That’s my thinking as well. I think with a 4 or 5 day park ticket, hoppers are hard to get your money’s worth. At 6+ days, the idea of hopping seems more doable because of, as you said, that more relaxed feel to the trip.
At 4 days, hopping between parks eats into the limited time you have. And I think this is even moreso the case now with HS no longer being a half day park due to TSL and SWGE. The only park that is half day for us now is AK (not saying it can’t be more than that…only that you can hit the highlights in a half day), and it doesn’t seem worth the cost of PHs just to cut a day at AK short.
If this is the case- it’s all too familiar lol…
Go ahead and get park hoppers if that was your original intention- let the in-laws get base tickets…Plan the trip the way you wanted if the ability to park hop is important than do it…again they can upgrade if they feel up to it…heck maybe they can watch the kids while your hopping…
We almost never have hoppers are are totally fine with that.
We got them one year as part of a free dining package (remember those, in the olden days??) and we literally hopped twice for extremely short periods of time and very specific reasons (Osborn lights, ADR)
I have had hopping as an AP holder. I hop a lot more when I travel solo, so that made sense.
But as a family we pick a park and stick to it - always have and probably always will.
This is what I told myself. At the TP recommended discount seller, the PH was $50 more. Our tickets were 10 days. So, $15/day for the three of us. Shorter ticket would have been more.
What clenched it for me though was the park reservations. If I’d completely guessed wrong on which parks to reserve and we couldn’t change them, we’d just spend the second part of the day at the desired park. So, I blame Disney for ‘forcing’ me to get PH. Only half joking.