My niece and I have 5 day park hopper tickets for our upcoming trip. The first four will be used on the varying parks. For the fifth, I was thinking that we could choose the two rides in each park that we loved the most, and do those; if time allows, maybe some resort hopping before dinner. With that as the plan, which park would you recommend starting with. I was thinking Animal Kingdom since it closes the earliest, or would MK be better. Either way, any advice on how to hop between all four parks would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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Always start at the park that opens first which is typically AK and end at the one that closes last, typically MK.
For transportation ease I’d start at AK, bus to DHS then walk/boat/skyline to Epcot then monorail to MK.
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I agree with this. And it gives you the option of monorail resort hopping, or staying in MK for fireworks.
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Conventional wisdom typically suggests exactly that rationale: start at AK because it tends to both open and close the earliest
Have fun!
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I normally would give that conventional wisdom but for my upcoming trip we are doing something else. We are staying at AKL so access to that day’s extended hours at Epcot. I am also anticipating that we will need a break because of the heat. So I am going:
MK
AK
break
HS - skyliner to
EP - with extended hours
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Just know that busses to parks from AK don’t start running until 10 a.m.
We wound up leaving at 9:30 so we took the AKL bus and caught the MK bus there.
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Some of it may come down to what you want to ride in those parks. If you want to ride 7DMT without a long wait, you’d have to start at MK. Or if you bought a 7DMT ILL, you’ll be at the mercy of the reservation time.
My 4p1d plan for Memorial Day is
RD AK (7:30am with early entry) until 10am
Epcot 11:15am - 2:30pm
Skyliner to HS until 6:30pm
MK 7:45pm - 11:00pm
My goal for each park is to ride 2 rides and do 1 non-ride attraction, plus food or drink.
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My DS and I decided to do this on Sunday May 5th a couple weeks ago. Overall it went very well and we can got more done than I expected:
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AK - slightly late for early entry we likely arrived through the gates about 7:45. Decided to do Navi River and literally walked on. Same with Dinosaur as the pre-show was our entire wait. We also were the only ones in line for Triceratops Spin although some folks elected to stay on from the prior ride. We then hit our LL for Kilimanjaro Safari which was ironically where we had our only wait. Took us 25 minutes with a LL since a truck broke down. Still had a very good safari and even had the IU alum driver toss a “Boiler Down” my way due to my Purdue hat which I was amused enough by to give her a cast compliment. On the way out we had our picture taken by a CP from Massillon, OH who after we noted we were from nearby told us she was leaving to head home after her shift which amazed us as working on the day of a thousand mile drive home wouldn’t have occurred to me. Left AK a little after 10 and caught a bus to the MK.
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MK - probably arrived around 10:30. We did 4 rides plus the shooting gallery and a pic by Pirates. DW joined us midway as she got back earlier than expected from a sister’s weekend in Tampa. We did PeopleMover, then the shooting gallery before meeting her for LL rides of Big Thunder, Haunted and Pirates. Fairly certainly all 3 of those were LL we were able to snag one after the other. We also ate lunch at Columbia Harbor House in between riding Haunted & Pirates. Ferry back to the TTC and then monorail to Epcot which was one of the reasons for our park order as we had not taken the monorail into Epcot to observe some of the new construction in a year or so.
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Epcot - Only did 2 rides at Epcot - Spaceship Earth and Figment plus a picture in front of the Figment topiary. We decided to head back to our rooms at AoA to watch the end of the Cavs playoff game and take a little break. Skyliner back to AoA.
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HS - Skyliner to HS for 3 rides plus dinner at Mama Melrose’s which we snagged last second. LL for MMRR, TSMM and walked on Star Tours. Plus a picture at the front of the park.
Overall we managed 13 rides plus 1 attraction and a picture at each park. We also hit each mode of transportation: Bus, Boat, Monorail and Skyliner. And we still had time for a sit-down meal, a decent QS meal and a short break at the resort. Was a lot of fun to do. LL certainly helped and I’ll always wonder if we could have done Kali and then the Safari given the wait we had due to the truck breakdown, but we opted for not getting soaked to start our day.
Anyway - highly recommended as something a little different to do in the parks…
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My goal is 2 rides, one non-ride, and a food or drink at each. My CLs look a bit higher than yours, but it looks like you were lucky and had unexpectedly low crowds, so I’m going to hope that’s just a trend! 
Oh, and I intentionally built in looong transportation breaks because I have crappy bus luck.
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I think your goal is definitely doable. I was surprised we managed to do as much as we did without overexerting ourselves. Good luck with the crowds!
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