First day: BOG at 8:55, yay or nay?

[Oeg]

DH and I are heading to WDW with our boys (6 and 8) next week - first time for all of us.

I just managed to snag a reservation for us at BOG at 8:55 our first morning. I'm not sure though what is a better way to start our trip - breakfast there, or rope drop and the "let the magic begin" thing plus access to rides before it starts getting crowded. I'm hoping for an earlier time to free up, or to schedule lunch there one day, but so far no luck.

Also curious just how crowded the parks will be on low crowd days (and thus, how important it is to maximize morning hours on rides, versus dining). Touring plans has pretty short waiting times, so maybe I don't need to be obsessive about planning as I fear I may be. All these trip reports of people only managing to ride a few rides are scaring me, but maybe that's just not the situation in mid January???

 

[Thing 1]

We have done that week and it IS a good week crowd wise but still the crowds wil build quickly anyway. That first hour is golden.i assume the park opens at 9. I would never spend that hour eating. What time is your first FP? I would spend that first hour hitting a couple of the more popular rides you don’t have FP for. The castle is cool looking but the breakfast food is very basic and there are no characters. If you fell into a late AM or lunch time I would grab it but otherwise I’d let it go.

 

[dledger]

Skip it and get right to the rides!

 

[22Tink]

First thing in the morning is prime park touring time. I'd drop the ADR and do rope drop! The only time I do BOG breakfast is if it's PPO and will get me in the park early.

 

[unrequited23]

Are the kids psyched that you have a BOG ADR or is it not a big deal? If they aren't super excited I would watch and try to move up the ADR until the 24 hr before cutoff. If I couldn't move it up a bit, I would cancel it.

The first hour really does set the tone for what you can accomplish. Plus the opening show gets the kids excited to be at Disney.

 

[Oeg]

Thanks all! I just managed to get a reservation for 8am (park opens at 9) which I think might work out much better. Probably means we’ll miss the opening ceremony, but it seems like being in the park early (and maybe getting to ride SDMT with minimal wait) might be an okay trade off.

Neither boy knows what he would be missing, but I think they’d enjoy BOG so glad I got it.