Which would you do? (Park day selection)

Walt Disney World
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Hello! We have a large family trip planned for early October and I am trying to decide which days we should plan to do which parks, so we can then start thinking about dining reservations and LLMP strategies for such a big group! Would love some input from the experts on our tentative options!

Group includes 5 parties- 10 adults, 3 kids
Myself, DH, DD5
MIL & FIL
SIL, her partner, DN8, DN2
BIL1 & wife
BIL2 & fiancèe

We’ll all be at CBR, have all been to Disney before (even the 2yo who went when just 5 weeks old!) and other than arrival day plan to generally stick together.

We are also a start in MK kinda crowd, especially with the kiddos so they get the full “walk down main street and see the castle” as first impact.

Planning to do LLMP once for each park and LLSP as needed.

Option 1:
Saturday- TL/Universal (split groups)
Sunday- MK → MNSSHP
Monday- Break
Tuesday- Epcot
Wednesday- HS
Thursday- Break
Friday- AK
Saturday- MK
Sunday- DS/Travel day

Perks- 5 day ticket (saves $), early MNSSHP so if gets rained out could potentially reschedule
Cons- Feels like a slow start with only doing MK before a break day

Option 2:
Saturday- TL/Universal (split groups)
Sunday- MK → Fantasmic!
Monday- Epcot
Tuesday- HS
Wednesday- Break
Thursday- AK
Friday- MK → MNSSHP
Saturday- Sleep-in → Epcot → MK fireworks
Sunday- DS/Travel day

Perks- Last park day truly becomes a catch all, go wherever we missed/want/re-do kind of day
Cons- MNSSHP near end when we could all be too exhausted to get the most out of it

Option 3:
Saturday- TL/Universal (split groups)
Sunday- MK → Fantasmic!
Monday- Epcot
Tuesday- Sleep-in → MNSSHP
Wednesday- Sleep-in → Epcot
Thursday- HS
Friday- AK
Saturday- MK
Sunday- DS/Travel day

Perks- Feels slower paced with double sleep-in days
Cons- No true break day without park time, sleep-in days don’t necessarily help if the kids still wake up at dawn, haha!

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I’m mostly struggling because myself, DH, and DD5 are much more go, go go than a lot of the group and worried they’ll burn out. DD5 went EE → Park Close on her first MK day last trip even watching the fireworks in the rain, but I know SIL’s kids and FIL can’t match that level. :sweat_smile: Trying to find a compromise.

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But you are going to love that day in practice! MK is a tiring park- especially when you add in a late night at MNSSHP.

Also, you need to add park hoppers to the cost.

Also purchasing Park hoppers just to go to Fantasmic after MK day. My least favorite is option 3.

For your party I like option 1 the best. It just seems simpler with all the different groups.
Maybe see if some in the party would like sleep in mornings while your crew does EE RD if you want to go-go-go. You could plan a morning for your family then start the family plan at, say 10:30 and book family LL’s after that time.

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I guess I should have clarified we’ll have park hoppers! With the MNSSHP causing MK to close early half the days we’ll be there and F&W probably drawing some of us to Epcot even if just for dinner/snacks on the way back to CBR in the evenings we decided they were worth it.

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I don’t see many MK days though, just 2. And one of those could correspond with the party. But since you have it I guess you might as well use it…
Early October will be Food and Wine. This is something a bet some of the adults in your crew would enjoy.
When I park hop I tend to think of my time in terms of morning/ mid day then afternoon/ evening. I wouldn’t worry about MNSSHP being canceled just don’t plan for it to be on that Friday before you leave just in case.
I like a varied park plan and I don’t know about a WHOLE rest day. But poll your group. For me I would do:
Sunday: MK with Epcot evening
Monday: HS
Tuesday: MK day with evening break- maybe a nice resort TS for the family or HDD
Wednesday: AK and maybe MK evening
Thursday: Epcot till early afternoon then get ready for MNSSHP evening
Friday: Resort morning, maybe a nice TS brunch or breakfast at a resort with HS afternoon/ evening
Saturday: Epcot during the day with a mid afternoon switch to MK

I have more MK time built in than my family would typically do but it is most peoples favorite park and it’s easy to find things everyone can enjoy there.

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Also Columbus/Indigenous People day (13th) as well as multiple schools taking Fall break.

Actual dates of your visit may have in impact in your schedule

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We’ll be there 9/27-10/4 so hopefully that gets us in before the bulk of the Fall break crowds. I noticed Indigenous Peoples day impacted the schedule for the Halloween party in years past but if I recall it just changes it for that one weekend. Waiting impatiently for them to officially release the details for that (but know full well it will likely be May before we get any info)!

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We’ve done resort dining/monorail crawls or DS on full break days for dinners in the past. I’m also assuming the kids will take any and all pool time they can get based on the tail end of our last visit. We were there for Hurricane Milton so ended up with some bonus resort time and the pool became an E-Ticket attraction very quickly. :rofl:

I tried to simplify the park days for input in the initial post, but there is also strong likelihood of our HS day being split with MK if we can line that up on a day without a halloween party, as there are a lot of rides the littles won’t do, at least with part of the group. AK closing so early and with the construction for Tropical Americas underway, we’ll likely be hopping somewhere after that as well. We’ve never regretted having park hoppers! :smile:

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Lots of pros and cons here. In terms of LLMP, later in the week is better if you want to get morning times and optimize the number of additional selections. Seems especially true for MK and HS, less important for AK.

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If the others will tour on their own, set meals as meet and share times.

If you’re rope droppers, a late breakfast/early lunch time about 10:30/11 am can be useful. And late arrivals may be happy for a bite to eat. Maybe a ts for this.

Also another meal time of about 5 to 6pm helps too. Maybe a qs for this.

Another thing we’ve adopted is if we’re out late one night we take it easy the next morning. We used to be able to go go go but no more.

It costs more to get Park Hoppers but we do anyway. Then I schedule park blocks - if our WDW days are 5, then we have 5 mornings and 5 evenings. When our kids/grandkids/ great grand kids were under 10, the resort pool was as big a draw as most anything in a park. Plus the water and less noise was restorative. So we actually had 15 blocks of time to arrange activities around.

We rarely took a break day with that set up.

We usually went to a different evening park from the morning one. Changing up the park seemed to resonate with the kids better.

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I think we’ve pretty much decided to go with Option 2 pending any unexpected switch ups to the MNSSHP calendar or park hours!

Friday- Travel day (arrive 10pm staying off site near Disney Springs)
Saturday- Check in day for CBR - TL/Universal (split groups)
Sunday- MK → HS (mostly for Fantasmic!, but maybe sneak in a ride or two before and after?)
Monday- Epcot
Tuesday- HS → Epcot for dinner
Wednesday- Break (Pool → DS lunch and shopping → Dinner at a resort?)
Thursday- AK (take advantage of an early night for the long next day)
Friday- MK → MNSSHP
Saturday- Sleep-in → Epcot → MK fireworks
Sunday- Character breakfast (Ohana or Topolinos?)/Travel day

My next question is about Fantasmic!

If the show time is 8pm and park closes at 9pm, is there enough time to get in line for one last ride after (or a quick stroll around Galaxy’s Edge to see it at night) or do they pretty much usher you out straight from the show? Last time we were there it was a 9:30pm show for 9pm closing so everyone was being encouraged to head straight out.

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