No of Days in Disney Parks Needed

[Garlicbread]

Hi all,

First time visit next Easter with 2 kids aged 13 and 10 for 14 nights. We have booked to stay at Universal for 3 nights / 4 days as part of our trip but id like to start planning when and how long we will visit Disney Parks for (we have a 14 day unlimited ticket).

Have visited Disneyland Paris a few times now with them (yes i know it will be different in Orlando) but point is they have done most of the tame Disney rides now so we don't envisage doing everything in each land in Magic Kingdom - i think our focus would be more on Animal Kingdom, Epcot and Studios and waterparks. Anyway, id really appreciate if anyone could copy the Parks listed below and give a quick response indicating how long we would need to spend in each park on our visit to ensure we see as much as we can of it.

Any helpful comments too would be really appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Magic Kingdom
Hollywood Studios
Animal Kingdom
Epcot
Blizzard Beach / Typhoon Lagoon

[Garlicbread]

e.g.

Magic Kingdom 2 days
Hollywood Studios 1 day
Animal Kingdom 1 day
Epcot 2 days
Blizzard Beach / Typhoon Lagoon 1 day

[rjhsteel]

Epcot is a tricky one.
If you like rides a day is easily enough.

[BarryL]

Our next trip will be

MK: x4
AK: x3
EP: x3
HS: x2
Water Parks: x1
4 Park in One day: x1

These aren't full days. Some days we'll do rope drop to mid afternoon, others we'll do lunchtime to close

[Buzz n' Piglet]

2 days in each unless you want to be there from opening till closing.

Go once for park opening.

Go a second time later in the day and stay for the night time shows.

[Adultdisneyfan]

I think it depends what your must dos are.

For instance you might struggle to do Fantasmic and the Galactic Spectacular fireworks on the same night. So you might need 1 full day then an evening in HS.

Although the MK rides might be classed as tame it’s the theming and the whole experience which is what makes many of them must dos IMHO. There’s much more to Splash Mountain than a drop with water and Haunted Mansion is way better than the Paris equivalent. Although the Paris Space Mountain is better than the MK on IMO.

Remember in MK there are the parades, nighttime shows and experiences you’ll only find there. Mickeys Philarmagic for instance is great fun.

For us we do 3 MK and 2 each in the rest. That takes us to 9 days. We have a break/shopping day, a day touring the resorts (we love touring the monorail resorts before back to MK for Wishes (now Happily ever after).

No one really can tell you the best options as only you know your family. You therefore need to list your must dos and then when you can book your FPs do so and try and tick off as many must dos as you can. Once you do that it might identify which parks need more visits.

You’ll have a wonderful time and true - DLP isn’t anywhere near the experience you’ll have. We did DLP after our first WDW trips. Boy what a disappointment. Had a great time but just wasn’t WDW. Have to say neither was Disneyland Anaheim. Glad we’ve done all 3 but WDW is the best in our book, certainly for us brits who go for 1-3 weeks.

Have fun

[sammykitten]

Originally Posted by Buzz n' Piglet

2 days in each unless you want to be there from opening till closing.

Go once for park opening.

Go a second time later in the day and stay for the night time shows.

See more...

thats how I'd do it for a first time trip too. We quickly realised we loved AK and Epcot so we ended up park-hopping to/from those 2 parks on most of our Disney days.

eta - DLP is still my "happy place" and my home park .

[cornishfrogboy]

We have generally been at rope drop on every day and then out by 1700 for an evening meal. Occasionally we have revisited, late evening for fireworks or the bigger rides. I would agree with Garlic bread re number of days.
If your family are into ‘bigger’ rides and if it fits your budget, then I would look hard at either a D.C. Ultimate non swim or a SW BG AQ 3 Park. That is where most of the big coasters are to be found.

[Scaramouche]

For us:
Days = opening until 2/3 when it’s back to the hotel for a swim (usually a nap instead) and change before heading back out in the evening.
Evening = from 4/5 onwards until close usually. (We’re uses to going in aug/ept so this is usually around 11pm ish with extra magic hours etc)

Magic kingdom - 2 days, 2 evenings. (Only one of these is open - close with a swim in the middle. The other one would be split)
Epcot - 2 days and 1 evening
Hollywood studios - 1 day and 2 evenings (to see fantastic and whatever the other evening fireworks are)
Animal kingdom - 2 day and 1 evening.
Disney springs - 1 morning, 1 evening
Boardwalk - 1 evening.

We tend to do 10-12 days in Disney so also do water parks 1 day each in this time. We usually class the water park day as a rest day as we’re usually there opening until 1-2.
When we’re doing 12 days we also do 1 day Seaworld and 1 Day Discovery cove.

As we come from universal into Disney we usually get 11 days in Disney on a 10 night stay as we would get to the Disney hotel around lunch time, give our bags to bell services as head to either Disney springs or a park.

This time round, we’ve got 4 nights universal and 10 in Disney, we are not doing any other parks and we might spend a morning in the outlets depending on spending money.

[Garlicbread]

Thanks all for your responses so far. Looks like ill have to make some tough choices bearing in mind that we have Universal to factor in for 3 nights during our 14 night stay.

Any further advice from others would be most welcomed!...