How should Grad Night impact our touring plans? We are there for 3.5 days…afternoon/evening on May 23, then full days with hoppers on the 24-25-26. Grad nights are May 23 and 25. Just wondering if this impacts our touring plan, park selection, and/or nighttime shows?
We have seen great grad nights and had a couple of awful experiences with poorly behaved grads; however, we have learned that from Spring break through end of June there is almost always some type of school groups as a lot of schools still go on an unofficial event (my high school offered a spring break trip to SoCal that included a day at Disneyland but we weren’t there for any official event, just a group of teens mobbing the parks probably behaving just as poorly as some of the experiences we’ve seen with teens on our awful experiences).
As for touring plan advice, for the Grad nights specifically they do tend to want to stay in DL a lot of the day since they get DCA to themselves after it closes. DCA tends to be a great park to be in during the day on grad nights. Since they get their own World of Color, that’s also a great nighttime show for grad nights, but, if you don’t want to see it both nights that are grad nights, you can easily use the nighttime show period to ride rides in either park with some slightly reduced wait times. You would just want to avoid having to cross Main street or getting stuck up in Fantasyland in DL. Staying in the West side (New Orleans Square, Critter Country, Frontierland) will keep you clear of all of that if you want to do rides in DL during the parade and FWs. DCA you don’t have to worry about that as WOC doesn’t cause the human traffic jam that all the nighttime shows in DL do.
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Thanks so much for your feedback! I am used to WDW touring and so I feel clueless at DLR! 
Start at DCA on Grad days, move over around 5 or 6 to DL, can come back to DCA for WOC if needed. Grads tend to start at DL and move over to DCA in preparation for their party around dinner time.