Do you plan around favorite park or park hours

[EvilQueen-T]

I was just curious as to how people go about planning which park they visit on their vacations. Is it simply a favorite park first day to least favorite later in the trip or is it by which park has the longest hours or emh each day, or do you do a park to avoid the crowds at those with emh etc...? We're the type to plan for which park has the longest hours but if all else is equal we always start with magic kingdom on the first day of our trip and tend to spend more time there than anywhere else.

 

[wolf359]

I always start the day at a park not doing morning EMH, and end the day at the evening EMH park. I'm not nearly enough of a morning person to get up in time to be anywhere before 8am.

 

[JarJarJedi]

When we were planning on what parks to go to on which days, we looked at when HS had Fantasmic, and when MK had the light parade. We also had MNSSHP to plan as well. If there were EMH on the day that we picked to be in the park, that was a plus.

 

[Susan Savia]

We always start with Epcot no matter the hours, but then the rest of the time check out the park hours and avoid the ones with early/late hours.

 

[mickeysshoes]

Our morning are planned round EMH for the most part. Our evening are planned around our ADR's!! We go with the flow in between!

 

[Disney05]

We also plan. It seems if you are doing every park and have ADR's, you need to plan. Kind of what makes a WDW trip unique.

 

[Master Yoda]

We typically plan around early morning EMH. If we do not plan on attending early EMH we avoid the park that has it.

 

[dmatt87]

I plan the parks around the EMH and I plan the ADRs around the parks!

 

[HouCuseChickie]

We do our best to hit MK as our first park on day 1. Beyond that- we plan around evening EMH and try to incorporate our ADRs into that.

 

[bgraham34]

I always plan my trips around park hours. I never do AM EMH unless its the am of the morning we are leaving.

 

[cynic710]

the only superstition or rule that i follow when planning is to stay away from MK on a monday, as this is the typical day that starts a family vacation, and with that, most families want to go to MK first.

My next trip in November, however, is with a few first timers who are in their 20's, so we are going to MK first to set the tone of disney magic, and lucky us, were flying in on a wednesday.

other than that, i dont plan around much else, except for the day we choose for AK, because of the early closure we always make that our downtown disney for dinner night.

 

[Patrick_Ears]

MK is always our first park no matter what the times are. We love staying late in the parks.

 

[foreverbelle]

We never plan around the park hours, we actually just get up and say where do we feel like going today? In the evening we usually plan around EMH, or where we have our ADR's.

 

[plaz10]

We plan our time around EMH. If we book the trip late and have trouble getting ADRs on the nights we want them - we will plan our nights around our dinners. But if we have enough time to plan, we put our ADRs on the nights w/EMH so we can utilize the most time at the parks.

We love the EMH morning hours. Great time to go. We visited MK in May and got 3/4 of the park done in less than 2 hours. Walk on space, splash, big thunder, all of fantasyland (including peter pan and pooh). It pays to get up early!

 

[kybred72]

As is not the norm, I do not plan my park time around EMH. I've always allotted 2 days for the MK; the very first full day and our last day. The in between days are planned around when special events are happening (i.e. Fantasmic, Wishes, MNSSHP, etc) and we also plan around where I was able to confirm hard to get ressies for dinner (i.e. Cinderella's Table, O'hana, Le Cellier, etc).

 

[Minnie1976]

We use EMH early at Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and MGM. Then we use EMH in the evening at Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. We found MGM is too crowded to get on the attractions we like when they have EMH in the evening hours.

 

[Ransom]

We used to do (Monday through Friday) Epcot, MK, DHS, Epcot, AK. Then they stopped showing Fantasmic! on Wednesdays and I had to make it Epcot, MK, Epcot, DHS, AK.

The original schedule was set to avoid EMH, but any more I don't much care if EMH is scheduled. I think on our next trip, Epcot has evening EMH one of the Wednesdays we're there, and AK has morning EMH one of the Fridays. That's fine...we're there for two weeks and we've been there many times before, so it doesn't really matter to us either way.

 

[CAPTAIN HOOK]

My plans are is based around the Park Hours and the showing of parades and shows.

 

[Poofiesdream]

Park hours and parade days!

 

[JIMINYCR]

When I start my planning I check out the site TouringPlans.com to see their recommendations of which are the best and worst days to visit the parks. I have found them to be pretty accurate on their ratings of crowd levels. The first day I arrive it's usually late afternoon so we always start off with MK even if it's only going to be for a few hours till closing. The rest of the trip we follow our plan day by day, we always get park hopper passes so we can split up doing two parks in a day depending on the crowds that appear. With the option open to us we may hop over to the park with the extra evening hours, but I don't plan my schedule because of it.