Park hopper touring plan

happymomof1

DIS Veteran
Joined
Apr 13, 2009
ive seen so many touring plan examples, but none for when using parkhoppers. We are planning for mid afternoon breaks for swim/relax and then another park from 5ish on. ???????
Am I missing examples for the best way to do this???????????
If anyone can link to examples or articles or blogs or vlogs, I’d love to look into them.
I can’t be the only person planning this, right???
 
We did two parks a day with a break in the middle. We simply built two plans for each day. I'm not sure what you're looking for beyond that. You can build it all together on MDE and we did that, but our real nitty gritty plans were done in TouringPlans and we just had an AM plan and a PM plan. Worked great!
 
We do this but organize it to balance my need to plan with my husband's need for a more laid back vacation. I get my touring plan packed morning and in the evening we are more relaxed. I might have some ideas of what to do but we go slower, stopping for more little things (kids want to watch the train setset Germany Or dance on the light upu pavement? Go for it) during our evenings.
 
We always do our trips that way. We are early risers, especially in Disney. Each day we do rope drop, leave around 12:30-1pm to swim and rest and enjoy the resort and then head back out for dinner and spend the evenings in another park or the same park, depending on what we want to do. We have been doing this for years and we really enjoy our trips so much more having that break to recharge and just relax. We don't hop from park to park anymore like we used to.
 


Do 2 seperate touring plans (1 for the morning, 1 afternoon-you can input the starting times) if you really wanna plan both parks. We usually don’t park hop but had to get park hoppers to get free dining on our last trip. Like On days when MVMCP was on, wed stay in MK til 4 then hop elsewhere for the evening. We’d use our FPs at the first park and get extras at the second park, usually making a touring plan for the am and just going with the flow (while getting last minute FPs) for the second park. From now on we’ll be getting PHs every trip, loved it.
 
This is how we are planning every day of our September trip. Example:

Tuesday, 9/4: Early Morning Magic at MK, Fantasyland/Tomorrowland, lunch at BOG

Break

HS 4pm--close with FP

I don't really use Touring Plans too much, as I prefer my own spreadsheet.
 
We always do PHs and always take a break in the afternoon, even if we are only there for 4 days. We don't use Touring Plans because, well, we don't plan. We are normally up early just because we are used to being up early and I can't sleep past 6 am no matter how hard I try. I get up, I do my jog/walk around the resort and do some yoga, then after my shower my son is usually up (I might make enough noise to make sure he's up, just saying) then we go have breakfast. We will go to the bus stop and hop on the first park bus that comes. We just wait for the next one if the first one to come is a park we've already been to and aren't in the mood to repeat. We will usually book FPs while on the bus and we don't usually book more than two back to back because we just don't like to plan. We will either grab lunch in that park or head over to another park to eat if there just isn't anything we are interested in there. Then we will go back to the resort and spend some time at the pool, mostly the hot tub with a refreshing adult beverage, for a couple of hours and maybe grab a nap, just depends on our mood. Then we will head out to another park, again with the first bus to arrive, rinse and repeat with the FPs. While walking around we will look for ADRs, because we are two adults the time doesn't really matter and we like trying new places so the place doesn't matter. Heck, we have been known to hop over to another park for supper then decide if we want to stay there for a night time show. We tend to do split stays, with the first night or two in a moderate or value then switch over to an Epcot resort for the rest of the trip, lately that has been Dolphin since it's less. Most of the time on the last part of the trip we will split our time between Epcot and HS since we can walk to both.
 


We do this and usually have a couple approaches based upon which parks and when we have decided to start our day.

1) Arrive mid morning, FP+ from 10-1, break and work on FP+ #4 at park 2, travel to park 2 for evening and work with rolling fast passes.

2) Arrive for rope drop and get in as many rides as we can, break for lunch and rest during busiest time in the park, head out to park 2 where we have fast passes for late afternoon then continue with rolling fast passes.
 
I hope you don't mind me asking a question on your thread:confused3.
I wanted to know about how long do most of you take a break at the resort?
Right now we plan to do the Wild Africa Trek in the morning then go back to the resort for a rest before heading out to HS. I can't decide what time to make our HS reservation for dinner.
 
I hope you don't mind me asking a question on your thread:confused3.
I wanted to know about how long do most of you take a break at the resort?
Right now we plan to do the Wild Africa Trek in the morning then go back to the resort for a rest before heading out to HS. I can't decide what time to make our HS reservation for dinner.


We are thinking anywhere from 2-4 hours. Too many factors to consider like weather, will we want pool time, etc.
 
Am I missing examples for the best way to do this???????????

Building in breaks is ideal but often times you get wrapped up in doing more at the park that you don't end up leaving when you planned too ( happen to catch a show or see a shorter wait time). Some prime examples was a NYE trip with my at the time 9 yo twin boys, we planned for afternoon breaks after rope dropping every day but it really only happened one day during our trip. This past April again was planned to have afternoon breaks because we had hoppers and wanted to take advantage of this but in reality we only utilized hoppers on 2 of our 7 days and that was both to go to France for breakfast then off to HS and then the other to go to breakfast at AK then off to MK in the evening.

Ideally if you can hit the park by RD then leave by 1ish it can give you a break at the resort, although not terribly long. How you use hoppers really depend on your traveling party. If you have a group of adults or older kids then you can get a lot out of your hoppers, but if you have younger kids then the plan with them might be more mornings at the park, afternoon pool, dinner and then bed with maybe scheduling evening fireworks a couple evenings.

i don't think there is any wrong way to use hoppers except if you pay for them and not really use them. It didn't bother me much that we didn't really use them because we snagged a deal where we got the hoppers but were paying the same as a regular ticket.

Just wanted to add that when you RD a park you can get a lot accomplished with relatively short wait times, so to use the hoppers you can plan your day RD one park then scheduling FP for another park for the evening.
 
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We always get up and go to rope drop then eat lunch maybe one more attraction then back to the resort for a break. Then we go to another park and I have my adr set for there and my fast passes. :)
 
These are my plans for November with PH tickets. We are also staying at BWV so we may hop into Epcot or DHS at any given time.


Arrival Day - MK all day FP+ starting at 12:30 pm
BOG lunch 1:45/Dessert party 7:30
**We will do a break in between lunch and the dessert party if we need to. We land at 8:30 am so we may be tired or we may be running off of pure adrenaline. I'm playing that by ear.

AK AM EMH
FP+ at AK Starting at 10:00
Lunch – Satuli Canteen/Nomad
HDDR 6:15 pm
MK PM

DHS
FP+ starting at 9 am
Lunch - HBD lounge/QS??
Epcot
Dinner - F&W kiosks

MK
Lunch – Plaza 11:05 am
Dinner – Lounge/TSL/Sci Fi/Crews Cup/HBD/MM
DHS PM – FP+ Starting at 5 pm

Sleep in – AK all day to closing
FP+ Starting at 12
Lunch – Nomad?
Dinner – Y&Y, FTBBQ, Satuli, Nomad, TH?

Epcot all day
11-2 F&W - Lunch
FP+ Starting 2 pm – Soarin, SE, MS
5:20 pm – VN

Sleep In
Lunch – Pool side, B&C?
Dinner – BOG 4:40 pm
MVMCP

Sleep In
Epcot 11-2 F&W
DHS - FP+ Starting at 2

4 Parks One Day
AK – DHS – Epcot – MK PM EMH
FP+Starting at 9 am

Fly Home 10:15 pm - Undecided on what to do this day
 
We do this and usually have a couple approaches based upon which parks and when we have decided to start our day.

1) Arrive mid morning, FP+ from 10-1, break and work on FP+ #4 at park 2, travel to park 2 for evening and work with rolling fast passes.

2) Arrive for rope drop and get in as many rides as we can, break for lunch and rest during busiest time in the park, head out to park 2 where we have fast passes for late afternoon then continue with rolling fast passes.

I was wondering about this. I wasn't sure which park to get our FP+ for, our AM park or our PM park. We always arrive for RD. When you arrive for RD, do you always do your FPs for the PM park?

Thanks!
 
We normally rope drop until about 1:00 then go back to the resort in the afternoon and then an early dinner usually at one of the other resorts. We then hit one of the parks in the evening near the resort where we eat dinner. We used to commando the parks from rope drop to close but as we've gotten older we really need the break. I make the FP+ reservations for our morning park then look for additional fast passes for the evening but our evenings are usually more relaxed and are used for just walking around taking in the ambience of WDW at night. We are going the week after Thanksgiving this year so we are going to be taking in all the Christmas decorations at night and one night reserved for MVMCP.
 
When you arrive for RD, do you always do your FPs for the PM park?

No, not always. Sometimes our PM park focuses on dinner and fireworks, then we will get fast passes at the morning park. Also if the second park has a very late closing EMH like MK sometimes does we will just use rolling fast passes at MK.
 
I was wondering about this. I wasn't sure which park to get our FP+ for, our AM park or our PM park. We always arrive for RD. When you arrive for RD, do you always do your FPs for the PM park?

Thanks!

If depends. One day we are doing AK, midday break, HDDR and then MK. I’ll do our FP at AK since our time at MK will be limited with dinner taking up a big chunk of time.

Another day we have MK and then DHS at night. We will do FP at DHS.

with TSL opening i prefer to do my FP there whether it’s AM or PM.
 
I was wondering about this. I wasn't sure which park to get our FP+ for, our AM park or our PM park. We always arrive for RD. When you arrive for RD, do you always do your FPs for the PM park?

Thanks!



I think it very much depends on the park. If we are doing AK in the PM we will FP there. Same for HS.
 
I was wondering about this. I wasn't sure which park to get our FP+ for, our AM park or our PM park. We always arrive for RD. When you arrive for RD, do you always do your FPs for the PM park?

Thanks!
THIS is exactly what I wanted to know! We’ve been to WDW many times and love to Parkhop! Especially to Epcot or HS in the evening for a great dinner, shopping and entertainment! BUT——— I never see touring plans that explain the best way to see headliner attractions and how to utilize fasrpasses best!

If anyone has info on touring plans that utilize breaks and park hopping, please link. I just saw a great video from the actual touring plan company, but it too was showing exactly how to set up a touring plan for a full day st a park from open to evening.
 
Here are our plans for our July trip:

Weds arrive at MK, around 3 pm. dinner at Chef Mickey's. Evening: MK

Thurs rope drop: DHS, dinner: Cape May. Evening: Epcot or DHS

Fri: rope drop: Epcot. Dinner: Via Napoli. Evening: Epcot

Sat: rope drop: DHS Dinner: Tappan Edo Evening: Epcot

Sunday: rope Drop: MK Dinner: BOG. Evening: MK

Monday: Rope Drop: AK. Dinner: Coral Reef. Evening: Epcot

Tuesday: Rope Drop: MK Breakfast: Crystal Palace. Evening: MK

Weds (Departure day) Rope Drop: Epcot. Breakfast: Cape May

Lots of evenings in Epcot because we're staying at the Beach Club; it's a 5 minute walk. Besides, we love strolling around World Showcase at night. But any of those are subject to change; our dinner ADRs are early enough that we could certainly get on the bus to MK or DHS, particularly on EMH evening nights.

As far as breaks go, we tend to head back to the resort at around 1 pm, give or take. We return for a 6 pm or so dinner ADR.
 

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