Planning trip in Feb 2015

[blappin]

I am taking my wife and our 5 year old son to Disney Feb 5th -9th 2015 and will be staying at the all-star resorts. We will be staying onsite and will be visiting the parks on Friday, Sat & Sun. My question is this – we are trying to figure out if we want to purchase the park hopper tickets or not. If we do then it will cost about $200 more and we can hop from one to the other but if we do not then we will only be visiting one park per day and I was wondering which parks would be a must and which would be best to skip. We will be visiting again in Dec 2015 with the rest of the family. Also what are some must do for my son during this trip on such a short trip?

 

[sxeensweet]

If you can afford it I would do the hopper just in case. Some parks like AK and HS close kind of early that time if year and you would maybe want to go elsewhere in the evening,etc. Also you can get away with not spending a whole day at AK and HS being your stay is so short. Allow a full day at MK and Epcot! Aldo you may want to go back to those in the evening that maybe you visit AK etc. All up to what your family wants to see and do in those 3 days. We ALWAYS have it and are usually thankful we do have it for the reasons I mentioned and for dining ressies etc. Oh also I would do the whole 5 days even if it's not a whole day on arrival and departure day to visit a little more. Tickets get cheaper overall the more days you add.

 

[EdC]

We'll hopefully also be down there in February w/ our boys (almost 5 and 2). When we went last time, they were almost 3 and 5 months. We stuck to just Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom w/o park hopper and wasted a partial day at Hollywood Studios when we first arrived. I thought that AK was open plenty long enough for us on one day. At MK, our older boy just kept going on Goofy's Barnstormer over and over again. So we would do parent swap and go between that and Buzz's Star Command. The other rides were just filler for us.

Our oldest liked the Toy Story buildings at ASM.

If you haven't already, sxeensweet was alluding to tickets being expensive for short trips. I'd recommend looking up non-expiring ticket options and deciding if it'd work for you especially w/ the other trip in the works.

Good luck!

 

[SMS55]

Is this your son's first trip? Have you and the Mrs. been to Disney a few times? If you haven't been much or it's the little' guy's first time, then no. You want at least one full day at the Magic Kingdom. There is plenty to do there for a child and even the grown ups. You won't see it all if you hop. You could probably spend two full days there if you wanted. If you've been to Disney a few times then Park Hoppers are good. We go every few months, so we'll skip stuff like the Tiki Room, Tomorrowland Speedway and Stitch. For a 5 year old, most of the rides at the Magic Kingdom are a must do. There are a lot of classic Disney there. You have character greets with all the classic characters. One thing we've done before is gone to Chef Mickey's. It's gotten too expensive for the quality of the food but you meet Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Chip and Dale and last time we went they had taken out Donald and replaced him with Pluto. Peter Pan has really long lines so it might be a Fast Pass to consider. We get Space Mountain but with a 5 year old you might want to pass on it or you'll have to do a baby swap.
Honestly, if you're going back in December don't stress too much. What you don't do in February you can do in December. The things you don't care to do again, you can scratch off the list. That's how we play it when we go. There are certain must do's and certain things that if we don't get to it, we don't sweat it because we'll be back.