Today I was listening to Len and Jim’s newest podcast, “The Case For with Chris Cox,” and in their first episode, they debated the merits of Park Hopping.
Pros:
Flexibility
Dining in Epcot
Make use of limited time to see more parks
Potentially save money by condensing a resort stay
Cons:
Waste of time due to transport between parks
More expensive vs. park-per-day tickets
Encourages skipping over quiet areas of each park
My question for you:
What is your opinion on Park Hopping?
Choose the response that best matches your opinion.
I prefer to hop
I prefer to visit one park per day
I like both strategies equally
0voters
What other considerations go into your decision to hop … or not?
Both have merit, and meets needs in different ways. When we have park hoppers, we don’t actually park hop a lot, except for longer trips ironically, where we can keep things more relaxed. I feel like trying to squeeze more than one park in a single day for a shorter trip short changes both parks, so I would push not getting park hoppers for shorter trips (and potentially opting to skip a park instead), and getting them for longer trips.
But…there is an argument for doing it the way that serves ones family.
I am pro park hopper. We love it for the general flexibility, especially during party seasons. Something they didn’t touch on in the episode was that we have small kids in our travel party and there aren’t as many things for them to do in all the parks (looking at you HS ). Park hopper tickets give us a chance to split up and keep everyone engaged. The group with littles can hop back to MK and ride dumbo and barnstormer on repeat after doing the few things at HS made for them, while the ‘big kids’ finish up the thrill rides, then we all meet at Epcot for dinner.
We have tended to hop the last few years because it allowed us to maximize the number of times we rode the rides that had VQs - do GotG or Tron in the morning, then hop to another park for the evening. Or start at another park and hop to Epcot for GotG or MK for Tron with an ILL.
But now that we’ve ridden those rides a bunch of times, we have reverted to one park to day to make our touring schedule less frantic and more relaxed each day.
I used to always park hop but now I’ve been converted to one park per day for longer trips. I can usually add more days to a ticket vs adding hopper.
I’ve done a few weekend trips recently where I had a one day hopper so I can hit my favorites. I’ve paired that with a party ticket on another day. There’s pros and cons to both.
I tend to hop more when I am solo. I think because I tend to have less of an agenda and kind of flit around more freely.
I think my tendency to hop or not hop also depends on my resort location. Proximity makes it a chore or quite easy to pop into my resort in between parks. I’m probably the least inclined to hop at AK or the All Stars and most inclined at an Echo Lake area resort
For longer stays I prefer hopping. If I’m in an Epcot resort hopping is a must cuz as they said it has the best dining.
I actually prefer one park per day for shorter trips because of the time lost traveling between park. I don’t nap on these kinds of short stays so I’m more of the notion of you just don’t go to all four parks if you’re doing a short stays.
I tend to rest mid day on longer trips and then park hopping makes sense cuz you can do a diff park in the evening post nap.
Me too, mostly because I have an AP so there is no incremental cost! Also you can make use of the maximum number of park hours - e.g., AK opening through MK close. And being solo, you can transit more easily and that time isn’t as “wasted” because you can use it to update the forum, relax, etc.
Disneyland is another story and there of course park hop on a one day visit and maybe it’s not so necessary on a longer stay but it’s also so frikking easy. And park hopping is a requirement at USO.
Agree - hopping at Disneyland is a completely different story!
That said, on my recent trip with my BIL’s family, we did one park per day to save money - it was enough savings that I was able to buy 4-day passes. That worked out great for a first-time trip, because we were able to really focus on finishing everything in each park the first day, then the second day for each park, we did repeats / missed attractions. Hopping wouldn’t have necessarily cost more time, but unless you only hop after hotel breaks, it does cost more steps!
Yeah the year we hopped with all younger people but not kids we walked 13 miles! We went back and forth several times based on LL availability and dining from 8-12am but it was just a single day so I could go hard like that
I feel the opposite about when to buy hoppers for the two coasts. Like we’re doing 5 days in WDW and it’s one park per day and a day at Disney Springs.
I got told by DS21 to stop trip posting and be in the moment with the family this last DLR trip. I’m gonna have to just do end of day reports in WDW this Dec cuz he’s right! lol. But yeah when you’re solo.
I definitely find I do more hopping when I’m solo, but we’ve also really come to appreciate being able to go to a different park after our midday break, because we still usually come back to the hotel when we’re traveling as a family in the middle of the day. So having one park in the morning and a different one in the evening is often fun. Plus we’ve had shorter WDW time as a family the last couple of trips so we’ve done hoppers for that reason too.
It helps that we don’t have to decide whether or not to get park hopper tickets, because the UK tickets include park hoppers automatically.
I plan for a core period to include what most of us want to do, or a particular focus. We might have dinner booked &/or planned to go to a nighttime show, which could be at the same park or not.
If there’s nothing planned, sometimes one or more of us will decide they want to go to DHS, for example, and they can just go. Or we agree to meet back at the villa for dinner (which again is optional).
The park hopping gives us flexibility, as does the longer stay.,
We usually take an afternoon break, which makes it easy to hop without feeling that you’re wasting time since you’d be going from hotel to park anyway. But probably about half of the time we go back to the same park. It just depends.
). Park hopper tickets give us a chance to split up and keep everyone engaged. The group with littles can hop back to MK and ride dumbo and barnstormer on repeat after doing the few things at HS made for them, while the ‘big kids’ finish up the thrill rides, then we all meet at Epcot for dinner. 
