How Do YOU Determine Which Park to Visit on Which Day?

[scrapquitler]

So, on our first trip to WDW, I used the Touring Plans Crowd Calendar to choose which parks to visit on which date, and after Day 2, I realized their expected crowds didn't reflect what we were seeing in the parks. Coincidentally, we happened to visit parks the next few days that Easy WDW said would be low crowds, and they were.

Last year, we took Easy WDW's recommendations into account when planning our park days (although we did diverge a bit). Now that Easy WDW is no longer publishing crowd calendars, and crowds seem so unpredictable, I am wondering how others decide what park to visit on which day? EMH? Personal theory of crowd behavior? Other ideas?

We do not follow the conventional wisdom. We never do rope drop, but we generally always close the park at night. We usually go to whatever park we feel like in the morning, then hop over to whatever park is open late at night. We never miss evening EMH at MK.

And we almost always start and end our trip with MK, regardless of the day of the week, crowd calendars, etc.

 

[stinkpickle]

I hop to and from EMH's and usually avoid MK on Mondays and Saturdays....except for EMH, of course.

 

[Vista461]

We have kinda of a loose plan and hit the ones with EMH and set up our FP's for that park. We always get hoppers so we usually hit 2-3 parks a day.

 

[Dis703]

I generally start with looking at the park hours and events. I typically avoid EMH but make an exception occasionally. I won't do MK on the weekend and try to avoid Epcot on the weekend as well, especially if traveling during F&W or F&G. From there I look at the longest park hours and make sure shows like Fantasmic are running on the nights I plan to visit that park. Most of the time the days I pick end up being recommended days with EasyWDW and Touring Plans with occasional discrepancies on a day or two.

I've seen the no MK on Mondays recommendation come up a lot, and used to try for that but it didn't pan out last few trips and Monday turned out to be just fine. So as long as it's not a holiday we don't make that restriction.

ETA: If my family could get moving early enough for Morning EMH or stay out late enough for evening EMH I would likely take advantage and go to those parks more often. But it rarely works out for us.