The Mid-Day Rest

Having a mid-day rest goes against my “must-see-it-all-do-it-all” personality, but alas I have promised my family more pool time while on this next vacation. Since I don’t do mid-day breaks out of the park, I need someone to critique my plan. Does this seem reasonable?

Rope drop - 1 pm - park time - FP loosely 10:30-11:30-12:30. Look for a 4th FP after 12:30 FP.
1pm-2pm - transportation to hotel (BC or POFQ) using free Disney transport.
2pm-4pm - pool time for kiddo/naptime for DH
4pm-5pm - shower time (3 people). Yup, OCD. My DH loves it (NOT!).
5pm-7pm - dinner and transportation back to a park. This feels too tight depending on where dinner might be that evening.
7pm-9pm - Park time and nighttime Show (Illuminations/HEA/Fantasmic/ROL)
We likely won’t make it past the nighttime show long, if at all. At the moment, I don’t care too much about doing anything in the evening except the nighttime show. This will be “bonus time”.

If you can’t tell from all my questions, I am heavily engrained in this planning phase. I likely won’t rope drop HS, but rather come late morning/early afternoon and stay until after Fantasmic. We aren’t Toy Story peeps. We’ll have 2days Epcot, 2days MK, 2 days AK, 1 day AK and 1 MNSSHP which will strictly focus on party events. I really only need to see each Nighttime show 1x each trip. But I would like to see HEA 2x.

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If you are choosing between BC and POFQ, I have a suggestion. Think about hoppers, and what time you could save by staying at BC, especially when it comes to dinners, night time shows and rope drops, and quite frankly, everything.

Example:
Rope drop AK, then back to bc for pool/chill. Walk to dinner at ANY of the ep area resorts, OR ws itself, and then take the boat to HS for Fantasmic.

Rope drop EP (leave your room at about 8:30 am for a 9am opening, and you’ll be in line at about 8:40.) Walk back to BC for pool/chill, Walk to any of the ep area resorts for dinner, OR ws itself, then hit AK for ROL.

EP area resorts are massive time savers, imo. You have two parks to get to on a WHIM + the Boardwalk, AND all of the EP resorts’ restaurants are at your disposal.

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Yeah I think you’ll need 1 more hour in the dinner and transport section. Two hours for dinner, 1hr for transport.

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Thank you both. I feel like such a newbie. This is our first family visit not staying at POP. My last trip was a very short, girls only trip, and we regrettably stayed off property. It will be a hard sell to get me to do that again.

Let’s talk about that. If we leave the resort, go to Epcot for dinner and want to go to MK, what makes most sense? Go to the main entrance and take the Monorail? Or go back to the resort and take the bus?

I would just take the monorail myself.

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That’s a possible 6 of one, half dozen of the other situation.
Depends where the dinner was, what street show was around/about to start (if I had any fp at MK, OR if I could score a FP at EP to make it more lucrative to walk to the front.)

All in all, I’d probably just walk to the monorail.

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Your plan is pretty close to what we usually do, and it works great. Transportation time does vary, of course, depending on the resort you end up choosing. One thing that worked for us at the Beach Club was to get to rope drop at whatever park, stay until noon or one (depending on crowds and FPs and what we got done), then back to BC for lunch. There are sandwiches & snacks at the pool, Beaches & Cream, Marketplace, etc. Eating at the pool kind of killed two birds with one stone, if you will. The pool at BC is amazing! Then we would head back around dinner time or even later if we managed a nap. Also from BC you can go to the IG entrance at Epcot and it’s usually much less crowded – and both days we did that they opened the gates early and we grabbed something for breakfast on our way around the lagoon.

We have always gotten the “cheapest” view at BC and it’s fine – because of the layout of the hotel there are a lot of courtyards and gardens and beautiful views everywhere.

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I’m worried about availability of Beaches and Cream. :frowning:

It’s very small – my advice is to go during an off time if you can! We found, though, that it wasn’t super crowded during the day since it’s out of the parks. We usually have a late lunch, like 1:30 or 2, and we don’t have any trouble. Dinner seems to be much busier. There aren’t many tables inside, but there is a counter to sit at and you can always put your name in and sit in the sun while you wait :).

You have no trouble with a walk-in?! I’m shocked and delighted!

I’ve almost never heard of anyone having LUCK with a walk-in there.

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The only possible thing would be if you are a party of 1 and willing to sit at the counter. THAT might be available for a walk-up. Other than that, I have pretty much never heard of it since they started taking ADRs.

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Guess we got lucky - happened for an April visit and again when we were there in October. Slightly off season I guess, but I think by avoiding the 11-1 window it worked out!

On the October visit we did sit at the counter, but there were two of us so that was fine. For the April visit we had 4 people and got a table. Who knows!?!

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Anyone have their carry out menu?

Touring Plans has links to their menu(s) Adult, Kid & To-go. Here’s the to-go:

It’s basically cones, ice cream sandwich, root beer floats & a Mini Mickey Sink.

Hmmm. No food. Guess that’s hurricane Hannah’s poolside spot then. I’m going to try really hard to get some ADRs at Beaches & creme since were staying there

I scored one during our stay - in part because it is so legendarily hard to get I was thrilled I snagged one. Ours is an early dinner at 4 on a day we have a breakfast which seemed a solid combo.

Good luck scoring an ADR with the Reservation Finder here. I’m hoping it’s a lot of fun to eat there…

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I still have a ways to go for my ADR date. In the coming weeks I have to start selecting parks for each day. That part is the most stressful for me.

I have no advice to give, but I had to laugh because you sound like me. When it comes to Disney and Universal vacations, I have a “we’ll sleep when we’re dead” type attitude and a mid-day break is unheard of. However, we are going to Universal in August and I, too, have promised my family mid-day breaks every day and I can actually feel the conflict inside me as a create my TPs! :joy:

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