I’ve seen several posts of people doing 4 parks in 1 day. I would really love to hear how people went about accomplishing it. Like, which park to start & which parks make sense to go to in order to optimize time? How to get from park to park (buses, Uber, monorail, drive ourselves)? What rides? Which park to use FPP? I wouldn’t think having a sit down meal at dinner would work, right? Or maybe it would give us a chance to rest?
We will be there in the Fall 2017, and I think it would be fun to try this on our next to last day. My kids will be 11, 10, & 8. We will have PH tix & staying on property. I think we may want to end at MK on a non-party night. We might be able to time it out, depending on the days, to get into our first park during EMH.
On our last trip, my husband and I did all 4 parks in one day, but it was our last day ( on a trip where we had 9 park days), so we just redid our favorite things in each park. We started in the park that had the morning extra magic hours, and ended at the Magic Kingdom, since it didn’t close until midnight. We were exhausted, but it was so much fun! That being said, we did 2 rides at Hollywood studios, the Safari and a lunch stop at Animal Kingdom, 3-4 attractions in Epcot, then ended in Magic Kingdom. Granted, our favorites weren’t exactly “Headliner” attractions, except the Safari, and Toy Story… overall, jumping from park to park was pretty easy, but we were good and tired by the end of the day. I believe we left during the fireworks. However, it was a fun, nice, busy day. We rode everything that we wanted to do one more time before our trip was over.
We just did four parks in one day during our trip in August.
We decided to set up guidelines of things to accomplish in each park to make the day more interesting. We had to get two photos taken together as a family in each park (this turned into arriving and departing photos!). Also, we had to do two rides, shows or character meets in each park. If for some reason we were not able to accomplish a show, ride or meeting a character, we substituted getting photos taken - two for each “ride” missed. We had hoped to also include transportation on a boat, car, monorail and bus, but we decided to drive as it was raining and forgo the boat.
The order of parks made sense based upon park hours for the day. But it was a similar pattern to other liners - AK, HS, EP and then MK.
We ended up going on a rainy day, and had several rides break down while we were on them (or waiting for them) and we had trouble finding photographers. But we were still able to accomplish everything and we learned we had to be a bit flexible with our plans. We were on Soarin when the film broke, and even with our FPP for the ride it was about 90 to 120 minutes after arriving for the FPP that we left the ride. This meant we arrived at MK as the park closed and Wishes had just let out. This was about 90 minutes later than we had hoped for, but we decided a ride photo (you know those three from Space Mountain) would count as a photo.
Within our day we planned not only a rest in the middle of the day at the hotel (YC) but also a table service meal. If I had to do it over again I would have planned dinner better, we managed to eat at Casey’s after Wishes, and it was very crowded! But I had no idea what other restaurants would be open during EMH. But taking some time for a table service meal may have been possible because we drove not only to AK, but also to HS.
I certainly recommend trying it - my kids DD13 and DS15 both had a wonderful time!
We have done 4 parks in one day many times. We try to choose a day that end with evening EMH at MK as this means we can do lots of rides late in. Given this, we always plan to have a long lie-in the next morning.
We usually stay at the YC/BC. We start at DHS, followed by AK and then Epcot. We have a TS lunch at Epcot, then a rest/swim at the hotel. We arrive at MK about 8ish and have 6 hours there (if EMH UNTIL 2am). We use Disney transport to get to and between the parks.
We usually have targets for things to do in each park usually 3 rides, character meet (sometimes the same character on each park), something to eat, photo in front to icon.
We reserve our FPPs for MK so we can ride the headliners around wishes etc.
It’s a great day we all really enjoy, but be warned that it is tiring.
I like the idea of getting in your favorites one last time.