Do you plan the order you visit the parks in advance?

[maryszhi]

yes and no. depends on how dinning reservations and park hours. sometimes i do all four parks in one day, on others, only two. crowd levels also make my decisions.

 

[copcarguyp71]

That ADR thing is a pain in my tushie. Miss the good ole days when my WDW vacations didn't require multiple ADRS.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[jlsHouston]

I prefer the Hopper because I'm pretty much a park warrior and like to stay out most of the day, but if you have young kids it may not be as big of a deal, especially if you need to return for naps and such.

That said, I do like having the option of escaping a park as it possibly gets crowded or I get kind of bored with it for the day. While we take advantage of EMH and use the DDP so we get ADRs, I find it beneficial to try to go to the parks in the morning that don't appear to be getting much bus traffic, and so far that usually pays off. But this strategy doesn't work quite as well with rigid scheduling.

I can also finish up AK and DHS, at least what I want to do in under 5-6 hours most of the time, and even that's pushing it, so the ability to travel over to MK or EPCOT is a must for me.

naps are you kidding ?? While we need them it just doesn't work without a tantrum, oh come on kids lets leave MK and go take a little nap... although this last time we lied and said lets go to the pool for a while then when we got to the room we said okay lay down for 1 hour and then we will go to the pool. We all laid down and my dd and I slept and the 2 grandkids stayed awake and fidgeted and we finally got up and took them to the pool. I am thinking next year I am going to buy the annual passes for me, 1 daughter and the kiddos. I will get the premium on with the extras attached to it. I will book room only packages all next year and I will join something if available to get a discount on the dining. So next year when the babies are 8 and 6 we will have the park hopper option and we will even be able to do a water park.

 

[jlsHouston]

If I stayed at a Epcot Resort I would definitely do the hoppers for the dining aspect...but on our last stay with the hoppers we only used it twice during a 10 night stay at a +$300 cost.

see we are at BC this time for 6d and I am kind of sad about not being able to run in and out of Epcot for the food... however maybe I will only gain 5 lbs instead of 10 lbs not being able to visit France so often...

 

[mergatroid]

What surprises me is the number of people who make multiple ADR's during their trip. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that however 'proper' dinning has never been high on our agenda within the parks and I've been going for 35 years +. Wih us staying for 3 weeks at our own place off site and haing AP's, we don't have many full days in the parks but rather lot's of partial days. Because of this we eat out at cheaper restaurants off site most of the time. The few days we spend full days at the parks, we tend to eat in places like Cosmic Rays etc. This year we do have ADR's for the Rose and Crown to see Illuminations however that's the only one.

As I say I'm not having a go but eating in Disney has never been a big thing for us, maybe our Rose and Crown dinner will change that for us this year.

 

[acishere]

We planned only in advance only for days we set ADRs. The other days we decided on where we were going the night before over dinner.

So our advance plan was pretty much that we should do Epcot on this and this day since we have reservations there and we should do DHS or AK on this day because we have to be at the Contemporary that night.

 

[bethymouse]

Well, I use easywdw.com for crowd calendars (free site). I do plan the parks for each day around dining and extra magic hours.

 

[draybook]

We plan which parks we're going to be at over 180 days out. That helps us figure out which ADR's to make.

 

[71dsp]

Yes, I generally plan our entire vacation. That being said, I am not so rigid that I must stick to the plan without room for adjustment. We generally keep an idea of what we want to do, but don't mind switching it up if we decide on something else.

This is generally what we do. We do plan ADRs around what parks we'll be visiting but we've been known to change. We also plan around extra magic hours.

 

[a2grafix]

I do plan ahead of time which parks to visit on which days, and that includes visits to Universal and SeaWorld. I do take into account the extra magic mornings / evenings, and special events (Mickey's No So Scary Halloween Party / Very Merry Christmas Party).

Once I get onto Disney property, I keep the primer as a guide and sometimes throw it out the window. I have done several times switch my direction in an instant and zig instead of zag.

I will be pre-planning for my September-October trip but using it as a guide. It's always good to plan, though, to know what's going on at each Disney park / water park, and Universal / SeaWorld / Busch Gardens.

At the end of the trip, even though I had a plan in place, I still have a great time and can't wait until next time I vacation in Central Florida.

 

[Stellajack]

This is generally what we do. We do plan ADRs around what parks we'll be visiting but we've been known to change. We also plan around extra magic hours.

^ This ^

We also plan around EMH. Taking advantage of the morning EMH allows for a rest in the afternoon and a return to the park of choice for the evenings if you have the hopper option. Usually, we know well in advance which ADR's we want and book those 180 days out, but we don't usually do a TS meal in every park we visit.

 

[Redsky89]

I wouldn't say I plan but I've made it a habit of visiting Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios on my first day. Since I spend a majority of my time at Magic Kingdom and Epcot I get the other parks out of the way early.

 

[tinkerbell1620]

ive gone to disney 35 times... im only 20, even when i was little my parents never planned the days. i always just make MK my first sstop because i truely feel like im not in disney until i see the castle and have that feeling of walking down main street. we always try to say "hey were going to epcot in the morning and then......" w.e you get the point.. but it just never works out that way. we just sometimes sit at the busstop and whatever the first bus is we will go there. and its always great either way.planning an itinerary in my opionion is to much of a hastle, and then it gets frustrating when nothing works out.

 

[rsoxguy]

Always. Anything otherwise would be a contradiction to my -retentive ways.

 

[disney1077]

The first day and when I do the wishes dessert party are usually the only days I have planned before I get to DW. For the rest of my vacation I prepare my days the night before, I will look at the schedule, see what parks has emh, what adr I have and plan from there.

 

[Dznycrzy]

I plan, plan, plan. In order to do everything my family wants to do ,including dining, I have each day muticulously planned out. Usually 180 days in advance due to dining.

 

[BrittanyRose428]

We loosely plan around ADRs, though we won't plan a whole day around it. For instance, if our dinner is at Epcot, but we'd rather go to the Magic Kingdom during the day, we would spend the day at MK and just head over to Epcot for dinner. And we like going to EMH, so whichever park has the extra hours on a certain day is probably where we'll be.

 

[wdwmomof3]

Yes! I plan for months, and once we see what the park hours are for that week I plan our ADRs and what park we will be in each day. We also get the park hoppers so we can change our plans if we want to. I just like to have a something in place first.

 

[Foolish Mortal]

Somewhat. MK is absolutely always the 1st park visited. 2 of my 3 yearly trips I arrive on a Sunday so if the Studios has evening EMH then thats the second park visited. Then EPCOT would be 1st park on Monday. If MK has Sunday evening EMH then it's MK, EPCOT, Studios. Black Friday trips always end up MK, EPCOT, Studios.

 

[Susan Savia]

We are long time AP holders and other then plan on Epcot the first full day and the last full day, we visit the other parks on non early opening days. We do not do ADRs anymore as we don't like scheduling 6 months out.