Hey there Disney experts! I’m planning a one-and-only trip for my 4 boys (ages 13, 12, 9, 8) this September. My parents (middle 60s) are joining us. We are there 8 nights. Our plane arrives at 9:30am and we will be taking ME to Pop Century. I’m trying to plan which parks we’ll go to each day and for about how many hours. This will help me make my FPP selections next week. I’m planning for us to rest several afternoons and all day Saturday. Does it seem like I’m appropriately allocating time to each park? My kids are most excited for HS and AK. We plan to skip baby rides like Dumbo and aren’t interested in princesses (although they did say they’d ride the Frozen ride with me 
We are on a quick service dining plan so I am not constrained by dining reservations. If you have any input at all, I’d love to hear it! I haven’t been to Disney since I was a kid. Thanks!
Elizabeth
PS I know I may need to totally rearrange this after I get my fastpasses!
disney plan.pdf (145.6 KB)
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Your PDF plan just says which parks you are going to on each day. If that’s all you need to know about, then it looks fine. It looks like you have plenty of time for breaks and transportation before hopping to another park each day.
Yeah I’m working on individual touring plans for each day/park, but I didn’t think anyone would want to look through all that! Thanks for taking a look!
If you make your touring plans public…and post the links, most people on here are pretty happy to look through them. Especially if they’re going through their own planning withdrawals.
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Hi Elizabeth,
One general recommendation that I would make is maybe consider less days doing two parks. Transportation to and from the parks can eat up a lot of time and eat into your afternoon break. With your crew I’d try to head off a rebellion! Another way to approach the two park strategy is to just plan to go back for fireworks and ice cream, or to see Pandora at night…
I hope that you have a great trip!
-Jack
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Ok Jack - can you explain a little more please?
Would you suggest staying most of the day at the park (like til 5ish), heading back to the hotel, and then just going back for an evening show without rides?
Is that kinda what you mean?
I’m definitely interested in keeping my people happy and not too overly exhausted. We like to go, go, go and my kids are cross country runners so I think they’ll be up for the walking, but I also thought they’d be happy to swim and get out of the heat midday.
My parents are another story, but they can break off from us and go rest whenever they want.
The crazy hours this fall have me worried that we will all be too exhausted to enjoy the 2nd half of the trip!
Thanks for your help!
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And what is my crew likely to rebel against? Leaving the park too soon, or all the transportation?
Not quite sure what you meant…
I always say that you can never plan for bladders and stomachs! The size of your troop will affect the speed that you can move through the parks. September can still be pretty hot, too (like summer hot!).
You can always adjust on the fly. I can only say that I’ve made plans that looked like yours at the beginning, but nothing like that in reality. If you know what your ‘must-do’s’ are and you get them scheduled then the plan will take shape around that. The concept of the afternoon break is spot-on though. When everyone else is getting to the parks for the day you want to be laying in the sun at the pool.
The constant movement. After a few days into some trips my kids used to ask me ‘is it our break day yet?’
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You’re welcome. The other thing that I thought is that your parents could help in case of the boys decided they weren’t up for something. In my experience the grandparents have always been willing to stay back or bring someone back early. In fact I’ve seen a lot of magical memory stories that start with that scenario.
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Even with afternoon rests, it could end up like an exhausting trip.
On 7 mornings, you plan to RD XMH on 6 mornings (twice at 6am, three time at 7am and once at 8 am).
With transportation and the turnstile, it means that you’ll have to be at least +/- 45 mins at the POP Bus stop (on Skyliner if it’s on).
And on 8 evenings, you plan to close the park on 6 of them, which shortens your night (because you have to get up early next morning).
We love RD parks, as it’s the best time to get things done.
We also love to enjoy the park late evening.
However, I would try to reduce the number of evenings to 1 per park (total of 4).
Maybe I would try something like:
Sep 24: AK (Afternoon & Evening in AK)
Sep 25: HS (RD & Afternoon - Rest in Evening)
Sep 26: EP (RD & Afternoon - Rest in Evening)
Sep 27: MK (RD - Rest in Afternoon - Evening in MK)
Sep 28: Rest
Sep 29: AK (RD - Rest in Afternoon - Evening in EP)
Sep 30: MK (RD - Afternoon - Rest in Evening)
Oct 1: HS (RD - Rest in Afternoon - HS in Evening)
That way, you get to recharge a little bit more (by not closing parks every night) and you reduce your travel time between parks.
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Thanks so much! Love that advice. Here’s my new plan and the best part that it is only 2 hours less in the parks and seems like so much more rest!
disney plan option 2.pdf (144.8 KB)
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