I am helping another family to plan their spring break trip. I personally try to avoid EMH parks unless I have park hoppers and hop over for EMH in the evening, but they want to utilize them. They don’t have park hoppers. I am going to make their fast passes for them tomorrow. Every crowd calendar that I look at shows their park choices for each day to be in the highest crowd level. Would you try to talk them into a different plan to avoid the EMH parks or just work with their choices and help them to plan well. They aren’t “Disney” people. They would probably take my suggestions if I suggested that they go to another park but I don’t want to cheat them out of extra time parks if they want to utilize EMH. Thoughts?
I am a pro-park hopper person myself. I tried to do the 1 day a park thing and on a 5-7 day trip, me and my family were worn out by the end of day 3.
Now on a 7 day trip for example, I park hop with EMH as needed. Don’t force yourself to use EMH just because it’s on that day. If the EMH fits your plan then by all means go for it.
Personally I like to do EMH at night over doing it at morning, but that’s my personal preference cause I like to grab dinner then visit an EMH park at night for those extra hours. I also do alot of breakfast ADR’s in parks anyway so I get a little headstart with the breakfasts.
By doing park hopper, you can do something like this:
Arrive at RD (rope drop), do your FP’s in the morning plus a few more attractions, grab lunch, go back to resort for a mid-day break, grab a table service dinner around 5-6pm, then go to a different park at night or go to a park first, then hit Disney Springs for a later dinner (9pm’ish).
I do it this sort of way for a couple reasons.
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You end up getting more done, are more relaxed during your trip and each day you can rest and recharge with pool time, resort time, or resort touring time.
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What happens if you plan a full day to do Animal Kingdom (AK) and boom, Flight of Passage has broken down for hours or even all day. It doesn’t happen often for this attraction but it has. Then you have a problem because you’re doing “1 park per days”, and you may or may not get to go back to AK during the remainder of your trip.
Or another example is Test Track at Epcot. That ride breaks down almost every day. It’s also not open if it rains even just a little.
But…by doing park hoppers and splitting up your park days, you could potentially end up going to multiple parks on multiple days being able to do those rides multiple times.
On my upcoming trip Feb 1-10th, I’m visiting Animal Kingdom 3 different days and I have Flight of Passage FP’s all 3 of those days. Same with many other attractions at other parks. This way I can relax, visit different parks during the day AND NIGHT and get the most out of my trip without having to spend ALL DAY in one park.
Hope this helped.
I agree with Joejccva71. It is so much easier with park hopper. Guess that is why Disney charges for it. Also remember that most, but not all good restaurants or at least the different countries are in Epcot. With Park hopper you are able to spend your day in any park and then go to Epcot for dinner. Yes, I know there are a lot of other good choices besides those in Epcot but this is an example of why Park Hopper can be worth the cost.
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This is such a great point. 
So the DON’T have park hoppers? Are you going to talk them into park hoppers or just out of EMH? I’d say if they are morning EMH, then go for it. I don’t know that I’d go for evening EMH, though.
We only do one park a day. We used to buy the park hoppers “just in case” and basically wasted $250 each trip. If they don’t think they’ll use it, don’t push it on them. If they change their minds while there, they can upgrade.
We go every year at spring break and are not park hoppers at all. This year I bought hoppers for the kids ( have an AP), and wish I hadn’t (just feels like a waste of money that I would rather have put towards EMM or DAH special events). We may hop once the whole 8 days, it just isn’t necessary in my opinion. We do tend to take midday breaks to get out of the heat, and just return to the same park that night. We are no more rested on the days we hop then go to just
1 park, the rest comes with a mid day break and sleeping in every 3 or 4 days. Park hoppers complicate my planning, but I know others think they are great.
We do avoid the morning EMH parks for the most part these days after years of going to them and finding the parks more crowded than the others, but if they want to go to them that is just fine, just make sure they understand they need to arrive well before EMH starts to make the most of it. I prefer night EMH as well, mainly because the sun has gone away 
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@Wahoohokie has some great points. I guess it depends on what you want, etc.
As far as cost @davleigh I’ll give you a little calculation.
If I were to book a trip just by myself, solo for this year, let’s say 7 days. September 6-12 just as an example, so a 7 day ticket. My resort of choice on this trip is Pop Century.
So the price without any food cost is: $1273.92
To add the park hopper function, it’s $79.87 in addition. So on a price of almost $1300, you’re adding $80 for your entire trip to be able to bounce around parks if you wanted to. This flexibility is worth it to me even if you weren’t sure you’d use it every day.
To give you another example: Let’s pretend you wanted to see both Fantasmic and the Star Wars fireworks at DHS. Fantasmic starts at 8pm, Star Wars fireworks starts at 8:30pm. By the time Fantasmic finishes, and the crowd moves, you’d miss the beginning of the Star Wars fireworks show.
So by having park hopper, you can visit DHS one night for Fantasmic, then go another night for Star Wars fireworks and not feel rushed. Just another reason.
Either way I’m sure you’ll have a blast in whatever you decide.
Thank you all!! I don’t think park hopping is an option. They are trying to be as economical as possible. I am going to try to work with their days and get the best faspasses that I can and help them to come up with a good plan!!
I don’t believe anyone is trying to push it on them as you are saying. We simply pointed out some of the benefits of having Park Hopper. The choice is theirs to make altimately.
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Agreed. I just wanted to make sure I understood the question… I have a habit of reading, then responding, posting, then re-reading only to find out I totally missed some key piece of data that would have changed my post.
I also wouldn’t advise park hoppers for relative newbies, they can be very helpful if you know what you’re doing but otherwise might be unnecessarily complicating.
I’d try to get them to show up early for EMH, have a lunch in-park ADR, see some high-capacity shows and then leave during the hottest and most crowded part of the day. TP has a section for each park where they talk about crowd flow patterns around the park, I’d be sure to review that in detail as you make the plans.
The TP folks have often said that a good plan is more important than a marginally lower crowd level, so I’m sure that your efforts will really pay off for them no matter what! It’s great they have you looking out for them.