Going in November with my husband and 2 children (girl age 7 and boy age 4). We are staying on property at GF. We arrive on a Weds and plan to check in and spend the day by the pool. Then we will do 3 park days - Thursday/Friday/Sat. I can’t decide how we should plan out our time. We have done Magic Kingdom a few times over the years but HS only once. Never been to Epcot or AK with the kids. My kids enjoy the characters but aren’t the type to want to wait on long lines to see them so we are really going more for the shows and rides.
Would you recommend hopper passes and if so which days do we split between which parks? Do I skip MK altogether and do a day in HS/AK/EP? Or some other combo?
If it were me I’d get hoppers so that you can still do all parks. I wouldn’t skip MK altogether with kids of those ages. Epcot has a lot of construction right now but also a lot of fun kid rides so would be worth a look.
This is so hard. We always get park hopper tickets, but that seems like a lot of $ for 3 day tickets. If I had to choose 3 parks with children, I think that my first choice would be MK. Next would be AK. Personally, my 3rd choice would be Epcot. Having just been there with DGD ages 3 and 1, HS had the least for them or for me.
I would go with park hoppers and would not skip MK with kids that age. I imagine that the walking bridge/path from Grand Floridian to MK would be open by November and you are just one monorail stop from MK (on the way there), so with hoppers, you could plan your mornings at the other three parks and then if you wanted to, hit up MK in the evenings for a couple of hours depending on how everybody is doing, as you’ll have easy access to and from MK
Will you be there during the Christmas party at MK? If so, MK will close to non party guests at 6 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and those are 2 of your days.
Wildly subjective. If I were to skip a park, it would definitely be AK. No need to think about it. But others love AK.
I am not sure I would want to park hop with only three days since there is a lot of wasted time transferring. Have you considered doing one park as an After Hours event, and then use tickets for the other parks?
We have 6 days at Disney in May, but aren’t doing AK except for a DAH event there. Rather spend our time in the other parks.
We are doing this on our next trip also. DS16 and I are doing DAH AK and spending our other three days in the other parks. That might be hard for OP though, with young kids.
I would skip AK if I was you. I also would not waste the money on hoppers. I have kids that are basically the same age And MK is a must because of the amount of rides that are perfect for that age
Do you think you will take midday breaks? If so hoppers might work. I’m staying at GF in the Spring and planning on hopping in and out of MK. My kids are 3 and 6 and MK will definitely be the favorite park.
Thanks! This is what is so hard. Each park has at least a few things I think they would enjoy but having not been to AK or EP in this century, I really have no idea if they will enjoy the day there or not.
In the past we haven’t taken mid day breaks even when my first was very young (she would just nap in her stroller). Now we have 2 that don’t need naps, I assume we will spend the whole day there.
Exactly. I think my son would really love AK since he isn’t going to be as into the princesses. But he would also love Toy Story land. Decisions, decisions!
@Sonicstef, I mentioned the party nights since if you don’t have a party ticket, and if you don’t have park hoppers, you might not want to do MK on a party night unless you are ok with being done in the park at 6 p.m. CL are usually pretty low on days of MNSSHP or MVMCP, and, with PH, we tend to go to MK on party days in the morning and then hop to another park in the evening. Of course attending a hard ticket event is an option if it is in the budget.
We did a two day park hopper and a water park day last year. I have three boys 9,8,6 at the time. We did the HS Early morning event as an extra but it was great we were able to do all the Toy Story ride and did a few other things then we hopped over to Epcot and where I had our fast-passes. Then the second hopper day we started at AK since I was able to get fast passes for FOP. My kids love the shows and the Safari! Then we headed to MK where we were able to pick up a couple more day off fast passes. All in all it was a couple of long days but we got to see and take pictures with all of the “important” characters on their list and ride just about everything we wanted to for a short trip!
My kids are one year older than yours (respectively) and they enjoyed all parks. We went to all 4 in 2 days, 2+2, morning to early evening every day with no breaks, but they crashed early. They are not into fireworks yet.
If it werent for SWGE we would’ve skipped HS, but my son and I are SW fans so we couldn’t miss it, so we did one morning at HS.
So, I would do park hopper. I’d probably divide one day between HS and Epcot. I see MK and AK as having more things to do for a whole day at least for my family.