Ok, sell me on PH tix šŸ˜‰

This is my eye doctor. Losing money = losing minutes in the park.

Heā€™s as mystified by my thinking of it as Disney World, rather than # of rides. But yet, he looks forward to our Disney chats . . .

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Just catching up, love reading all of the experiences & reasons ppl do what they doā€¦

Weā€™re staying for the first half of our trip at the Dolphin, so can easily walk to both HS & EP; transportation not an issue there. 2nd half is at AKL, so maybe itā€™s more likely one park per dayā€¦ But then, still maybe RD either AK or MK, then after a midday break, depending on our mood, may want to see something else at night.

Like mentioned in another post, we also do a trip every few years, so thereā€™s a little bit of ā€œwanting to do it allā€ when we visit :slightly_smiling_face:.

Honestly, the bummer in all of the budget is our exchange rate in Canada. Sigghhhh.

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Iā€™ve been 5 times, had AP for two of those trips, and have only park hopped once. Typically rope drop, break in middle of the day and then return to same park for show/fireworks. Last trip I had full intentions to PH, but there was lightning in the area and SDD was down, so we skipped the parks that night. In California Iā€™ve park hopped a number of times, but I find in Orlando the parks are too far apart. I may PH if I go for a short trip in September, but when there for a week or more, Iā€™ve never found the need.

This is my feeling too. Although, in full disclosure, we have never done PH on our prior 2 trips.

I have been considering whether we might want it for our Jan 2020 trip. On the one hand, we have PLENTY of time - 2 days per park (+ one-day side trip to Universal). And my general feeling is that the travel time between parks is a real negative to hopping. Also, I specifically DONā€™T want us to be in the parks all day long. Thatā€™s part of what Iā€™m looking forward to by having such a long trip - at least a few days (maybe 2nd park days) where we wrap up what we want to do by mid-afternoon, and then have a ā€œresort eveningā€ (I do NOT have ANY non-park days on the schedule).

BUTā€¦ with all the uncertainty about SWGE, it occurs to me that maybe (based on EMH for example) we might want to hop a bit.

As I understand it, we can add the PH option at any point after we are there, so Iā€™ll probably stick without it, and leave open the option to add it, if we feel the need.

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With that long of a trip I donā€™t see why it would be necessary. It will certainly cost a lot.

Weā€™ve only ever hopped as a family one time in all of our visits. And when I say one time it was one hop in the entire visit for which we had hoppers.

Hopping just isnā€™t our style. We are quite content to have a whole day planned at one park, starting out early and taking a midday break before returning for the evening or having a late start and closing the park down.

The only time I have ever used a hopper feature a little more was when I was solo-traveling and meeting up with friends. It was helpful then as it did give me more freedom. But as I was AP at that point in time, it was included with my ticket and no upcharge was incurred.

Youā€™ll never get me to sell you on hoppers. I just donā€™t see them as necessary.

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We are not hoppers - but if we did I would likely go all the way to PH+ to get the Water Park entries.
That would be a much bigger value to us than the hopping.

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Every time we have had hoppers we never actually hopped. The last time we were there I didnā€™t get hoppers and used the difference to buy MVMCP tickets, which made for a ā€œhopperā€ day of AK followed by MVMCP.

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I like hoppers for the idea of getting dinner somewhere in a different park (Epcot!) and maybe wander. Low expectation but
Keeps dinner fun!

If youā€™re not sure then why not just wait? If you decide one day you really do want to hop, the upgrade.

We donā€™t deliberately hop as such. But we donā€™t do dawn to dark in the parks either. Often we, or some of us, will head back and have dinner in our villa and then decide what to do in the evening.

So we use them to be able to go to see Illuminations one night on a whim. Or go into Epcot from the Beach Club to get fish and chips for dinner. Or DS decides heā€™s going back to Bay Lake from DHS at lunch time and then goes to play Sorcerers in MK all afternoon. Or just going to MK to watch the fireworks one night.

It helps that the U.K. tickets are all hoppers anyway, so we donā€™t have that decision to make.

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We are the same way

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I have only done a couple Disney trips, but here are the rules I established in my headā€“

  • If you only have 1-3 park days and you want to hit all the headliner attractions, you want Park Hopper
  • If you want to do several Epcot country show case dinners, you almost certainly need Park Hopper
  • The more days you have on your tickets, the more Park Hopper becomes attractive because you have more opportunities to take advantage of Park Hopperā€™s fixed priced.
  • On a 4-6 day trip without many Epcot meals, Park hopper is less attractive because it seems plausible that you can schedule out one park a day and stick with it.
  • If you are going to split time between a water park & theme park on a single day, or you are doing multiple water park visits, Park Hopper Plus probably saves you money.
  • If you need Park Hopper to get free meals, then it may make sense
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Welp. Weā€™re gonna give it a try - and going to go for PH+, even!

When we broke it down, with UTā€™s current sale pricing, we basically need to visit a water park once & park hop 1-2 times during this vacation to be ahead. AND the exchange rate today is 1.32 vs 1.33 yesterday, so Iā€™ve saved $20 just by hemming & hawing 24 hrs lol (yes, our exchg rate makes me cry).

Also, since we have a couple of mini-foodies with us & are staying 5 nts at the Dolphin, we can totally justify eating at WS after being in another parkā€¦ And who knows, maybe weā€™ll even plan a 4-park-one-day challenge to really wear ourselves out to end the trip, hee hee :grin:.

Thx for all the input, happy planning!!

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I like the enthusiasm! Youā€™re gonna love Park Hopper!

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WDW planning brings out my usually-squashed-way-down optimism & enthusiasm :grin::grin::grin:

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Me too. I also think maybe a 4 park challenge would be fun, and free dining made the park hoppers worth it (I priced it out vs. non-park hoppers and fewer TS meals and it still made sense) so weā€™ll be using it, mostly for after an afternoon break or to see the fireworks after dinner.

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We have never hopped and I take short trips. But If I was at an Epcot resort or Monorail resort for 5 days I would 100% hop.

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Just checking, do you mean that you bought the two extra days so you can go to two different parks in a day? If so, it doesnā€™t work like that. WDW wonā€™t allow that.

We were there two weeks ago. We used our park hopper two out of four days. One of them was a party day, when MK closed at 6 and we went to another park. If weā€™d had a longer trip, we could have done everything we wanted without PH, but a longer trip was not an option. Besides, PH is cheaper than more nights in a hotel and all those extra Disney meals.

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Another good reason for PH is weather. One trip we had one scheduled day in HS and wanted to see F! but it was cancelled due to weather. Since we didnā€™t have PH (we have never gotten as we had young kids and no planned mid-day breaks) we were not able to go back to see it another night. Thatā€™s probably not a reason to buy it but it is a perk of having it.