Hi all! New to the forum, but not to Touring Plans. We are headed to the World in June '19. On arrival day (Saturday), we have a half day (in the afternoon) that we can spend in one park. Which would you recommend - AK or DHS? It will have been 4 years since our last trip, so lots new at both parks. Whichever one we don’t choose for this half day, we will spend a full day at later in the week.
Thanks!
That is a hard one as they each have their own things that could be done.
It really depends on what you like and want to do. At both parks, the shows can cause issues in the TP for that day. DHS is easier to get around but the shows and the Toystory land and the Tier 1 FP make it hard sometimes to do them all.
AK is much bigger and takes more time to get around, also if planning on doing both rides in Pandora, it can be very hard to see it all.
My suggestion is to list everything you want to do in each park and start making your TP for each, than to do 1/2 days for each and look at what works best for you.
I think a lot just comes down to preference. AK is my favorite park and DHS is much further down on my list, so my first thought would be AK. But if you want to see both Fantasmic and the SW show, it would be much easier to do on separate nights.
But I’ve been under the assumption that you have a full day at each park and this would be an additional half day at one of the parks. But if this half day will be the only time you will spend at this park then the question really boils down to in which park to you spend a half day and which will you spend a whole day - which is really a whole different question.
I would need more info before I could make informed recommendations. How long is the trip and how many days in each park? Children? What ages? DO you prefer the more intense thrill rides, more gentle rides, shows, or overall atmosphere. Are there serious Star Wars fans in the family. Toy Story? Serious animal lovers?
For me it would be easy. If this was the "second’ day at one of the parks, I would pick AK for the half. If it was the latter assumption, then I would pick DHS for my half day and AK for my full day
I don’t need a full day at HS, so for me the choice is easy. We aren’t Star Wars people (gasp!) and we aren’t in the Disney Junior phase anymore so there is tons of stuff we can skip at HS.
It really depends on what you want to do and what FP’s you can get. If you can’t get FoP FP, you really need to rope drop it or you’ll be taking an involuntary half day at AK. If you can’t get SDD FP, you may end up in a longer line but it won’t be nearly as bad as FoP. Our family loves DHS and it’s just a hair behind MK for our favorite park. RnRC, ToT, ST, SDD, TSMM are all rides that we could do over and over, not to mention the Frozen Sing-Along and Fantasmic!. For us, it’s easily a full day park whether we’re doing the other shows (BatB, IJ, Mermaid, Muppets) or just doing a lot of rerides. I feel like I could probably do the things I wanted to at AK in half a day because I’m really not that into PW, Dino, or NRJ.
For me it is also an easy choice. HS is just a half day for us with no kids (so need for characters or shows). AK is always a full day because it ends up being our heaviest walking days. It does depend on where your priorities are…and what FPP you can get in the newer lands that you wouldn’t have visited before.
I have to agree with the rest. Depends on what you want to do and your preferences. I like HS and AK is my least favorite park, so I would be ok with a half day at AK.
As stated before its all a preference thing. I like Animal Kingdom myself.
We prefer HS to AK, so we’d pick HS, for sure. And, as of late, HS is becoming more and more a full day park. It used to be a half-day park, even for us. But with recent changes, it becomes trickier to do in a half day. With TSL, RnRC, ToT, Star Tours, IJSS, we find it more compelling with things we want to do multiple times. Still, it isn’t necessarily full day either yet until Runaway Railway opens, not to mention SWGE.
AK, by comparison? Well, we’ve tried to fill a day up there and just can’t seem to do so. But there are just a lot of things we don’t care to do. Last trip, for example, we took the train for the first time and tried to do Gorilla Falls. But we were quickly bored. It just pales in comparison to the zoos we visit. And, man, does it get hot and humid. However, AK has a few nice things: FOP, EE, FotLK, Finding Nemo.
I would consider a half day at Animal Kingdom. It was the only full day park where we found ourselves at loose ends a couple of times waiting for our next attraction. Specifically, we were waiting for it to get dark to enjoy some of the nighttime features. We could easily have given Hollywood Studios two days with our group - we did a day plus two evening hours. Even with that timing we missed the Frozen show and several characters we had hoped to meet
We actually had this same challenge- and chose DHS as the half-day park.
With the addition of Pandora, AK really has become a full-day park and I’ve always liked more than DHS anyway. I’m a real SW fan and even given that, a half-day at DHS suits me just fine, at least until SW:GE opens up.
There are some shows at both DHS & AK which close earlier than the rest of the park, so just be sure that you organize your schedule to attend those if they appeal to you.
We would choose HS for the first afternoon and hope to be able to get FPP for SDD on the first day. AK is more walking, and the animals take time to see. Plus, FoP is so good, that riding more than once is a priority for us. Something additional you might want to consider is the evening entertainment. I don’t know the ages of your party, but it will be easier to stay until close if you start in the afternoon, so at HS that would mean seeing Star Wars show or Fantasmic. If you do a full day at AK but didn’t quite make it to close, you would be missing RoL, which in my opinion, is skipable. If you do make it to close at AK, it’s a good time to get in the standby line at FoP. Also if you are going to take an afternoon break on the day of the full park, I would take into account which park would be easier for you to leave and return to.