How do you decide
 

I have a few questions.

we haven't stayed on site before but will be this time at AKL with DDP.

How do you decide which parks to do on which days?

our ADR are able to be booked from 30.11.19 will the park hours and emh be available before then?

We have a rough plan that we will follow but we want to make the most of this holiday as we wont be back for a few years at least.

we are hoping to go to AK first day of holiday (DS loves animals) but I don't know weather to do Boma or tuskers for breakfast we will do both throughout the holiday, It will come down to EMH being available or not.

How do you decide which FP to book. only one I know for sure is FOP
we will be visiting all the Disney parks this time.

What are your must do rides at each of the parks, we are a family of 3 with our son who will be 10.

thanks

Ah, the million dollar question... One thing I would recommend is reading through a few trip plans in these forums, that will give you an idea of what people do.
We don't like to plan too much detail, prefer to be very flexible with what we do. What we would always do is plan our ADR's, first by making a list of all the places we fancy and then list 3 for each day in order of preference, that way if 1st choice isn't available we have a back up. That way, once the ADR's are booked we have a rough plan of which parks we should be at on each day and when.
We don't particularly have must do rides so don't usually bother with fast passes, we just wing it...

I suggest you look at Touring Plans .com and review their plans for tweens. Perfect for 10 year olds. They will suggest the best FPP to choose. Sometimes park hours are not out before ADR day sometimes they are. Avoid the park with morning EMH unless you are attending for EMH. Avoid parks with paid for early morning events as they swell the normal park opening crowds and avoid parks with paid for evening events as people arrive early and swell the crowds and you also lose normal park hours. Other than that I just avoid water parks at the weekends as that’s when the locals use them too so they are busier. Personally I never waste time eating breakfast at the lowest queue times in the parks either.

DIBB busy day guide. We have no rituals like MK on the first day regardless of how busy it is although HS tends to be our first day as our first park day is a Monday and it's always the quietest park.

I don’t over think which park to go to, I have an idea of how many times I will start in each park e.g. Epcot twice, MK four times and then I mix the days up so as to alternate each day. I don’t take any notice of busy day guides as I have looked at different ones and they say different things.

Regarding FP, in Magic Kingdom I mostly use them on the mountain rides with the intention of getting most other things on the day. However I also pre-book Buzz lightyear, Peter Pan and its a small world once over the trip. I have started to book it’s a small world as first ride of each trip.

In AK, FoP and Everest are musts for us for each day we go there, I then alternate what I use the third pass for, might be Dinosaur, Primeval Whirl or the Safari.

At Epcot I choose the tier 1 first, I have picked Frozen on both my days for next trip but I might change one of them to test track. There are not that many tier 2 rides so I would book any two each day and try to cover them all.

HS is a bit different now everything is tier 1, I have pre booked three days worth and have picked SDD twice and RnR coaster once. I have filled up the other slots with shows we are unlikely to go to.

This really is the hardest part of planning... following x

Most of our ADRs were dinners (apart from Garden Grill breakfast). We never spend full days in the park - would go back to hotel in the early afternoon so it didnt matter so much as for where the dinner ADR was booked for.

Often, I just randomly select parks on each day, trying not to do the same park on consecutive days. There may be other constraints - I may want to visit MK on my first day, I may have booked a Universal hotel and want to visit the Universal parks on days around that stay, I may be staying onsite and want to use EMH, etc - that fix which parks I'll visit on which day and then I work around those.

In addition, I tend to use the DIBB's busy day guide. If I'm stuck as to which park to visit on which day then I will look at the busy day guide and choose a park that is recommended.

Other than that, I tend not to overthink these things.

Yes. They are usually available around a week or two before the ADR window opens. (However, please note that the park hours and EMH can change from when they are first released right up until the day before - they are not set in stone).

Look at the rides that are available in each of the parks, list the ones you want to do, then look at which of those rides have the highest wait times (using the Wait Times page here on the DIBB that shows average waits) and book those - if you can.

You can also look at the DIBB's Fastpass+ page which has a list of suggested attractions to book.

At Disney, I'd fastpass the following:
MK: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Big Thunder Mountain, maybe Space Mountain, maybe Buzz Lightyear, maybe Peter Pan.
EP: Test Track or Soarin', Mission Space, Spaceship Earth (if its still open).
HS: Slinky Dog Dash or Toy Story Mania, Star Tours, Rock'n'Rollercoaster and Tower of Terror are also good ones to go for.
AK: Flight of Passage, Everest, Kilimanjaro Safari, maybe Primeval Whirl or Dinosaur.

But it depends on which rides you and your group want to do; there's no point in booking fastpasses for rides you don't want to do.

There’s no real rhyme or reason to planning your days on a Disney holiday.

Personally I stay on property and I like to park hop. So generally I’ll go to a park in the morning that has extra magic hours, schedule fast passes there for an hour or two after normal park guests can enter and then, if the parks too busy after that, leave and head to another park that hasn’t had EMH and therefore should be quieter.

I tend to not start at the same park two days in a row. And at the start of the holiday I ideally want to hit all four theme parks and universal within the first five days. After that it’s just a case of scheduling late morning fast passes at the extra magic hours locations and then seeing where the mood takes me.

Regarding fast passes I obviously try to just FP my personal favourites. But I also like to FP rides that I definitely want to do but won’t queue 30+mins for.

Big Thunder Mountain, for example, I will never wait standby for unless it’s a 10 minute wait or less. The queue is too cramped and too hot to spend any longer in.

Everyone’s plans are different and mine is a more ‘go with the flow’ plan than most. It’s whatever allows you to get the most from your holiday.

1. Decide how many days you want in each park (MK needs at least 2).

2. Look at Busy Day Guide on here and try to fit in the parks on the best days (don't stress over a most recommended versus recommended but do avoid the least recommended days).

3. Google a list of what FPs are most recommended in each park, in order. then read about the rides so you know which 3 you like the sound of most. This is essential - otherwise you might end up wasting a FP on something that only ever has a 5 minute queue when you could've saved yourself an hour and a half in line!

I recommend booking FPs in close succession starting from at around 11am. You can get a lot done before that time and it only starts to get busy at around that time - this gives you time to hopefully fit more FPs in after you've used those ones up.