This Christmas will be the first time my family will have park hoppers. We are mainly doing hoppers so we can hop to MK on Dec 30 and EP on Dec 31 without having to stay at those busy parks during the rest of the day (we will be onsite guests and plan to schedule a dessert party at MK the 30th).
My questions are:
If your family uses park hoppers, how do you plan?
Do you book your 3 FPs for morning park usually then use the 4th, 5th, 6th, etc., at the other park?
Do you usually hop every day?
I always have hoppers, but rarely hop more than one or two times in a trip. I typically have a 5-day pass so I plan a full day at each park and then split the 5th day between 2 parks (usually MK in the AM and EP in the PM).
Lots of factors regarding which park to FPP. If you’re splitting your time evenly, most people will say save the FPPs for the second park - but if you’re hopping later in the day, then it might be better to use the FPPs in the first park. Also depends on which park I’m hopping to. If it’s EP, it’s probably to eat and spend time in WS, so FPPs are less important.
I think you need to figure out what works best for you. I park hop every day. My fast passes are more park dependent than time dependent . For example, I rarely make FPs for EP, regardless of the time of day. I always, and I mean always, make FPs at HS. Due to these two facts I will usually combine EP/HS or HS/MK. This way I ripe drop what I want at EP but save FPs for night time at HS or rope drop HS and well as use my FPs and then book additional ones at MK. I will often expect to book additional FPs at MK since there are more attractions to chose from.
In the past we, like @bswan26, have only park hopped once or twice a trip. We plan to hop a little more this upcoming trip but mainly just for later evening hours and to catch fireworks shows we will have missed other days. We typically spend most all day in that first park of the day though, so we always book our fast passes for that park and just go with the flow at the second park.
This makes complete sense to me and where my mind was with it too. Meaning, it is easier to grab a later same day for MK especially. My initial rough sketch never has me going to EP and MK in the same day, which made me question my strategy since it seems those would be the easiest to hop between due to the monorail. Is that thinking not true? I guess when I think about it HS and EP are just as easy as well given you could walk between the two. I LOVE AK, but don’t care for the evening entertainment so I know we will hit AK two mornings late in our trip so hopefully we can get FP for FOP twice during our trip and them hop to the busier parks for the evening entertainment for NYE (MK Dec 30 and EP Dec 31). I just hate to spend that much money on hoppers to only use it twice.
The later evening entertainment is exactly what I was planning on! That or given it is a crazy week, a change of scenery might help us survive the crowds a little.
I think my issue is that I usually plan some kind of a break in between parks. Most often I return to my resort to swim or eat- sometimes sleep.
I tend to plan my days as half days. One from 9-1 or so, the other from about 5-10. When planning my days in the world I always start with my nights: what fireworks or special event will I do?
Thanks for the help. Do you ever find yourselves hopping unexpectedly? As in you didn’t plan to hop that day, but the crowds were bigger than you wanted or you just wanted a change of pace?
