We have a short 4 night trip in September so that my husband can go to MNSSHP ( its his favorite and he hasn’t been since Covid). We have a few days for the other 3 parks. 2 Day hopper was less than 3 day base so was planning on that. But on Undercover tourist the 3 day is less. We have 2 kids (10 & 8) and have been to the parks multiple times but never done hopper before and they love their pool time.
This was our tentative hopper plan
Sat - Flight lands 12:30 - pool/ disney springs for dinner
Sun - Hollywood Studios
Monday - AM- AK / PM-Epcot
Tues- AM - pool / PM - MNSSHP
Wed - AM Pool/ 2pm - depart for airport
With the 3 day I would move AK to the morning of MNSSHP I think. Any Pro’s Con’s I’m not thinking of?
But I’m not one to prefer hopping. Even in January when I had a complimentary hopper ticket, I don’t think I hopped even once. It’s just not how I tour.
That’s a lot of pool time in a short trip. Do you children love swimming? If so, this plan looks great. If 2 days of pool would be fine, I would do the 3 days base. I like a whole day in Epcot personally and switching the AK day to party day would give you a little more time in that park it seems.
I always get hoppers and usually use them. On my July trip I had 8 park days and hopped 7 of them. But if I was in your situation I would go for 3 days base; Sun-DHS, Mon-EP, and Tues AK until the start of the MNSSHP, and then the party (which is almost a “full day” if you get there right when it starts.
Whether to get hopper is a complex choice and usually I wouldn’t be choosing whether to do another day OR do hopper. My number of days is usually fixed so I’m just deciding hoppers or not.
In my experience, hoppers are most useful if 1) you want to attend each park and need to make it to multiple parks a day in order to hit them all or 2) you have a ticket over 4 days. The longer my trip, the more likely I will want to hop one of those days.
On a 4-day trip, I would do base tickets. 2-3 just depends on if you want to hit all four parks and whether after hours events, etc. allow you to attend one of them outside normal park hours.
Personally I would do 3 day base if it was between that and 2-day hopper. Missing one park would be better than trying to cram 4 into two days.
Alternative point of view, given that y’all have been multiple times and like your pool time.
Two day park hopper
Morning in a park lunch about 11
Probably AK once
Early afternoon pool
Early evening in a park
Prob Epcot once
I would be asking each kid - aside from the pool - what one thing do you most want to do in each park. You can call it your iceberg trip. Lotsa water and tips of parks.
Thanks for all the feedback. We are staying at AKL Kidani. My kids really do love the pool. I’m kind of tired of going full tilt at the parks and want to just hit our favorite rides and relax more (but team rope drop for life). I was thinking that having the morning of MNSSHP off would be nice (and going to MK as early as we can). But I think we could knockout AK in a few hours with plenty of time before the party. 3 full days is definitely much easier for planning purposes.
The problem to me with hopping on a short trip is the time wasted in transit. If I have a longer trip I can take a slower pace and hop around to enjoy this and that. On a short 2 or 3 day trip I can really only see doing one park per day anyway. But I’m not RD to midnight either. So timewise, PH on a shorter trip seems wasteful to me.
It depends on how unhappy you would be if a “must do” is skipped. If something is down and you only have one park day there you’re out of luck. I like staying at Dolphin(great pool, BTW), so Epcot is usually my hop at dinner time, finish out the evening park, for ease of getting home at the end of the day.
I like having the option leaving a park, if rain closes too much down, or crowds a mess etc
Ive never stayed at Animal Kindom lodge, but Ive heard travel time to most parks is longer, so breaking in the middle of day for pool time is going to eat into a lot of park time. We tend to do pool on arrival days, or break days, or leaving day. Its just too hard for me to pay $$$ for park tickets and then just spend a lot of my time at the pool and not at the park I can do a staycation at ahotel at home with a cool pool.
But we arent local or DVC or AP holders, so the expenses of flights/hotels/tickets makes Disney usually not an annual event. The past couple of years have been an exception, as we did DL last summer. And DW in 2021 with grandchildren.
And I got talked into a Disney Cruise this summer, and then said wellll ok, we can do a couple of DW days before… Im a pushover for grandkids.
Sat - Flight lands 12:30 - pool/ disney springs for dinner Sun - Hollywood Studios Monday - AM- AK / PM-Epcot Tues- AM - pool / PM - MNSSHP Wed - AM Pool/ 2pm - depart for airport
I would take the 3 day one-park and maybe split it up as follows:
Sat - Flight lands 12:30 - pool/ disney springs for dinner
Sun - Hollywood Studios - add a midday break for the pool and then back to HS for fantasmic or to get in line for RotR at park close.
Monday - Epcot - grab a GotG boarding group at 7am,1pm, or 6pm - enter the park from international gateway at rope drop to get on Remi right away. - add an afternoon break for more pool time!
Tues- AM - pool / PM - MNSSHP - not sure how Tron’s virtual queue will be handled for people with hard tickets. Might be possible to get one for this day. If going in early, do the pirate adventure treasure hunt! We enjoyed that on our last trip.
Wed - AM Animal Kingdom / 2pm - depart for airport