Your favorite things about Park Hoppers?

[tndisneyfan]

I like the park hopper just for more flexibility. We leave in 10 days for our next trip. Park hours are short at DHS and Food and Wine is going on. We like to spend a fair amount of time at Epcot doing F&WF, but don't want to spend all day there. If DHS is closing at 7, sometimes we'll head over to MK and just watch the fireworks. I can't think how many times we've went to MK just to catch the fireworks.

Even when the park hours aren't short, hoppers give you the abilty to do morning EMH at one park, then once that park gets crowded you can go somewhere else. Also if MK is having a really late EMH night, you can go to one park most of the day, take a rest, and close down MK. If we do a dining plan, it seems like most of the places we like to eat are in Epcot. So we'll plan our days somewhere else and just plan evenings in Epcot. If you get to one park and it's way more crowded than you would've expected, you can leave and try another one.

I think you can do without it, but we like the flexibility.

 

[Crystal824]

I really do not see how anyone can stay at the WDW for a week and not have the hopper. We always go through two parks each day. We like to start the day at one park, stay for 4-5 hours go back to the resort and have lunch and veg out at the pool. Around 5 we head out to another park, have dinner and enjoy that park at night. That we we are splitting up the parks at day and night and never getting overly tired or bored from just one park per day. I should state that it is my wife and I on these trips as we are in our 60's with no kids to deal with. We also go during the off-time so the crowds are considerably smaller and wait times at most rides are non existant which allows for a quicker walk thru in the parks. We never know where we are going to wind up, even though we have dining reservations. We let the dinner determine the park of the night, but the days are wide open. 34 days til I am back.

This is what we do too. Usually one or two days we will stay in a park all day. Mostly we go to a park at rope drop, stay until 2-3, come back to the resort, swim and/or nap. Then we will hit a different park that evening for dinner and the night show. We do have kids to deal with...two little ones. They can't go all day commando in a park yet.

 

[lake queen]

We have had great luck with park to park buses. For one thing they are usually quite empty during the day, so it is comfortable for us to stretch out.

They more often than not come in a timely manner. I do remember waiting quite a while at AK one time. But sometimes I think that is the luck of the draw. On all our trips, the bus service is generally good, but there are always a few times where the wait seems to be extra long.

 

[JanaDee]

So I'm the only oddball out huh?

No. We've had a couple trips where we didn't get hoppers. It just took more planning at the time.

If not having hoppers works for you, great! It's your vacation.

 

[tndisneyfan]

A couple of questions:

How good are the buses between parks? Between MK and EP, I imagine the monorail is the way to go, and EP to HS either walk or take the friendship boat correct? How about all other park to park options, are buses readily available?

Can FP+ be scheduled for multiple parks in one day? I don’t remember the details on this since we never worried about it.


Thanks again,
Dan

We don't take the bus often between parks, but when we have used them it was fine. I don't remember any long waits. I would take the Friendship boat between Epcot and DHS, just because I enjoy the boat. I'm not sure if a bus run between the two, but a bus may be the quicker option. It can be a fair wait for a boat if you've just missed one, and it makes several stops at resorts before it reaches the other park.

As far as I know, FP+ CANNOT be scheduled for multiple parks in one day. But, what we've had good luck with is getting to one park early and riding what we could without FP, then scheduling FP for whatever park we were going to be in that evening. That way we knew we would have three big rides waiting on us.

 

[Bamagirl43]

With the new FP+ rules, things may be different...

Sometimes the best laid plans don't work out. Rides are down, kids are tired, it's hotter or more crowded than expected. PH let's you flex your schedule and hit a park for the evening when you weren't expecting to.

Mostly, I like the variety. We go to one park for the morning, afternoon break at resort, dinner and then second park for the evening. It breaks the day into 3 unique events. For us, it makes a 7 day vacation feel like 21 days.

Thanks! I was wrestling with PH as we are usually a one park a day family. You said it perfectly "3 unique events" per day!

 

[HopperFan]

So I'm the only oddball out huh?

No. We had many years where we didn't get them. The kids were at an age they didn't want to leave to break but then again they weren't going to last open to close. So we chose to go later and stay to end, or go at opening and leave for dinner.

Another time that they might not be worth it is if you travel the slower times where park hours are limited. We have often gone times where AK closed at 5, MK and Studios by 7-8 and EPCOT at it's usual 9 to keep the restaurants full. That time of year hopping is much more difficult to do.

 

[PSUGuy]

For years our strategy has been to hit a park at rope drop, tour until the standby lines exceed 25 mins or so then we hop to WS, every day. We like to hit MK or DHS in the evening, we stay at BW so DHS is a stroll, so often we enjoy 3 different parks in one day. Ya need a hopper for that.

Bill From PA

 

[shannn]

Like almost everyone, dinner in Epcot! We stay at the boardwalk so we spend a lot of our evenings in the WS.

Fireworks at MK in the evenings

AK is really a short day so somewhere else at night.

As for FP+, you can only book your initial 3 in one park. But after you hop to your new park, you can go to a kiosk and try to get a FP there.

 

[bluezy]

I'm also in the "park hoppers give us flexibility" camp. We don't necessarily *plan* to hop, it just works out that way. And it's for all the reasons previously listed:

1. The park we went to at rope drop just feels (or actually is) too full to be enjoyable.

2. AK & DHS are not usually full-day parks for us so we'll either go back to the resort for a swim and dinner or head to another park for dinner and fireworks.

3. While we usually devote a full day to both EP & MK, we often have things we didn't get done on those days or things we want to do again. We'll take a day to go back to both of those parks and hit up those things we didn't get to do earlier in the week.

When the kids were younger, we always got park hoppers but sometimes only used them once during our stay. Now that they're older (the youngest is 9...will be 10 by the time we go next year), we use them much more frequently. On our last trip, we hopped 3 out of 7 days and one of those days we hit 3 parks. Well worth the price for us.

 

[MonorailCentral]

Like most have said, it's all about the flexibility. We currently have APs, but we usually like to be flexible. Sometimes it is one park for the day, sometimes we'll jump around. We like to go where the mood takes us.

 

[stinkpickle]

Plus, you don't have to pay for it until the first day you need it. I usually wait to add hoppers when we check in.

 

[karly05]

Going to dinner in EPCOT after enjoying a morning in another park. (EPCOT has better dinner options than most parks, but I really don't want to spend 3 full park days in EPCOT per trip)

You took the words right out of my mouth!

It's not uncommon for me to do 3 TS and 2 or 3 CS meals (not to mention snacks) at Epcot, but I don't want to spend my entire trip there.

I also like to keep my last day open to go back to things I missed or want to do over without having to limit myself to one park. And as other posters have said, you never know when weather or unexpected crowds will make you want to switch plans and try another park.

On my 2012 trip, MSEP was running on limited nights of the week; I didn't want to spend Monday at MK (always a "bad" day there), but that was my only chance to see MSEP that trip, so I spent most of the day elsewhere and just hopped to MK to grab some dinner and see MSEP/Wishes.

 

[henrylovespooh]

We get hoppers for most trips. We're like many others who have already commented - we will go to MK for the morning, and when it gets crowded around lunch time, we head over to Epcot. We don't spend much time in at AK or DS (rarely more than a half day), so we'll spend a morning there (or even an evening at DS to go see Fantasmic) and spend the rest of the day in MK or Epcot. I love the ability to go wherever we want, when we want.

 

[OasterP]

A lot of this will be stuff others said I'm sure, and we've only gone once, but I LOVE them. I'll never go without them.

Here are some of the main reasons:

We went during food and wine so I could go back to that any time I wanted.

If a park was more crowded than expected (Yes I'm talking to YOU HS expected 4/10 actual 8/10) we just left and went somewhere else.

On our last full day we didn't know exactly what we might want to do. I did the morning in Epcot and then we did the afternoon/evening in MK!

Animal Kingdom is not one we'll ever plan a full day for again, so it would either be a resort day (which I learned I don't do well) or hop to another park.

There were a couple of times we had planned on spending the day at one park but wanted dinner at Epcot (and not food and wine). My son doesn't love Epcot as much b/c he's four, but we all loved the food there.

I was depending on Pop busses and WDW transportation and I still didn't find it was hard to park hop.

 

[Sparkly]

Hopping to MK at night!

 

[Moonwolf]

While we are mainly a one park per day family. I like hoppers to take advantage of some parks staying open later. Hoppers are great for things like AK days or after EPCOT closes we can hop over to MK for another hour or so of park time. Then again my brother and I can run from rope drop to past midnight pretty much everyday then crash once we get home from our trip .

 

[linzbear]

Our reason for PH is so that we can do our long line favorites more often per trip. That is, so we can do Kiliminjaro Safari, Toy Story Mania, Peter Pan - things that end up with really long lines. We'll start the day at DHS with a ride on TSM and then FP it (or maybe just ride, whatever), then do a show or two, but then we really don't have anything after lunch that we couldn't do on a different morning with another round of TSM. So we'll head to Epcot or MK and there are many rides there that don't require you to be early that we love, and then we can stay for the nighttime shows. Or we'll go to DTD.

We tried without PHs and we just didn't get anything done - one ride on TSM, but then we didn't want to use another day at DHS, so that was it, one ride for the entire week long trip. Same with AK - one ride on the Safari for the entire week. But then we had so many days at MK and EP that we got bored after lunch! Hated it, and we won't do that again.

 

[cakebaker]

Most of the perks of hopping have already been listed-

Ability to schedule evening Fp+ and enjoy the light crowds at another park that morning is the biggest for us. We park hop every day of our trip.

But also, I can't stand the idea of just getting to see each park once during a trip. I have to have at least one visit to the MK that I can walk out saying to myself, I'll be back in a few days!

I would never do without the hopper option.

 

[DisneyFive]

Thanks again all.

Dan