Over the weekend DW decided that for my birthday, we are going to make a short visit to WDW. Thank you, dear.
It will be the first time back since September 2019, (btw we left the day before the Skyliner opened).
We’re driving down from Atlanta on Saturday, July 24th, and leaving on Wednesday, July 28th. We will be staying at one of the new Hilton properties in the Flamingo Crossing area.
So we have only three full days at the parks. Have five-day tickets, no park hopper. Which Park reservations for which days?
My current plan is Saturday MK, Sunday HS, Monday MK, Tuesday EPCOT, Wednesday AK.
The only real goal is want to ride ROR, should I book two days at HS? One word of caution, DW does not like HS, it is her least favorite park.
If that is the main goal I would definitely book 2 days at HS. Probably change Epcot to HS just in case bc you should be able to cancel the HS pass and book Epcot if you don’t get the 7am boarding group. What about adding hoppers to your pass so you could get multiple tries, but still enjoy other parks after 2.
It’s better to have 2 days scheduled and then only need one! DHS reservations are still hard to come by…
IMHO - Make Wednesday your second / “back-up” DHS day instead of a definite AK day. If you get an RotR BG on Sunday, switch Wednesday back to AK. If you don’t get one on Sunday, flip it to an AK day instead and you’ll have another chance at RotR on Wednesday.
I tend to agree with this. As much as I love Epcot usually, if you have to skip one park, I would think Epcot would be it with the state of things. Also, Epcot is the park most likely to have park reservations be available last minute in case you don’t get that RotR BG.
This is another alternative, depending on your personal love for AK versus EP. But I think AK will be harder to snag last minute if you decide to not use the second HS day, so I would be less inclined to advise booking HS instead of AK versus EP.
My vote would be for Epcot to be your backup day for HS because of the park hours and reservation availability.
AK tends to open earlier than EP. So if you try to get BG at 7 am and switch to AK when you fail to get one you will be behind the rope drop crowd for AK. You won’t have the same issue with EP if hours remain close to what they are now. You can switch to EP and still make rope drop. EP also seems to have better availability last minute than AK.
Normally I would tend to agree with booking DHS in place of an Epcot day.
Except …
By the end of July I really do expect fireworks to have returned. And word is both HEA and EF will return together.
So if you don’t have hoppers and want to see EF then you’ll need to drop DHS and book Epcot on one of those days. Epcot is unlikely to fill up - but if they prioritise resort guests over offsite then there is a small risk there.
You need to decide your priorities between RotR, Epcot Forever and perhaps AK. It might be that AK becomes easier to book once fireworks do return as people switch.
Oh, that is tough without hoppers if ROTR is a priority. Epcot is a hot mess at the moment though and currently does not open until 11 which makes it barely worth a park reservation (and it is my favorite park). I’d personally do 2 HS days and 1 MK day and make your first HS day your arrival day since it’s a short day. You really can get a lot done in MK in 1 day if you have a good plan.
Not sure how long they’re giving people to return for their BG these days though, at one point they’d cut it to 1 hour. I guess they could plead their case to the CMs.
Definitely add park hopper and switch a day to HS. The HS day you add may help you achieve your only real goal of riding ROTR. You can always park hop to other park after ROTR. Enjoy! For what it’s worth, if you are lucky enough to get a boarding group for ROTR both days, it’s definitely worth doing twice. Coolest ride/experience we’ve ever been on!
