Kids and difficult park days?

[Procrastinator]

Anyone else who has younger kids (ours are 5 and 7) find themselves leaving a park wondering what was the point?

Today at AK, tried to learn lessons from last year. This was a longish park day, 9am to 7pm. Now back at room it was 12,000 steps, so a fair amount for little kids legs, but not the 20,000+ that a park day could be.

We hit everest and dinosaur first thing - no queue's. Used FP for safari, KRR and FOP, no queues, watched 2 shows, no queues. Had a 2 hour buffet lunch at tusker house to cool of and recharge. Yet still the kids spent most of the day annoying each other - then whinning at us, wanting to buy every toy in sight and then crying for various other ridiculous reasons.

Now i don't think they are little angels, but we had really good days at the beach and the water parks with almost none of these headaches. It always seems to happen at the parks. No matter how slow we go they just struggle. I really find myself questioning whether it is worth the cost and effort of park days and if we are better off sticking to more relaxed pool / beach / waterpark days.

Anyone else have this sort of fun and games with their kids?

[Tinkerbell 1]

Is there a reason you’re doing a 9-7? We’ve been brining our DD since she was 4 (19 now) and we rarely did anything longer than 9-2 or we stayed at the pool and then went our late afternoon/evening. At their age 10 hours is a lot.

[Guest]

To us that would be a really long day .
We were doing half days at most and my dd is 8 .
It’s really hot and humid to be walking around all day and we’ve all struggled at times here.
Home tomorrow for a rest !

[Bellasmummy]

Half days for us too. Dd is nearly 10 and we normally spend about 4 hours in a park. 6 would be a push for us but ok if we sat down for a long lunch.

Even for just us adults we wouldn’t spend all day in a park in this heat.

[Procrastinator]

Todays was the longest park day in the plan as we like the first 90 mins of a park of short queues and we could only get fop at 6pm. So yes it is a long day time wise, but i tried to manage the length of time with no fast walking to get to a FP, there was a 2 hour air con buffet lunch. Between 3 and 5 we were just sat watching lion king and nemo shows.

Might just have to accept 4-5 hours is max in a park under any circumstances, no matter how gently the day is managed.

[Guest]

We are two adults and we would be grumpy to be in a park from 9am to 7pm. It is far too long, I could do it if we switched parks half way but definitely not a single park.

I have often thought that I see a lot of unhappy children, they look hot and tired and are crying. I am convinced WDW is more for adults.

[Lemmonie]

Mine are 11and 13. It’s constant bitching at each other to be honest 😂 parks or no parks 😂

[Procrastinator]

Originally Posted by Claudette

We are two adults and we would be grumpy to be in a park from 9am to 7pm. It is far too long, I could do it if we switched parks half way but definitely not a single park.

I have often thought that I see a lot of unhappy children, they look hot and tired and are crying. I am convinced WDW is more for adults.

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Yes, definately see a lot of tired and crying kids at wdw. Which i try to avoid with ours by a very slow pace with lots of air con and sitting down.

The 10 hour park day i have been talking about was a very gentle pace with 4 hours of sitting down in aircon. We did only 4 rides, 2 shows and lunch - not exactly fast paced!

Tomorrow is planned to be 9-4 including a 2 hour air con lunch in the middle. Will see how that goes. But i'm almost at the point where i think the kids would be happier just being in some form of a pool every day and not actually go to the parks.

[Mr Tom Morrow]

We are here with the 8yr old Granddaughter and she is fine with our usual 9 to 4 routine. We are walking circa 8 miles a day.

She is loving the Parks but she does like pool time. Probably even more.

I see it time after time on here with people doing planning to the nth degree and I do wonder if it's for the Parents benefit or the child's.
A happy child is a happy day. If that means a pool holiday then so be it.

[JLH]

I am here now with my older children and we only do half days . We started the day st aquatica until 1 - back to villa until 5-30 when we went to universal . This is our first full day and I am already changing the plans to more relaxed day than planned tomorrow- on previous visits that would have really annoyed me having to swap plans but not bothered this visit - I want it to be more relaxed this visit.