3 days, no PH - Help!!

[jenng1983]

Why don't you do a park on Sunday daytime? Figure out which park you don't care about seeing in the evening (from your must list it would probably be AK or Epcot). You will have plenty of time for Disney Springs after the water park.

Or can you upgrade the base tickets to park hoppers (I don't know how it works with military tickets)?

I have no idea which parks have what at night time.

We can't upgrade to park hoppers without a substantial hit to our budget. See below.

Let me spend your money....
I'd fly in on Monday. Take ME to your resort. If getting in after midnight, you'll have to grab your own luggage.
Since you are getting three "free" five-day passes, buy the one ticket as a five-day. Go to the parks on Tuesday. That way you can spend one day in each park. One visit to DS is probably enough. On Sunday, do a light/half day/evening in whatever park the kids want to return to most. (I'd do MK.)

DH is of the mindset that we won't want to do 5 days straight of Disney. I'm of the mindset that right after that we're cruising, so we'll be able to relax then. His other thing is that we'll be spending more money in the parks compared to our of the parks, so I'll have to show him how we can save $$. I have to get him on my page.

Packing for the cruise when you are already on vacation will be very quick. Put everything in the hotel room that is yours in bag. Done. It's not like packing from home where you are debating what to bring. Just something to think about! What if you did Water park/DS on Sunday and a 4th park Friday?

True. The packing for 2 vacations in one thing is freaking me out, but you're right, it won't take long once we're there. We can probably even do it early Monday, as we will probably get a later PAT due to being first timers.

Are you really wanting to do a water park day. Regular tickets won't get you into a water park, and those tickets are more expensive. Depending on the age of your kids you might just want to turn that day into a park day, and do Disney Springs on Sunday before the cruise.

DH and the kids do. I can take it or leave it, as I'm not a huge fan of waterslides, but I'm outnumbered there. I'll have a 7 and 16 year old, and DH is a kid at heart.

Our magic bands usually mailed to us, you should have them well before you leave for your vacation.

Yeah, not to Canada though. We'll be picking them up at AoA.

According to the OP, these are air miles tickets. They should be bridged when upgrading. Depending on the type of ticket (if they are older without expiration dates), she might be able to “upgrade” the 5-day tickets to a 4-day hopper for minimal cost.

Airmiles participated in the Canadian resident deal. As the OP's avatar mentions being in Canada I think there is a good chance that these are Canadian resident tickets. If that's true upgrading may be prohibitive.

We are dealing with this very thing. We have 4 day tickets but since our flight isn't departing until quite late we thought about doing a park in the morning but because of the deal we got on the tickets it's cost prohibitive to do so.

That sounds like a strange situation. Any ticket sold by a third party is typically bridged because Disney doesn’t know how much you paid for it.

When we went to DL in June, we tried to add a day to our tickets, thinking it would be adding a 4th day, so $20/ticket to pay the difference. However, we did get our tickets from Air Miles during the Canadian resident deal and therefore "paid" fewer Air Miles and would have had to pay the difference between what the ticket was worth, and the price to add on a day, making it $100 per ticket to add the day. I'm afraid Disney somehow knows how much the ticket value is, and they take it into consideration.

exactly what time will you be arriving at MCO?
What is the cost of the hotel at the airport? $150?
AoA? $175?
If you are going to pay to stay somewhere on Monday night, just go the resort.

All the flights from Calgary get to MCO around 11:00-11:30pm. Unless this changes next year, I'll be planning for a middle of the night arrival. By the time we get our bags, and get to AoA, I can see it being 1am or so. I haven't looked into the price of a room at an MCO hotel, but the thought of getting on a bus after a day of travelling sounds less than appealing.

 

[jenng1983]

Thank you so much for all your input! I have pretty much decided that we WILL be visiting each park. I think what we'll do is stick with the one "down" day for now, and buy a 4 day ticket, which we can add on to later if we decide to visit a park another day. I've only ever been to DL, and there I am a park open to park close type and it's pretty tiring, but it seems like the hours at WDW aren't as long as they are at DL, so there won't be as many late nights I imagine.

 

[Lesley Wake]

Thank you so much for all your input! I have pretty much decided that we WILL be visiting each park. I think what we'll do is stick with the one "down" day for now, and buy a 4 day ticket, which we can add on to later if we decide to visit a park another day. I've only ever been to DL, and there I am a park open to park close type and it's pretty tiring, but it seems like the hours at WDW aren't as long as they are at DL, so there won't be as many late nights I imagine.

Ok, so for nighttime stuff, there is the following:
Magic Kingdom-Happily Ever After-awesome, can't miss it!
Hollywood Studios-Fantasmic or Star Wars fireworks-with timing you normally have to pick one.
Epcot-Illuminations
Animal Kingdom-Rivers of Light, Tree of life awakenings (projection show), and Pandora at night with bioluminescence.

Personally, if I had to miss one park at night it would end up being Epcot. But I also know a lot of people who love Illuminations and would skip Animal Kingdom (though Pandora at night is awesome). If you can I would want to visit all parks at night! Maybe do Hollywood Studios the last day, do stuff in morning, back to resort, then back for an evening show...

 

[Mambo Junkie]

I'm having a hell of a time here... Going to WDW in October 2018 for a land & sea vacation. I last went 25 years ago, DH and the kids have never been. We are booked at AoA from the 9th to the 15th. We're getting 3 x 5 day base tickets for my family from Air Miles, and are going to be purchasing one 3 day ticket. We have 5 days in Orlando before our cruise, but are planning on 3 days at the parks. I thought I had it all figured out. My original plan was to buy a 3 day PH for the 4th family member, and use the extra "days" admissions on the 5 day passes to park hop (does that make sense?), and go to AK/HS one day. Anyways, I just discovered that Disney doesn't let you do that, and you can only use one admission per day. So, plan B was to pick 3 parks. But I can't exclude one. MK is a must, no brainer. ToT is a MUST for us, and we would like to see Fantasmic, plus the new Toy Story Land will be open when we go, so that makes HS a necessity. AK seems awesome, and Pandora is a must for DH. I was going to rule out Epcot, but then I realized there's Frozen, A&E meet and greet, Test Track, Soarin... I'm not sure I can rule it out so easily anymore.

So. Our plan as of now is:

Tuesday - Arrive LATE in the day (after midnight) - there's no other flights from Calgary that arrives earlier
Wednesday - WDW
Thursday - WDW
Friday - Water Park, Disney Springs
Saturday - WDW
Sunday - hang out at hotel, Disney Springs, pack for cruise
Monday - Board cruise

I am considering flying in Monday instead of Tuesday, staying at the airport hotel, purchasing a 4 day ticket and then having Tuesday to do a park as well. Even if we only do a half day. The cost difference will be minimal.

1) If we do this, what do we do with our luggage? Check in is at 3pm, we don't want to be lugging it in the parks. Can we bring it to AoA in the morning for them to hold it? Can we leave it at the hotel at MCO and have them transport it to the hotel for us?
2) Will we be able to pick up our magic bands from AoA in the morning, so that we can use them in the parks? If not, how do we use our tickets?
3) Would it be easy to just do one of the parks on either Friday or Sunday, and only stay for half the day?
4) Should I just suck it up and pick a park to exclude?

HELP!


Edit: I should add, we do want some downtime in there somewhere. We COULD to a park for a half day on the Sunday, but I don't want to be rushing around getting packed and ready for the cruise.

I don't know how young the kids are but you could always opt for the MNSSHP ticket, which will allow you to get in at 4 - you can make fp selections (we had 3:20-4:20 Space Mtn. 4:20-5:20 7DMT and 5:20-6:20 Splash. Dinner at 6:15 at Jungle Canteen. When we finished, the park was ours. We had a great time and saw everything we wanted, including the parade and fireworks. That could be a half day with the morning lounging around. Of course, we didn't have to go see princesses or worry about autographs, either. Adult trip.

 

[jenng1983]

I don't know how young the kids are but you could always opt for the MNSSHP ticket, which will allow you to get in at 4 - you can make fp selections (we had 3:20-4:20 Space Mtn. 4:20-5:20 7DMT and 5:20-6:20 Splash. Dinner at 6:15 at Jungle Canteen. When we finished, the park was ours. We had a great time and saw everything we wanted, including the parade and fireworks. That could be a half day with the morning lounging around. Of course, we didn't have to go see princesses or worry about autographs, either. Adult trip.

Hmm... that's another great thought. I had originally wanted to go, but we're trying to pare back on budget, and I tossed the idea out. But... I love Halloween, and it WOULD give us another half day in MK...

 

[disney144]

How would you spend more money in the park? Food costs are the same. Stick to your shopping budget and it will be the same.

 

[jenng1983]

How would you spend more money in the park? Food costs are the same. Stick to your shopping budget and it will be the same.

How? Honestly, we're suckers for Disney. Anything they want to sell us, they will. We have NO willpower in the parks.