Offsite strategies

[Bork]

I used to know exactly how to plan a WDW vacation but I feel like I'm starting from scratch this time. 5 of us (DW, DS18, DD9, DS3) going in late August, so crowds should be less.

The thing I'm really struggling with is touring plans when you are offsite. We always avoided early entry, but now we can't. I haven't found a lot of information online. What are the strategies, assuming the headliners are going to be crazy busy by the time we get in.

For MK, it seems like we should head to Frontierland/Adventureland first. For AK, the Safari? What about the Epcot or DHS? And try to hit the headliners later?

 

[Zippa D Doodah]

I used to know exactly how to plan a WDW vacation but I feel like I'm starting from scratch this time. 5 of us (DW, DS18, DD9, DS3) going in late August, so crowds should be less.

The thing I'm really struggling with is touring plans when you are offsite. We always avoided early entry, but now we can't. I haven't found a lot of information online. What are the strategies, assuming the headliners are going to be crazy busy by the time we get in.

For MK, it seems like we should head to Frontierland/Adventureland first. For AK, the Safari? What about the Epcot or DHS? And try to hit the headliners later?

We have a few experiences staying off site since the new pattern has been in effect. Yep, at MK it seems like a good idea to start out in Frontierland (or Liberty Square or Adventureland). We have found Genie+ to be almost essential at MK, but that's a whole other discussion. I don't ropedrop AK so can't add anything there. Epcot it seems like it works for us to head toward the Land pavilion. Always easy enough to ride Soarin with a reasonable wait and to have a rollicking ride on LWTL with no wait.

DHS is such a peculiar place at rope drop. You'll stand there in a huge huddled mass waiting for 9am, swapping germs with a couple thousand strangers and watching all those resort people stroll in. The "good news" about DHS is that the masses have three different destinations in mind at rope drop (Slinky, MMRR, and GE). We never have chosen to do GE at rope drop, but have found it's not so bad to hustle into line at MMRR or Slinky and have to wait 30-40 minutes max for that ride. Things sometimes get a little sideways from there, but that's how we start

 

[Mrs~Incredible]

We always stay off site. We went in November most recently. We used to rope drop, but now that’s not really helpful since waits are usually already high by then. We found the following strategies to help the most:

1. try using genie plus for some of your park days, especially MK and HS.

2. later evening touring worked best for us this time. And we found a new discovery- how much we love the parks at night!

have fun!

 

[anne60]

We stayed off site in November. We got to HS at about 8:15. It was after 9:15 by the time we got through the turnstiles and every ride worth doing had a posted wait time of 45 minutes or more. Waited almost an hour to ride RnR (first ride we went to), and it went downhill from there. We had planned to do 2 days at HS but we switched plans and did not go back. Unless you buy Genie plus or can accept spending 5-6 hours in line, you won’t get much done. Maybe a late day strategy would be better, but we had small children in our party so that wasn’t do-able for us.

 

[ENJDisneyFan]

We also stayed offsite in November (Thanksgiving week) and arrived to DHS by 8:15am for a 9am opening. We were at the very front of the offsite pack, and the crowd grew quickly. We were scanned into the park at just before 9am and headed straight to ROTR which had a posted 45 minute wait. We walked at a pretty fast pace back to GE and were on and off the ride by 9:45am.

We did use G+ but were only able to secure 3 rides if I recall correctly. I had booked MFSR initially at 7am, but while waiting in line for Rise my kids decided they would rather do SDD. So, we used our 45 minutes waiting to refresh and ended up securing SDD for 4pm. We were also able to use G+ for TSMM and RNRC (which ended up being down and converted to an any time pass). Our longest wait at DHS was MMRR at about 75 minutes. We probably would've had better luck at closing time, but we had a dessert party at MK that night.

As far as MK rope drop, we had great success starting in Adventureland. We did Pirates, Splash, and HM in that order, all before 10am. We then did BTMRR with a G+. I definitely recommend starting in Adventureland/Frontierland since the onsite guests do not have access to that area.

Staying offsite and being "behind the pack" was definitely not something I preferred lol (this was an extended family trip paid for by my parents, so we had no choice). My family is used to being onsite and the early entry is a huge perk. However, you can definitely make it work with a good strategy and we still had a great time.