My family is going down in late October, with plans to attend MNSSHP on our first day there. We will not have park tickets for that day but plan to arrive at 4pm entry and enjoy some of the rides and attractions before the party begins. We may do some rides and attractions during the party as well, but will mainly focus on the party activities.
On the following Sunday, 10/29, we have a reservation for MK with plans to hit up what we didn’t get to on Friday afternoon; a sort of clean-up day if you will, before hopping to Epcot.
I know crowds are very low on days when there is a party - which there is on that day. What I am wondering is whether it is important to arrive early on that morning for rope drop, or if we can kind of take it at a slower, more leisurely pace given the expected low crowd level. Would we be okay to arrive around 10 and still enjoy low waits? I could stack a couple of attractions for us with G+ that morning too.
I went to MK in January on a day where it closed at 4:30 for a staff celebration. We left the park around 2, but arrived at 7:30.
Nearly everything was a walk-on for us (it ended up being CL1) and I had a Genie golden ticket which I couldn’t even use because G+ had near return times. I used G+ for most of the list below but didn’t need to. It provided minimal time savings.
I don’t think we know quite what it will look like this year because “revenge travel” is lightening up, but I’d say it depends on your priorities.
We did the following on our day:
RD PPF (off by 7:57)
PPF G+
WtP
SDMT x2 (one ILL, one SB)
IASW
HM
Philharmagic
BTMRR x2 (one G+, one SB)
Pirates
Space Mountain
We also did breakfast at CRT in there too.
If you are hopping to a different park AND doing Genie, I’d put most of your effort into getting LLs at the other park - those went FAST on the day MK closed early.
So maybe I’ll not worry about stacking for MK and just the the single park G+ for Epcot (which isn’t a great use but…)
And it sounds like arriving later with a short list of priorities will probably work fine. Do you recall noticing a marked increase in crowds by any particular time?
Oh crap though - we can’t do VQ GOTG unless we have an Epcot ressie.
By Sunday my group will need a little bit of a sleep in. They have no idea what they are asking for - and I’ll give it to them but they are going to regret it
I went to an August party last year. We arrived at 11 as my daughter had one of those photo sessions and then we went to Be Our Guest for lunch so we really didn’t start riding until probably 1 (though we did meet Mickey before our photo session). I still woke up at 6:50 to buy genie and start stacking but I couldn’t because there weren’t return times late enough. (I did buy 7 dwarves).
The wait times were so low I took pictures. These were the highest wait times
I did use G+ because we had already purchased it but in some cases it was ridiculous. We went on Pooh for the first time because we had hit all the highlights and the LL line was way longer than the standby line.
I have a video of us on Dumbo where I was regretting not getting my own elephant to take pictures of my daughter and she comments that there were three open elephants. This was at 3 pm.
We rode things we had never ridden before because we were running out of things to do. Like Barnstormer, which turns out is the most terrifying ride.
We also waited for the stepsisters. We were first in line maybe 5 min early and there were only 3 other people in line when they arrived.
In September I have a day planned where I’m doing exactly this-starting at MK on a party day and then hopping to Epcot. I’m hoping when I arrive at Epcot there will still be 1:00 VQ openings for GOTG…
I’m realizing that a few in the group won’t want to ride GOTG (my mom has an inner ear disorder so anything of that nature is a no for her), and almost none of us will want to ride more than once. So I think I’ll do the ILL$ thing for those who do, and maybe we will also luck out on the 1pm VQ which does stick around longer than the 7am anyway.
We were on Main Street by about 9:30 the day we went last August, and waits for almost every ride were under 15 minutes. We used LL for PPF and Splash - we did use it for some others but only because we figured it created extra time for re-rides. It was the most glorious day.
I’m not sure if you can directly compare them, but in december we went to MK on a MVMMCP day and I was blown away by how quiet it was for most of the morning. I had planned to RD at 7am but we didn’t arrive until 8:15am and got a lot done before lunch time. This was dec 16th so not full on christmas madness, but still notably quieter than I expected. MK didn’t feel crowded until maybe 2-3pm.
We had a similarly pleasant experience to @Mike on a Christmas party day (20 December, CL 4), though we did RD with early entry at 7.30am. The opening time had been moved forward about 2-3 weeks before, which I think really helped as fewer people are willing to get up that early.
We managed to do the following rides as walk-ons/minimal SB waits before 10am: PP, WTP, PotC, Splash, BTMR, then our first LL of the day at JC and a snack break. We ended up with a golden ticket that morning which was fabulous (we got through an additional 9 LLs and the ILL we’d bought for 7DMT before 4pm), but IIRC, until noon most other LLs (except SM) were within 30-60 min return time, so it would have still been possible to leisurely ride and book until at least lunchtime, and the whole park felt blissfully calm to us until we left at 4pm.
PM was a 5min wait at 1pm. We easily got a great spot right in Frontierland before the start of the noon parade, and had no waits for the snack we wanted (immediate MO at Sleepy Hollow at 10am, no lines at Westward Ho at 3pm/Main St Confectionary at 4pm), and no wait to check in for our 11am Skippers Canteen lunch.
We went to MK on 9/13/22 and did a ton! We even spent over an hour shopping. I pulled up our old TP (MK One Day 2022 -- 9/13/22) and know that we did even more than what it on that TP. (And for some reason, the date on the plan changed to today when I opened it up.)
I actually picked another date to go this year that had a MNSSHP because of the how much we accomplished last year.
It’s great to know how much we could get done because we would be looking to do maybe half that so this really reassures me that the goal is reasonable for that day
I’m going to rain on the parade a little bit here. We were in MK on a Sunday party-day mid/late October 2022. We arrived around 7:40 am during EE. Lines were very short from 7:40 until about 9:00 am and relatively short from 9:00 am to 10:00 am, but then I was surprised at how long the lines were for a party day compared to October party days pre-2020. My original plan was to go to Pirates around 10:00 am, but the line at that point was 40 minutes (unexpected). I ended up using a LL for Pirates later in the day. The lines were shorter than non-party days that week so I would definitely recommend MK on a party day, but the lines on my MK day were not consistent with what I am reading above from other posters on other days. Without LL, it would have been a disappointing day. Note - We did very well with LLs that day.
Caveat: October 2022 was right in the middle of “revenge” travel so this October may be closer to pre-2020 October crowds.
I hope my experience doesn’t repeat itself this year, but want put this out there to manage exceptions.
I like that!