We typically go to one park for morning/early after noon and then go to another park for late afternoon/evening, sometimes going back to the room to rest if we’re feeling tired. We do this because we can get bored in one park so we add another park as variety. And then the first park is fresh again when we visit it later in the trip.
I’m curious how your family does it? Do you spend all day at one park or do you park hop? Assuming you have park hopper passes, of course.
We don’t get park hopper. I do remember a time when that was included - however the pricing isn’t really worth it. Most parks are at LEAST a day park. For those parks that aren’t - we go and do something else that is interesting. If hopping was included (which I think it should be) I may do it here and there - but I enjoy taking in a single park each day.
We do a mixture. UK tickets include hoppers, we wouldn’t buy them separately.
I almost always have a different park/destination morning/night. I break my days and planning into half days.
Like you I often like to spend an hour or 2 back at the resort in the afternoon. I have an annual pass so I will always go to a different park in the afternoon, hopping is included. I tend to do a lot of afternoons at EPCOT for the variety of places for dinner
I like the flexibility of hoppers, even if we don’t hop every day, just a few. We don’t go back to the resort midday. It lets me mix and match the days so I can get the best combo of what I want to see and dealing with lower crowds. For instance, for our upcoming trip in Dec, on 15th we’ll start in MK (EMH and low crowds) then hop to EP for supper/evening while MK is closed for MVMCP. The next day, 16th, we’ll do the opposite and start at EP to finish seeing things then hop to MK for evening and HEA. We’re using up older parkhopper tickets that don’t expire, for this short trip.
Most days, we hop. I like having the flexibility of being able to leave a park that’s more crowded than expected or to pop over to another park for dinner or nighttime entertainment.
We tend to do one park from rope drop, then take a break after lunch so DD3 can swim in the pool for a couple of hours. If we go to a park in the evening it’s usually Epcot for dinner (especially during F&WF), although in October we’ll do AK one evening to catch RoL since it’s on early enough for DD to stay up. When she’s a little older we’ll plan more park evenings, but still take a pool break in the afternoon.
Mix and match with nice dining in a different park to where we went during the day each evening
This gives us two parks to get us excited about visiting each day and I also feel you can do more rides more quickly in the mornings and the evenings
And a rest for a couple of hours in the afternoon helps us recharge and refresh etc
That works for us and we have great holidays that seem to be filled with activity and seem to last longer as a result IMO
Well, I guess I can be the first non hopper Liner on this thread. Used to hop every trip (usually one per yr) for many years, since the 80s.
About 10 years ago, traveled with a friend who was cash strapped, so he wanted to skip the hopper part of ticket. I was really surprised at how little I missed the hopping.
Following years, started touring with son & his family, so with grands etc. With a larger group, buying tickets for 5, it really got noticeable how much more ticket prices had increased, also how much the hopper option had increased.
The one thing we love to do is stay onsite & use 60day & EMH benefits. Also we like to stay deluxe hotel. So that’s where our dough goes haha.
That is exactly how we do it - my favorite days involve sleeping in, going to one park until about 3-4 then hopping to another.
We just dont get up early enough to take a midday nap, usually, unless we are going out for a Late night.
I think hopping can be a flexible option for families who aren’t quite sure what they’ll expect at Disney. We went seven days and ended up hopping on three of them. One wasn’t planned. We split a day at Animal Kingdom then hopped to Epcot after supper. We had FastPasses for Epcot that evening so we were able to get FastPasses for both Frozen and Test Track on the full day.
The flip side was that by lunch on our full day at Epcot, we were getting bored with Epcot. By mid afternoon, we gave up midway through the pavillions and just headed back to our hotel for some pool time. Basically, we trashed our Touring Plan for the day. After supper, we hopped back to Magic Kingdom and had a blast.
The next day, we had a full day planned for Magic Kingdom, then suddenly Rivers of Light opened up…but not on our AK day. So we ended up leaving MK early and going back to AK for a dining package at Tusker House. The show was better than the food.
Did we need to park hop? We could have gotten away with not doing it, but I think we ended up having a better time by hopping because we were able to see some attractions that frankly wouldn’t have fit into our plans. And we had the freedom to hit the eject button on Epcot in favor of doing something our family enjoyed much more. I recognize how inefficient it was with our time, but it was nice having the freedom to adapt our plans on the fly.
We always park hop. Mostly for Dinner ADRs, mostly at Epcot. We can do whatever park during the day and then eat at one of the many great restaurants at Epcot. Also depending on your resort, it can be great to park hop in for a quick evening at a park. The times we were lucky enough to stay on the monorail loop, hopping over to MK is so easy that even if you only have an hour or two you can get a lot done and it is worth the travel. Staying somewhere more remote, that’s an option we would use far less…
This is what we do. We break up our days into half days so we ultimately spend a day and a night at each park but not typically on the same day.