3rd trip…need some help please. dates are aug 20-31. No park planned on arrival and departure day, have 10 day tix staying at porq. Me dh and dd11. Having a hard time deciding if we should use emh or not (no ph)/ what park which day and how many days to spend at each park.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Looking at the “whole picture”, your crowd levels seem to be mostly 5 and 6 during the first half, and 3 and 4 during the second half. Park hours are “standard” throughout.
To EMH or not to EMH, that is the question. I almost always use EMH, but I also always have PH. With 10 days of RD, plus 10 days of FPP, EMH is probably not critical (my typical trip only has 4 or 5 park days, so I cram as much in as possible).
I assumed that you would want at least 2 days in each park; I added a third MK and EP day. So working with crowd levels for each park, and avoiding any EMH parks, this is what I came up with:
21-MK; 22-EP; 23-EP, 24-AK, 25-AK; 26-MK, 27-DHS; 28-DHS; 29-EP; 30-MK
This starts and ends you at MK, with the third day in the middle. It also gives you back-to-back days at the other three parks so you can focus on each park individually. Your first 2 EP days are near the beginning, so your 3rd EP day is near the end to balance it out. You may get as many different plans as there are Liners, but this would probably be my jumping off point.
As you are still working on “what park what day”, I’m assuming that you have not made any ADRs yet. If there are specific ones that you want, I recommend making them as soon as possible. If there is a specific ADR that you want and it isn’t available on the day you want it, you may have to shuffle things around to accommodate it - but with as many days as you have to work with, this shouldn’t be too difficult.
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I think the answer to your question regarding whether to EMH or not really depends on your group. Will it be hell to get everyone up and to the parks for EMH? If so, I’d skip them. Fast Passes make that possible. Plus the fact that you have 10 park days means that if you don’t want to wait on a ridiculously long line one day, just make that ride a priority on another day. I like bswan’s analysis. With such low crowd levels, I don’t think EMH or even RD is that critical.
Maybe mix it up a bit. Some days do EMH, some days not. You might also want to build in long resort breaks in the middle of the day. So maybe an EMH, stay til 1, back to resort til 5, back to park til close. But then the next morning you wouldn’t want to do such an early start.
Pace yourself for 10 days! Have fun.
My main problem is that I had a good plan but wasn’t able to get BBB or BOG on the days that I wanted so I have been working to change things up. I do have adrs, too many though because I can’t come up with a plan that I’m happy with. I like using the pm emh to watch night time shows because it doesn’t seem so hectic leaving the park. We like having pre-rd adrs. I’d like to try am emh but it woudn’t be something I’d want to do after a late night.
Right now I have pe-rd BBB sat 8/21 or wed 8/26 with CRT at 10am (I will cancel one of these). I also have MM F! package @ 430 on mon 8/24 (pm emh). I have R&C on fri 8/21 and fri 8/28 @ 735pm (I will cancel one of these). DD really wants to do Ohana breakfast. I have a 1055am on thurs 8/27 with mk am emh. This could be a different day though, still plenty of availability.
We always plan mid day breaks, usually 1230-530ish. Always super hot when we’re there!
Every scenario that I come up with I find fault with. I know I’m overthinking this!
You can add park hoppers to your tickets but it might not be in your budget
on our trips we have generally not done am EMH as these are hard to get the whole family up for (they like swimming int he evenings, seeing the fireworks and experiencing the restaurants), We avoid the parks with these EMH hours. We do make a point to try and do the evening EMHs for MK (walk on rides let you do the rides you normally skip) and DHS (we all love ToT and RnR). After these we will have a late start and miss RD (usually do a character meal at about 10:30am on these days, then swim and enter parks later (usually prefer Epcot and AK on these days, especially with FPP). Of all of this, my strongest recommendation is to do pm EMH at MK.
In terms of finding faults with your plan - I have never had a plan I am entirely happy with and I have never had a plan that we have not changed when we are actually in WDW. Get the main elements in place and don’t worry too much about everything else.