Am I being too ambitious to park hop with little ones?

DisneyDaver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
My wife and I are doing some early park plan scheduling for our WDW trip this November with my parents and to be 3.5 y/o daughter and 1 year old son. We have not been to WDW with kids this young before. We are staying at Bay Lake Tower. We were thinking of the following for one of the days. Is this too ambitious to plan a park hopping day with 2 little ones? The rest of our stay we will be doing 1 park per day.

Breakfast - eat in room
Morning - MK
Noon - Lunch at MK (CRT if available) for everyone except me and my 1 year old son who would head back to the resort for a quick lunch and his nap.
3:00ish - Take Minnie Van to AK to see Pandora (if we are able to schedule late afternoon FP+, my wife and I would do FOP while my parents took the kids to NRJ, but if not can't get FP+, then we'd walk around Pandora and do something else)
6:00 pm - dinner at AK
 

DisneyJoe

Well-Known Member
Not ambitious at all - I would walk from MK back to BLT, it is an easy 10 minute walk, it can save you time waiting for the monorail.

Don't forget the nature trails at AK, most kids love them.
 

nickys

Premium Member
Not ambitious at all - I would walk from MK back to BLT, it is an easy 10 minute walk, it can save you time waiting for the monorail.

Don't forget the nature trails at AK, most kids love them.

And also The Boneyard, which is handy if you want to do Dinosaur / Everest - either using rider swap or just taking it in turns whilst the kids play.
 

correcaminos

Well-Known Member
Agreed - not ambitious at all. Very similar to what we would do with really young ones :)

AK is a great park to have little ones though - really so much to see that aren't officially rides and such.
 

disneygirl76

Carey Poppins - Nanny and Disney Enthusiest
My wife and I are doing some early park plan scheduling for our WDW trip this November with my parents and to be 3.5 y/o daughter and 1 year old son. We have not been to WDW with kids this young before. We are staying at Bay Lake Tower. We were thinking of the following for one of the days. Is this too ambitious to plan a park hopping day with 2 little ones? The rest of our stay we will be doing 1 park per day.

Breakfast - eat in room
Morning - MK
Noon - Lunch at MK (CRT if available) for everyone except me and my 1 year old son who would head back to the resort for a quick lunch and his nap.
3:00ish - Take Minnie Van to AK to see Pandora (if we are able to schedule late afternoon FP+, my wife and I would do FOP while my parents took the kids to NRJ, but if not can't get FP+, then we'd walk around Pandora and do something else)
6:00 pm - dinner at AK

I don't think Park Hopping is ambitious at all. It will be fine. :) Especially since it is just one day. Do you want to pay for a park hopper for all days and use it for just one though? I will say this from our first trip with our little man. He was 1 when we went. My husband and I historically always got the park hopper so for the first trip as parents, we got the park hopper. We found that we never once park hopped. Our little man is a stroller sleeper so he would just doze off and we found ourselves going the parks early, taking a break when he would nap in the stroller, and then head to the room after dinner so he got to bed on time. As an avid planner, I literally had to toss my color coded spread sheet out the window! :)
 

DisneyDaver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Do you want to pay for a park hopper for all days and use it for just one though?

Yeah, I want to retain the flexibility. We are only going for 5 nights so that flexibility might be important depending on what FP+ options are available each day of our visit. It's my first time going to WDW with young kids so the hoppers may end up being a waste. I always made good use of them for adult trips and am used to having them.
 

Spash007

Well-Known Member
We went in September with our 3 year old planning on park hopping, and realized while there it was just tough. The one day we did (Epcot to AK) we had to take an unplanned break back at the hotel in between, which meant we got to AK too late to do anything besides dinner and watch some of the street entertainment (which our 3 year old loved, so overall a successful day still). That said, I think your plan addresses the problems we ran into - we were in ASM, so to go back for a quick rest meant a bus ride out of the way. It was also much hotter than we expected (I believe around 90 that day) so we all wanted to cool down and change between parks. In November you probably won't have that heat. I would recommend just keeping a late lunch back in the room as an option in case your 3.5 y/o needs a break.
 

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