Let's learn from everyone's mistakes....

[ZoZo]

You'll see many people suggest taking afternoon breaks. I've found that, actually, this advice is best only at certain times of the year, when the parks are open late hours.

All of my trips have been in October, when the parks close early. AK closes at 5:00, and the other parks usually close by 9:00 pm (except for those parks with evening EMH). So to me, it doesn't make sense to take afternoon breaks every day, since (with travel time to and from the hotel), breaks can take up to three hours out of your afternoon. Most days I'd rather power through my day, knowing I can get to bed early in the evening.

 

[Disney_Princess83]

Try and not to cram too much into one day. We had two experiences on our latest trip:

We went over to Universal, arrived by 8:15am, to grab coffee and then hit the parks. We headed back for our hotel by 6pm, decided that we weren't that tired so jumped onto a bus for EPCOT which was open until midnight. And we stayed until midnight.... It didn't end well! LOL. We were very cranky once midnight ticked around.

We had a similar experience one day (another EPCOT day) where we had two reservations for lunch and desse and then had to leave the parks by 6pm for a dinner show away from the parks. We also tried to cram Test Track, Soarin'... Again it didn't end well!

We were trying to do too much and it didn't really pay off. Try and relax and don't cram too much into a single day.