We are a family of 6, kids aged 13, 13, 12, and 5. All are pretty adventurous and like roller coasters that they’ve experienced thus far (i.e., they most recently did a trip to Kennywood in Pittsburgh PA and rode everything they were allowed to ride).
I don’t know why I’m agonizing over this so much, but I’m trying to sequence the parks in a rational way. We are staying at the Beach Club and opted for Park Hopper (after much deliberation). We land in Orlando around 8:00am on Saturday, October 5.
We had originally been planning: Epcot, MK + Epcot, HS, AK, kids choice (HS penciled in), and MK.
I tried to work out AK on our arrival day, but didn’t like the implications for FoA (we will probably plan to ride twice so that 5yo doesn’t need to wait for rider swap). After playing with TP’s for a while I went back to Epcot. But after thinking about it some more, I think we can plan on an 11am arrival at HS and still get in all the major rides, except perhaps MFSR (it’s on the plan, but who knows if we’ll even get into the land).
I refactored all my plans assuming we will in fact visit HS on our fist day (made adjustments to FPP, ADR, etc). The question is: do I now swap HS and AK on days 3 and 4 respectively? If I act quickly I can likely make similar plans for AK on day 3 as what I have now, with the added benefit of a more informed “floater” day on day 4. The downside is that CL at AK go from a 4 on Thursday to a 5 on Wednesday. I’ve copied my plans and see that there are relatively modest impacts to my TP for the day, but nothing too drastic.
Things I’ve tried to factor in:
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I really don’t want to “hop” to a park if we can’t get a good chunk of the attractions in, unless we’ve already visited the park and are intentionally going there for a specific attraction or two.
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I’ve heard that Soarin’ is a bit of a let-down once you’ve experienced FoA. I’d prefer to get Soarin’ in this trip before doing FoA. (Mostly, I want my tweens to be excited about it and to not give the 5yo a hard time about not riding FoA).
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I like the idea of having more floater days – it gives us flexibility if a ride is down or bad weather impacts our day – but it makes planning all that much harder.
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I’m rethinking how much time we want to spend in Epcot. My kids really enjoyed Soarin’ and Figment when we went 8 years ago, but even visiting a couple of evenings I feel like we’ll be able to get enough of the major attractions in without dedicating a morning there (or at least without planning in advance).
What that said, I’m now leaning toward:
HS, MK + Epcot, AK, float, float, float. I’m hesitant to change all my floating days (currently AK, HS, MK) but I’d probably swap them so that it’d be HS, AK, MK – with the assumption that we’ll visit Epcot again most evenings.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!