses at park 1, and once used, look at Lines to figure out lowest wait times/crowds to pick park#2 for the day, and get another fastpass there
    OR
  • vary plans based on crowd levels
    OR
  • whatever you suggest!

I’m trying to figure that out for our trip in March and don’t find any guidance. Would love your recommendations!

I’m a big fan of AM emh + pre-booking 3 fastpasses later at the predetermined park you’re hopping to.
Or
Rope dropping park a, then hopping to park b for light tour / three pre-scheduled fastpasses + nighttime show.
I also do the afternoon hotel break thing. Why pay for a Disney hotel if you’re not gonna use it?

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I park hop just about every day. Generally I will rope drop one park and save my FPs for the second park. That allows me to do the headliners in both parks. That being said, what I do is also dependent on what park I am going to. I schedule HS for a morning and a night and I FP it both times. I love RnR, ToT and ST. I often go to EP and never go on an attraction, and I can visit AK early morning and at night and ride EE single rider as many times as I want.

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Is the Express Transportation option still running? I sure hope so. We think it’ll make park hopping so much easier

There were reports on lines chat the other day that it was. It is a good option if you go park to park. I realized I hardly ever do that- I usually go to a resort in between parks.

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Thank you!

check out my post in the Touring plans section…titled “Park Hopping FP?”. I didn’t really get any good responses but read my follow up trip report. I know it will probably be busier in March but we were able to rope drop HS and change our HS FPs for Epcot FPs in the afternoon (at 10am on 9am rope drop). Then went to AK at the end of the night and used FP for EE and walked on Dinosaur. At Epcot TT and Soaring passes could be available in the afternoon due to all of the people holding on to FEA passes. My original FPs for HS were not good times as I switched plans five days prior to visiting (dropping FEA). I was unable to find earlier passes at HS so we did all of the right things at RD and rode the four rides that were most important to us.

Thank you! I read it over and am amazed at how much ground you were able to cover. We do plan to get to the parks early, am hoping we will have short lines as well. Thanks for the tips.