- Not sure. I was originally planning on G+ but with the price increases those plans may need to be rethought (the x6 factor adds quickly!) and limited to just certain days/parks. I’d been hearing it was less necessary for AK and EP.
2)Yes, on-site. Also DVC/Deluxe so if they keep any extra hours at night I can utilize those (but I suspect that will go away with the start of paid after hours)
3/4) We have hoppers and originally liked the “stack for later” plan but with the change in booking rules for G+ I don’t know if that works as well. Since we only go every other year we like to hit all the parks, so one day each with a “bonus” day- repeat a park, or hit a waterpark etc. depending on how the week went.
Not sure what change you are referring to. I was WDW 2 weeks ago and we successfully stacked for afternoon/evening at HS and also successfully stacked for evening at MK after hopping from a morning/afternoon at EP.
From my experience, the most important parks for G+ are HS, MK, EP and AK in that order. Your decision on G+ may impact which parks you decide to RD. For example, if you get G+ for HS and MK, then you may want to RD EP (otherwise you will spend a lot of time in line if you want to do Remy, FEA and TT at EP with neither RD or G+). Of course, if there are Extended Evening Hours for EP during your trip which you are able to attend, then RD would be less important. Lots of moving parts here which make it a tough decision.
The change is that it used to automatically show you times after 2pm at the park you were hopping to. Now you have to wait until the distribution for the ride you want has reached 2pm, which might not be until 1pm or later, though for the extremely popular rides will be much earlier.
I was aware of this change, but I was at WDW in May (before the change) and in October (after the change) and I didn’t feel it had a material impact on my ability to stack for hopping. But my sample size is small so maybe other guests have had a problem with this.
I thought there might have been another change which I was not aware of.
That was the change. I hadn’t heard a lot of experience on how well stacking was working with the requirement to wait. Was it a non-issue because popular rides quickly moved past 2 or did you get fewer overall because you were waiting for additional time to elapse before grabbing one. Glad to hear it wasn’t an issue for you!
You don’t have to wait until 2:00 pm to book … you just have to wait until the LL time for the ride reaches 2:00 pm. For example, while at Epcot around 1 pm, I booked a 6:15 pm PPF at MK.
The rides I wanted to book for later in the day at the “hop to” park moved past the 2:00 pm slots before I planned to book them so it wasn’t an issue. I didn’t feel this impacted the number of LL I got.
Unrelated to that change change, I got significantly fewer LL each day during my October trip than I got in my May trip. Without looking back at my details from May and going purely by memory, I think I got about 7-8 LL per day back in May while the October trip was about 5 per day. Our TP was about the same so I attribute the difference to higher crowds in October (the LL times advanced faster in October than May, most noticeably at HS and EP).
That’s the change but it definitely would have impacted us quite severely in July except if we were stacking for HS.
Can you explain how? Is it because you couldn’t book LL with return times before 2:00 pm and then ride after 2:00 pm with grace periods? I didn’t see an impact for us when we hopped to MK.
Because most rides had return times very close to the current time, we wouldn’t have been able to start stacking until about 1 and if you’re hopping at 2, that doesn’t make for a very big stack.
But if you can’t hop until 2:00 pm, how does it help to see on MDE that there are LLs available for rides with return times prior 2:00 pm? I must be missing something.
Before at 7am if I wanted to book for AK where I was hopping at 2pm, I could do that. It automatically showed times after 2pm. Then I could carry on stacking at AK every 2 hours till I hopped.
Now at 7am if I’m hopping to AK, I can’t book anything until the normal distribution has got to 2pm. That might be at 12 if I’m lucky. It might not be until 1.45pm - on our AK day the return times were almost immediate for every ride.
I mustn’t be explaining this very well.
I got it now 
I didn’t realize that previously you could book a 2:00 pm time for a hopping park even if the LL distribution time had not hit 2:00 pm yet.
Since my hops had been to HS and MK (for LLs that go faster like PPF and BTMRR), it was never an issue that I noticed.
Yes, I can see how the new rule would make it harder to stack LLs for hopping parks in some situations.
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FYI
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I feel your pain! Trip with daughter started at 6a every day; trip with husband has me worried we won’t make our 11a ADR! 
I’ve had success negotiating an early morning for an afternoon nap so you can try that. Good luck!
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