How do you pick which parks to do on what days?

[rafjen]

We mainly do early starts
Decide how many days in each park- usually 2 per park and 1 TL
Look at EMH and crowd calendars
Add in any special event- fixed plans ie MNSSHP
Juggle so not at same park 2 days on a row-
Plan fireworks mainly after first few days
plan 1 or 2 later starts if necessary ie TL/ post a late night
Book restaurants based on park days
Then I look at some rough touring plans to get an idea of fast pass times

[GreenJimmy]

Originally Posted by scoobydooby

5- I plan x4 nighttime fireworks visits on the second day of a 2 days run of early starts so that we can sleep in the following day.

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Scoobydooby, can you explain what the 4 nighttime fireworks visits are?

[scoobydooby]

Originally Posted by GreenJimmy

Scoobydooby, can you explain what the 4 nighttime fireworks visits are?

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Hello. Yes of course. But I used the term fireworks a bit inaccurately. Sorry. I meant the evening entertainment at the parks.

One visit to Happily Ever After at MK. This is fireworks.

One visit to Fantasmic at DHS. Not majorly fireworks but really good.

One visit to Illuminations Reflections of Earth at Epcot. Not all fireworks but does involve fireworks.

One visit to Rivers of Light at AK. (Personally I would miss this if travelling solo I think it’s awful). No fireworks.

[Guest]

Lots of very good advice above.

First I would start with a planner.

It will give you a good understanding of how much time you do really have, with packing, travel and down time etc.

I think it is good to use a crowd calendar. They can all differ slightly, but to a certain extent that's a good thing or we would all be planning to do the same non-busy thing ! The only advice I would give on this is pick one, and stick with it. Don't swap between the them, or try and compare. Pick one and go with it.

Personally I use the dibb busy day guide as I like the functionality of the planner and the ADR booker and the fastpasss records all being on the same system and linked to my planner. I know MDE has all the Disney stuff but it doesn't cover universal or other activities.

Then it's a case of sitting down and working out what where and when based on the guide.

Our normal plan of attack is:-
Nothing bar sleep on arrival day.

Early start and early finish for the first two full days. (Make most of jetlag to ride the rides before crowds build up).

Quiet day on day 3 - often early waterpark. Then anticipate v early night. Jetlag hits here.

Last few days start to shift body clock back for return, so later starts and later night finishes for shows experiences wandering and fastpasss.

Long / Full days in the middle. This normally means Universal in the middle as it is a bit of a faff to just go foe a part day.

Feel free to do part days, laze around, throw the plan away and do nothing... Or repeat whatever you did yesterday as you liked it so much !

It tends to work out for us that our first two early mornings are Epcot and MK, and our last night's are there too.

But - do keep an eye on park hours, put your details in to get hours updates, and work around the nighttime shows. It would be a shame to miss them.

It sounds complex. It's not really. I found when travelling with my kids and my DH to a significant degree it was always better to know where you are going the following day - and let kids know there is a plan so they can see what they want to see, albeit not that precise day. In my house this was preferable to an hour of rowing about who wanted to go where at 7am each morning. Others of course will be much more easygoing !

Enjoy.

[Guest]

I don’t think about it too much. I may plan to go to the park with early morning hours that day, I avoid parks with evening extra hours for that day, but might go there the following day. That is the extent of it, I don’t use the websites that recommend parks as I find they can contradict each other anyway.

I had to change things around this year when it came to fast pass day as I could not get slinky dog until our last day.

[hbmip_disney]

Originally Posted by NatashaAudrey

I have looked at the crowd calendar on here and on undercover tourist but they are completely different, which has thrown me off a little. On here it says that MK is the LEAST recommended park for our first day and on undercover tourist it says it's the MOST recommended park. I'm a massive wimp so not so keen on rides but my husband loves them so need to also try and split time so we can make the most of our holiday and fast passes

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We are going to Disneyworld in August for the first time and I combined three different crowd calendars to see which park was the most reccomended overall for each day. I wrote down each park next to each day number and ticked next to a certain park each time one of the crowd calendars reccomended that park for that day, and then chose which park had the most ticks for that day, also bearing in mind how many times we want to go to each park throughout the holiday. Hopefully that makes some sense? I also took into account EMH because we are going to take advantage of some of them as we are staying onsite. However, we will do the EMH park only for the duration of the EMH and then leave and change to our planned park with FastPasses for the rest of the day. Everywhere is supposed to be busiest on weekends, especially Saturdays so I put both our rest days on Saturdays. Tuesday is meant to be the quietest park day I think.
Hope this helps xx

[jothp]

I always start by working out how much time we want to spend in each park. For us AK and MK are our favourites (plus there is lots more to do at MK) so more time there than the others.

I generally tend to put all our early mornings towards the beginning of the trip and later nights towards the end. We find that once we have a lie in it is much harder to then get up for more early mornings. We haven't really found EMH to be much help so we tend to avoid those and then schedule in to visit each park one morning before we start revisiting places we have already been.

Towards the beginning of the holiday when we are doing early mornings we will stay at the park until mid afternoon at the latest so I would either book breakfast/lunch in the park we are visiting or book dinner at a resort.

Later in the holiday we will arrive at the park late afternoon/early evening so I will book breakfast/brunch at a resort or will book dinner in the park.

Some of the very popular places may be booked up but when we have changed our mind whilst there, we have always been able to find somewhere to book on the day or day before that met our needs.

[Andybear]

I like getting to the parks about 9.00 - 9.30 so avoid parks which have EMH. I can never sleep the first night so have a quiet first full day. I then sleep well the second night and am on Orlando time for the second full day onwards - I don't have jet lag when I'm there. Once that first full day is over I'm fine. Then I further base the parks I go to on when I can get bookings for restaurants. EG, I'm a Beast fan so go to MK on the day I book dinner at BOG.