We found a cheaper flight home, departing at 630p, and I’m wanting to make it into an extra park day, figuring we can play until 2:30ish and still make it to mco on time.
If we add this day, it’ll be 8 park days total. MK will get 1 full and 2 half (travel) days. Our arriving flight gets in at 11am, so I’m figuring at 2pm arrival at MK. HS and Epcot will now get 2 days and AK will get 1.
I feel like this extra half day will allow us to really open up the schedule and slow down and enjoy more of the parks, with added in pool time and sleeping in.
Not crazy at all. It’s nice to have a little taste of the magic before the sad ride home. I think you have a solid plan, but make sure you have plenty of time to get back to your resort, grab the luggage, get the ride, etc bc the lines at MCO can be insane for both bath check and TSA.
We got tsa precheck specifically for MCO. We’ve had bad experiences and we are diehard two hours early folks. I figure if we’re out of the park no later than 3, we can Uber to the airport in a reasonable amount of time and still be at bag drop two hours early. We’ll likely be moving by 2:30 though.
I’ve done this multiple times - take a 5 pm flight out and park it up in the morning. Yesterday, we were in AK 11-1:30, took resort transport back to AoA, and Florida Towncar picked us up at 2:30.
I recommend bringing a change of clothes and wet wipes in your personal item if it’s going to be a hot day and change in the airport.
I’ve also taken a shower in the pool locker rooms at BC before heading home.
If you were going from, like, two to three park days I might say it wasn’t worth the money but going from seven to eight is negligible, do it for sure! We’ve done this on our last two trips and it’s been a lovely way to spend the last day, doing a bit of a “best of” or picking up those last things you haven’t done yet. Our last trip was supposed to be an MK day and then my son because obsessed with the idea of getting all the Wilderness Explorer badges so we pivoted to AK so we could take a trip to the Conservation Station and had an amazing day.
While I think an extra day in the parks is great and I fully support that part of the plan. I would ask myself how important it is that I get back the day of the flight. With all of the issues in flying of late, the chances of a 6PM flight go way up. If it is a direct flight, I probably still do it, as a delay is not catastrophic. If connecting I probably do not risk it.
One trip (pre-pandemic when airports were functioning better), we tried this approach, but had connecting flights. We got delayed forever at MCO due to thunderstorms and then someone stole our flight crew because they had a window to get out that didn’t work for us. We didn’t leave MCO until around midnight for what was scheduled for like a 7PM flight. Anyway, missed our connection at BWI by a ton and the best they could do was get us on a 2PM flight from BWI to CLE the next day. We ended up renting a car and just driving back overnight which was less than ideal. Since then I’ve been avoiding late flights on our exit day, but again it comes back to how important is it for you to definitely make your return on the flight day.
I tend to agree with that sentiment. Although sometimes my wife (or at least her boss) disagrees which can make it awkward if we miss that last flight out as I take the blame…
Thankfully it’s a direct with three later options. I too am usually weary of later flights, but getting stuck until morning wouldn’t be the end of the world!
I had a real difficult choice when I went to the airport after my solo day and the United kiosk offered me $1000 to fly home the next day. I flew home to my family but I did stand there for a solid minute considering it.
