Avery's mom
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2006
Due to a last-minute flight schedule change, we are going to attempt a one-day visit to WDW on Friday, February 19th as part of an 8 night Florida trip to celebrate my daughter's 18th birthday.
We splurged on park hoppers for the day, as we just could NOT choose one park. So, seeing that MK is closing at 10 pm that day, we pushed "purchase" on our very expensive tickets and now I am trying to plan our day in this post-covid, off-site stay world. Our last stay was at the Poly in 2019 and we have not stayed off-site since my daughter was 3. So, needless to say, I was surprised to read that parking lots don't open as early as I would like to be first in line at the gates.
Our park pass is for HS for the 9 am opening. We have done RoR at Disneyland, so it is not a huge deal not to get to ride it here at WDW. Naturally, we will try at 7 am, but won't be crushed if it doesn't happen. This park is for my daughter, so her priorities are - ToT, RnRC & M&MRR. We will do as much as possible at HS, then we want to hop to AK at 2 pm - solely for EE & FoP. Then, we will head to EC (open until 8 pm) for SE and a few food booths at the Festival of the Arts, finally ending our night at MK (open until 10 pm) for anything we can do at that point. We have never attempted a 4 parks-in-one-day trip before, so it is a fun challenge for us
My questions are related to transportation - I am so used to all the Disney transportation and would have thought to use the buses to get around. However, I have heard that it would serve us better to drive from park to park - except for MK, where we could take a bus from EC to avoid the TTC. IF we drive though, I am afraid that we will behind many, many others at HS, as the parking lots don't open until one hour before. With people being let in about an hour before, I don't want this to slow us down. I did make a 7 am breakfast reservation at Ale & Compass so that we could walk from YC to HS to beat the crowds. However, if we do this, we will have to A) leave the car at YC until the end of the day, which I know is not ideal or B) walk back to YC after HS to drive to AK which will eat up time. I know we can walk from the Swan also if we pay the daily charge, but that still leaves the car there making it unusable
If this was your day, and you wanted to squeeze the absolute most from it, how would you:
1) Get to HS the absolute earliest we can in the morning
2) Then proceed with the rest of the day's transportation....
We are willing to pay for preferred parking if it's worth it - which would allow us to park at each park for one fee, but this only makes sense if it is close to the front making hopping faster.
PS - I do know that we can only hop at 2 pm and we are not guaranteed to get into any park if it reaches capacity
Thanks!
We splurged on park hoppers for the day, as we just could NOT choose one park. So, seeing that MK is closing at 10 pm that day, we pushed "purchase" on our very expensive tickets and now I am trying to plan our day in this post-covid, off-site stay world. Our last stay was at the Poly in 2019 and we have not stayed off-site since my daughter was 3. So, needless to say, I was surprised to read that parking lots don't open as early as I would like to be first in line at the gates.
Our park pass is for HS for the 9 am opening. We have done RoR at Disneyland, so it is not a huge deal not to get to ride it here at WDW. Naturally, we will try at 7 am, but won't be crushed if it doesn't happen. This park is for my daughter, so her priorities are - ToT, RnRC & M&MRR. We will do as much as possible at HS, then we want to hop to AK at 2 pm - solely for EE & FoP. Then, we will head to EC (open until 8 pm) for SE and a few food booths at the Festival of the Arts, finally ending our night at MK (open until 10 pm) for anything we can do at that point. We have never attempted a 4 parks-in-one-day trip before, so it is a fun challenge for us
My questions are related to transportation - I am so used to all the Disney transportation and would have thought to use the buses to get around. However, I have heard that it would serve us better to drive from park to park - except for MK, where we could take a bus from EC to avoid the TTC. IF we drive though, I am afraid that we will behind many, many others at HS, as the parking lots don't open until one hour before. With people being let in about an hour before, I don't want this to slow us down. I did make a 7 am breakfast reservation at Ale & Compass so that we could walk from YC to HS to beat the crowds. However, if we do this, we will have to A) leave the car at YC until the end of the day, which I know is not ideal or B) walk back to YC after HS to drive to AK which will eat up time. I know we can walk from the Swan also if we pay the daily charge, but that still leaves the car there making it unusable
If this was your day, and you wanted to squeeze the absolute most from it, how would you:
1) Get to HS the absolute earliest we can in the morning
2) Then proceed with the rest of the day's transportation....
We are willing to pay for preferred parking if it's worth it - which would allow us to park at each park for one fee, but this only makes sense if it is close to the front making hopping faster.
PS - I do know that we can only hop at 2 pm and we are not guaranteed to get into any park if it reaches capacity
Thanks!