Long Stay, Less Park Days?

If travelling with your kids, ask them what they'd prefer doing. Much to our surprise, our kids like having days by the pool or going to the beach rather than going to parks everyday. (we typically try to go to Florida for 2 weeks and will spend a week in Orlando (doing 3-4 park days) and a week around FortMyers / Naples just going to the beach, pool, parks, kayaking, etc.
 
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My kids will often pick pool days over park days. They’re favorite thing is swimming in Winter when it’s cold and rainy back home
 
Go for it. We often go for a week and only do 1 or 2 days of parks. I have never purchased hopper passes. Hang at the pool or go to the water park. If your kids love the pool it's perfect.
 
Since you’re going in January, just keep in mind that it could be too cold to swim. When we were at WDW for New Year it was sunny and 28C but in 2017 it was 0-5C!!
 
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Since you’re goung in January, just keep in mind that it could be too cold to swim. When we were at WDW fir New Year it was sunny and 28C but in 2017 it was 0-5C!!

YIKES! We often go in Jan/Feb and one year we did have low temps. Too cold to swim but still great for walking around the parks. Being from Canada, even a ten degree weather change is HUGE for us. It's a good reminder though that if the weather is bad, we might as well be in the parks.
 
Disney knows where to get you on pricing. After day 4 or so (enough for a day at each park), it’s not ~that~ much more to add an extra day. But this can work to your advantage. Having the option to do a short “day” at a park after dinner for a ride and a night show (go on Space Mountain then watch Happily Ever After?) is a lot more relaxing than “having” to fit everything into a smaller number of park days.

We did the Canadian deal last year so it lowered the cost, but even then, the 6-day we got was ~$20pp more than a 4-day. We’d never gone that many days before, but we used it to leave AK earlier and come back another day, and to go to DHS on our last night for basically an hour for the Aerosmith coaster and some fireworks. Even if we hadn’t utilized the extra days, it wouldn’t have been that big a monetary loss. The important thing is we had enough flexibility to not feel like we had to cram everything into each day, and so we could do short days and relax in the morning or evening if we needed to. This is why I prefer more days to Hoppers.

Our 6-days though was also on a 10-night trip. I fully support having fewer days than the length of your stay. R&R is important on a vacation of all things!
 
We just got back from a 13 day(12 night) trip this January and had a 7 day park ticket (not hopper). We also have 3 kids under 8, so find sticking to one park a day more than enough for them.

We did 2 days at MK and one late afternoon/evening for the fireworks, 1 Epcot, 1 AK, 2 HS. We let the kids pick our last day and they wanted to go back to HS.

Weather was definitely up and down.... had a few definite pool days, a few chilly pool days and quite a few non-pool days since it was pretty cold. Daytime temperatures ranged from 27C to 16C, some evenings were down to 5 or 6C.
 


Oh man! We would never do two days at AK or HS, haha. The only park we often do more than once is Epcot. We could spend every day there, haha.

Everyone vacations differently. We typically go for 10-14 days and either have an AP or 10 day hopper. Adults, my kids are in late 20s. I could and do spend 2 or 3 days at AK. It’s one of our fav parks and imo one of the best themed parks.
We go to the parks in the morning, head back to our resort for the afternoon then head to a different park at night. On a water park day, we return to our resort to clean up and take a break then go to Disney Springs later.
Because we take the afternoons to enjoy our resort we don’t really feel the need for non park days.
 
I think we decided on a 5 day non-hopper. Two days at Epcot (since were staying right at Board Walk for a week followed by three nights at Grand Floridian) and then one day at the other parks.
 
Up until 2 years ago we were going for 12-14 days at a time and rarely had more than a 3 day ticket. We often added in a day or two at the waterparks. There are just soooooo many things to do/see outside of the parks, including enjoying the resort that you pay a small fortune for, that it's very easy to fill the non park days. We also require several pool days....no point taking a vacation and not relaxing.

The longer trips had to stop 2 years ago because stupid me bought out my business partner and now I just work ALL THE TIME. Last August I managed to swing a 10 day trip for just my DD and I. We did one very long park day which included hopping between 3 parks and then we did MNSSHP. So that's a 10 day trip and only two days in the parks. At this stage of the game we are at more WDW trips than I can even remember (over 25) so there is absolutely zero need to see and do it all. We actually enjoy the feeling of just being on the property.
 
depending on your stay,I think you would need at least 4 day tickets;1 park per day.However,after spending all that money to go there and then limit yourself to not going back for a second day,would be murder,especially for kids.I love disney and could stay all day in one park,but I don't think that works for little ones.Imo, longer stay,longer base tickets.Shorter stay,park hoppers.Like someone wrote earlier,Disney gets you in the first few days of your base ticket;it's not much more to buy more days.Magic and then Epcot are our favourites and can't imagine doing them only once or not doing one park at all.
 
depending on your stay,I think you would need at least 4 day tickets;1 park per day.However,after spending all that money to go there and then limit yourself to not going back for a second day,would be murder,especially for kids.I love disney and could stay all day in one park,but I don't think that works for little ones.Imo, longer stay,longer base tickets.Shorter stay,park hoppers.Like someone wrote earlier,Disney gets you in the first few days of your base ticket;it's not much more to buy more days.Magic and then Epcot are our favourites and can't imagine doing them only once or not doing one park at all.

It's true! It's such a small jump from 4 to 5, and then even less from 5 to 6.
 
I love going for long trips and short park days. Stay until nap time, or arrive after nap time! With airfare from Alberta, it isn't worth it for us to go for less than 11-14 days.
 
I love going for long trips and short park days. Stay until nap time, or arrive after nap time! With airfare from Alberta, it isn't worth it for us to go for less than 11-14 days.

I hear you. We did a 6 day trip once. WHEW. Never again. We average 9 days most of the time. Next time it's 10 ;) Now to decide on a red eye to gain a day or to lose a day.
 

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