Heading to the World in October and my friend and I have decided to attempt all 4 parks in one day on our last day of our 3 day trip. We’ve both been to the parks many, many times, so we are enjoying this as a new challenge and aren’t worried about the pressure to see it all.
I’ve created Touring Plans for each leg and we feel generally comfortable aiming for 4 rides, a snack and a photo with each icon at each park, knowing that we may need to adjust if we start falling behind.
However, I am struggling to decide what the best mode of transportation for this would be. I will have my car, but wonder if some of the Disney transportation may be more efficient (like being able to bypass TTC).
Our current plan of attack for Sunday, 10/20:
HS: arrive for 6am opening, depart by 9:30am
MK: depart by 2:30pm
EP: depart by 5:30pm
AK: park closes at 9pm
How would you choose to get between each park if you had any of the free options available? I would like to avoid Uber/Minnie Vans since we have a car and I just can’t justify spending that extra money.
There are many people on this forum that are far more knowledgeable than I am, but I’d drive my car to one of the Boardwalk hotels (grab a coffee or tea at one of their restaurants), walk or boat to HS. Then you can head back to Boardwalk to grab a bus to MK. Take monorail from MK to Epcot. Then back to Boardwalk and drive your car to AK.
Not sure the best way to do it, but my wife and I were going to do something similar on our last day in November. Take bus from our Pop to MK to start the day. Take boat or Monorail to TTC, then Monorail to Epcot. Take Boat/walk to HS. Take Skyliner back to Pop so that we used each of Disney transportation options that day.
I would drive to HS in the morning and park. Then take a bus to MK. Then monorail to Epcot (you will have to change at the TTC). Then boat/walk/Skyliner (!!) back to HS to pickup your car and drive to AK!
I did this earlier this year and relied 100% on Disney transport without any trouble. Just curious how set you are in the order you plan on doing them. I started at HS cause I had EMM, then walked to Epcot (maybe 20mins) then took Monorail to MK, then a bus to AK. I was done before dark.
I have been considering switching the order between MK and Epcot. The main thing there is that our original plan was MK for most of the day so that is where I booked my FP, and we figured dinner at F&W would be good. I could rebook my Space and BTMRR FP for early afternoon, but getting a different time for 7DMT at this point would be tough. And our priority for the day is the MK rides, and think the biggest bang for the buck is having FP there. Then we can book whatever FP we find for EP and go TT single rider. We also feel like Epcot needs the least amount of time for what we want to do, so is the easiest one to cut short if HS and MK take longer.
I could convince myself either way…and back and forth daily until the trip honestly!
This is an interesting idea. Would let us take advantage of the short walk between EP and HS, and the monorail between EP and MK. And end up with the car close at the end of the night which is a big perk. I probably need to assign an average travel time for each method of travel and then put together some possible combinations.
So yeah, if you want to spend more time in MK and you have the Fastpasses then keep your order. You will still have plenty of time. I like @melcort10 's idea of driving to BW. When I was there last spring my nephew drove to BW to park for our HS day. He told the guard he was picking us up and just parked the car there. Not sure if he had to give our name. You could always do the bump and run.
I’ve done four parks in one day on two different trips. The first time we did we just drove our car and it was honestly not a problem (now we were staying at the Poly so we didn’t have to deal with MK parking). The second time we didn’t have a car and just used Disney transport–which really ended up being just the bus system. The only problem we had was the end of the day when MK closed at we wait 40 minutes for a bus. We were exhausted and that was not fun.
Based on your FPP situation, I’d consider AK first, then MK. Drive your own car to AK, then move it to either HS or an Epcot resort and rely on Disney transportation from there. AK-MK-Epcot-HS. Still gets you to your FPPs in MK and dinner in Epcot, plus you’ll get to see more of the animals in AK, because your original plan would have had you there after dark. The tradeoff is you miss EEMH at HS.
This is worth considering as well. HS stays open latest as well.
We are doing EEMH at HS two days prior to this, so we may see how much we can get done and decide if it is worth doing again. If HS crowds start to pick up significantly in October, the EEMH may be a big deal. We also have other time at AK, so arent worried about the live animal portion of the park for this particular day. But from a order perspective it still may make sense. May make this a late decision based on how things are going in the days leading up!
This is good to hear. I lean towards driving because then I am not at the mercy of Disney’s schedule. I am feeling a lot better that ultimately folks have had success with both methods so it may not be worth stressing about too much!
I will have to admit that we did preferred parking (staying on property you just have to pay the difference between regular and preferred which I think was around a $20 or $25 difference at the time). It did make park hopping easy because we were always at the front of the parking lot which made the walk to the entrance quick.
@TarHeel, we did this a few weeks ago…with DD8 and DD11. We totally didn’t plan it…it was our last before leaving because of Dorian (we cut our trip short 1 day.). We wanted to hit all of our fav rides. DH would find FP as we were waiting in line. We drove to each park, did regular parking and used the trams (and monorail from TTC). We started around 9 am and were back at our offsite hotel by 9pm. Have fun!! We had a blast park hopping!
We did this a few weeks ago on our arrival day. We were in AK by 10:30, then took bus to HS, took the boat to Epcot then monorail to MK. Our “rules” for our challenge we to get a photo in front of the park icon (castle, tree of life…etc), have one iconic snack in each park, ride one ride, and get a picture with Mikey and Minnie in each park. We booked our first two fast passes in AK (Navi River and Mickey & Minnie) then booked our last for MK. HS and Epcot were pretty empty so it was easy to get on a ride at those parks.
Enjoy, we had a blast and it took us about 10 hours total