Planning first trip for April/May

Hi everyone,
This is my first time on this board. We are planning our first trip to WDW this spring - have flights booked for April 29-May 8. I’m trying to figure out our weekly schedule. Our group consists of me, my husband, and a 5 and 1 year old. My SIL will also be joining us for a few days. We will be taking a break for a few hours every day in the early afternoon for naps/pool time. I need to know how many park days before I buy tickets (hopefully before prices go up!). This schedule has 6 park days. Earlier versions of the schedule had 7 or 8 park days, with a few days being only half park days. I’m having a tough time predicting how much park time will be too much vs regretting not enough park time and not getting to do things we want to do. We need to do HS on Wednesday evening and MK/Epcot on Thursday/Friday when SIL is with us.

Here is my proposed schedule. What do you think? Thanks!

Saturday 4/29 - Travel. Dinner at Chef Mickey’s (already have ADR)
Sunday 4/30 - Magic Kingdom
Monday 5/1 - Epcot
Tuesday 5/2 - Day off
Wednesday 5/3 - Hollywood Studios. SIL arrives afternoon
Thursday 5/4 - Magic Kingdom
Friday 5/5 - Epcot
Saturday 5/6 - Day off. Take SIL to airport late morning. Maybe go to Cocoa Beach.
Sunday 5/7 - Animal Kingdom. Also my Bday! Dinner at Ohana (already have ADR)
Monday 5/8 - Travel home

Welcome!! I think the number of park days really depends on your personal preferences. I would agree that one day of non-park time would add relaxation to your trip, although we haven’t actually followed that advice ourselves. We found taking midday breaks didn’t work for our kids, because they were too excited to take naps and didn’t want to leave the pool. Last year we did your same park schedule with one day at HS too. This year we are doing 2.5 MK, 2.5 Epcot, 2 AK. Good luck! You’ll have fun no matter what.

Sounds good. And depending on how many days you have on your park tickets, you could always fill in one of the days off at a park if you want to.
Just make sure to use Touring Plans when you’re in the parks!
Also, if you don’t already know about “switching-off” aka “parent-swap” then I suggest you google it. You’ll probably want to use it with such young kids.
Also, if you’re renting strollers in the park, pay for all the days you’ll need it in on day one. Makes the following days easier, and saves a little money too.
Bring a portable battery charger for your phone!
Have fun!

Welcome! We have three kids and are used to traveling to WDW with little ones. We always take afternoon breaks and feel it is imperative to our enjoyment. Kids have always done well with naps in dark rooms with AC on. Also they are usually tired from making rope drop. For our next trip we will have 8 day tickets.
We typically will not take entire days off from the parks, usually just a couple of half days. Once you hit a 6 or 7 day ticket the cost to add one or two days is really not that much. Here is the breakdown for our next 8 day tickets:
MK - 3 days
Epcot - 1.5 days
HS - 1.5
AK - 1
We will take two half days off. Usually the morning after planning a late night. In the past we have done AK in one longer half day, but are planning a full day there this year because we are hoping that River of Light might be working by our trip.

Let us know if you need any more questions!

Remember that at a certain point (can’t recall if it is 5 or 6 days) your park ticket price increase is negligible for adding more days. So it may be worth it to buy more park days at a small price increase and do more half days than to try to smoosh it all in to 5 or 6

Edited to add:
After you have bought a 5 day ticket, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 are small price increases ($9, $7, $5, $4, and $3 respectively):
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/tickets/

Yes, either just pay for the extra day or keep in mind that you can add a day when you are there by paying the difference. I think planning to have the day off, but with the option to go to a park if it turns out there’s something you really want to do, is the best of both worlds!