When does the time difference hit?

[Mexy02]

You biggest factor is the heat tbh. That is what will hit you and make you tired . Make sure you all drink plenty of water. We factor water parks as rest days as well.

[Guest]

I really struggle for the first two or three days. I wake up early no matter what time I went to sleep and feel a bit rough. I now accept that's how I will feel and just get on with it. I am usually travelling with DH who seems to drop into the local time as soon as we arrive. Which makes it more irritating

[twogoto]

For us we never sleep on the plane and stay up until 'US bedtime' when we're there (so 4/5am our time) on our first night. We're never hit by waking up early etc and are totally fine through the whole holiday. Once we're home it's another story!

The first year it took from coming home mid September until having Xmas hols off work for my sleeping to fully go back to normal. We both spent weeks eating sandwiches in bed at 3am cos we were starving! Lol.

[mazzie]

Jet lag affects you more flying east than west so will get you more on your return. A few things you can do to help combat jet lag are set your watch to match the time of the destination country the flight. Establish a new routine of eating and and sleeping that adheres to the new time zone. Avoid napping on arrival and remain active until as close to bedtime as possible. Spend time outdoors on arrival, exposure to natural daylight suppresses melatonin production and helps synchronise circadian rhythms to the new diurnal pattern.

[tocpe321]

This will be our first trip to the West coast so it will be interesting to see how the extra hours affect us.

We have booked a theme park for our first day to capitalise on our early wake up. Hopefully we'll be able to make it through till US night time on day 2.

[Mezza1991]

We never feel any problems there mainly because your on the go 24-7 it settles in. I usually find come 10pm when I chill in the room on the bed with a cold beer I'm usually zonked within 5 minutes!

Setting alarms both whilst in Orlando and when you arrive back helps massively!

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by Iwish2017

So what day should i plan to rest if day 1=flight? We're flying duct and my kids are 8 and almost 6, if that makes a difference? Day 3? Day 4?

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For us - especially my daughter - it tends to hit us around day 4. So I tend to plan two park days after travel day and then a "rest day" on the third full day (by "rest day" I mean a shorter day with a lazier start and earlier finish - perhaps a shopping day or a waterpark day. We don't actually sit around resting).

It's not so much jetlag but instead is the cumulative effect of an extra long travel day, a couple of nights of less/poor sleep, plus a couple of days on your feet all day walking around the parks.

[Guest]

We plan for a lazy pool day on day 3 which is when it catches up with us, but even then I wouldn't class it as painful, just feel like we have done to much which TBH we may do.
Jeg lag will hit on the way home, try to stay up as long as you can, it hurts but we tend to find better in the long run

[amandajane10]

We woke up at 3.30am first day.

[Rosemck]

We usually go to sleep at around 11pm on arrival day, I then usually wake up again 1am and can never get back to sleep 😱 daughter and husband usually manage until 5am. The tiredness doesn't really hit me straight away though, one of my favourite parts of our holidays is going out early on the first day to explore before grabbing a much needed coffee when the QS opens 😋 it's not until the second week that the exhaustion starts to kick in going to sleep at 10pm and sleeping until 8am 😴