What would you do - critique my plan!

[Squidgyness]

So I think my head is about to explode. This year we plan on hitting all 4 Disney parks, 2 Universal parks and KSC, with a shopping/relaxation day to boot.

I recently started thinking about what parks to do on what day (30 day fastpass window approaches faster than I thought...)

Here are all the days we have available:

Sat 15/9 - Universal (Ease into the holiday)
Sun 16/9 - Universal
Mon 17/8 - Hollywood Studios (the big planned part of the holiday starts here)
Tue 18/9 - Animal Kingdom
Wed 19/9 - EPCOT
Thurs 20/9 - Magic Kingdom
Fri 21/9 - Shopping (and recovering...)
Sat 22/9 - Universal (easy going chillout day)
Sun 23/9 - Universal/WDW?
Mon 24/9 - KSC (this is fixed in place.)
Tue 25/9 - EPCOT (food and wine stuff)
Wed 26/9 - Magic Kingdom/Animal Kingdom (undecided)
Thurs 27/9 - Universal on last full day

My main problem is about what parks to do on weekends. On our Universal dates Studios shuts at 5pm. We have Express pass at US hence why I thought going to Universal at the weekend might be the better choice. I'm tempted now to move a day at Disney to a weekend so we could stay at Studios till 7pm for a bit more of an evening in the park during the week. Are crowds at Disney much less manageable on a weekend compared to a weekday?

I've never planned so much... part of me is super happy to be going back to the other 2 WDW parks for the first time in 2009 part of me wants to kill the person that suggested it.

[VS075]

Hi

I found USF/IoA to be fairly quiet in September 2017, even on weekends so when coupled with your Express I'm sure you'll be fine.

Have you thought about attending HHN on the Universal days (as that's why it shuts at 5pm).

Is Happily Ever After on during your MK days as their Halloween Party can impact this.

Looks a good mixed plan - something I'd be happy with as a big fan of Universal as well as Disney.

Thanks

[Squidgyness]

Originally Posted by VS075

Hi

I found USF/IoA to be fairly quiet in September 2017, even on weekends so when coupled with your Express I'm sure you'll be fine.

Have you thought about attending HHN on the Universal days (as that's why it shuts at 5pm).

Is Happily Ever After on during your MK days as their Halloween Party can impact this.

Looks a good mixed plan - something I'd be happy with as a big fan of Universal as well as Disney.

Thanks

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Thought about HHN (we ran into the tail end of it last year) but I'm going with my parents and they aren't really into scares :P Maybe one for the future though.

Had a good talk with the family and we decided to keep Universal for the weekends and transfer to IoA from 4-9pm for an evening or two (will still have a full day or two there as well.) Think that will be nice, I've never seen it on an evening so should be interesting.

We also decided to try and head to Disney springs the first evening to collect our magic bands and grab a bite to eat. If that doesn't work out, we'll head there the morning of our HS day and make a quick pit stop to do it.

I'm not sure about happily ever after, I will have to investigate that one but I did make sure to pick days where the WDW parks were open till late on an evening (our main MK day is a 9pm close so hopefully plenty of time to get stuff done.)

Thanks for the reply!

[Rafiki22]

Looks like a good plan to me, especially avoiding Epcot at the weekends as food and wine is v. busy.

[Guest]

I wouldn’t want to do all my universal days at a weekend. I haven’t been in September but I have been at another so called quiet time (May) and the queues were definitely still there, even with Express pass. I would swap at least one of them.

[Squidgyness]

Originally Posted by Rafiki22

Looks like a good plan to me, especially avoiding Epcot at the weekends as food and wine is v. busy.

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Yeah, I thought it best to avoid EPCOT at the weekends as all the busy day guides said it would be bad, remembered there was food and wine on. Going to be lots of locals there too on the weekend I bet.

Thanks for the thoughts guys!

[Toff Princess]

You sure love your universal! I need to get some tips from you on what to do there as I am pretty much good with 1 max 2 visits in a 14 day block!

As for your plan, I also think perhaps you should move some of your universal days off weekends because even with express tickets the queues can be immense.

Personally I think you may want to have one more full MK day and 1/2 a day less at Epcot. Meaning you could have one full Epcot day and one Epcot evening freeing up the morning for something else.

[Squidgyness]

Originally Posted by Toff Princess

You sure love your universal! I need to get some tips from you on what to do there as I am pretty much good with 1 max 2 visits in a 14 day block!

As for your plan, I also think perhaps you should move some of your universal days off weekends because even with express tickets the queues can be immense.

Personally I think you may want to have one more full MK day and 1/2 a day less at Epcot. Meaning you could have one full Epcot day and one Epcot evening freeing up the morning for something else.

See more...

Hello! Yes we do love our universal.

We spent more days there last year actually, though we left the parks in the early evening (usually about 5 or 6, ate at citywalk about 6pm then went back to chill out back at Royal Pacific.) We like to ride all the rides at least twice, only skip a few (Hulk, ET, MiB are the ones that come to mind.) We like to see all the little shows they have, the construction drummers, flying fish market, we see the big shows too, like sinbad and the animal actors show. Also like to browse their shops a lot too, and eat obviously. Fills the time up quite a bit. Spent over a day and a half just at Harry Potter, spread over the whole trip of course.

RE Magic Kingdom, I know this will shock some on here but it's our least favourite park. Epcot/AK are tied for first place, and Hollywood studios we last did in 2009 so we shall see what happens there. As we are three adults these days (myself and my parents) MK is really only in my plans to see the castle, browse some shops and do the three mountains. After that it's a case of doing what rides we can do in the time left. We will be staying all the way till 9pm though.

This year we have park hopper as an option though so you might be right in that on the second day at EPCOT we may leave to go to another park. I will be taking a cheapo tablet this year too as we had no means of browsing MDE last year and that was a disadvantage. So hopefully if we do end up leaving to go to another park we can nab a FP or two there as well.