With the hotel question answered, I turn my attention to scheduling. Now that I know we are staying for nine days I can begin to play with our overall schedule for our trip. I will not assign the parks to specific days until I know the Extra Magic Hours for May and June. (Information about Extra Magic Hours Here) There are several factors that I consider as I put everything together. Do we want the Park Hopper Option? How can we balance early mornings and late nights? Which parks, rides, and attractions are most important to the family? Lastly, this is a vacation, how can I make sure we have time to relax?
We have decided not to go with the Park Hopper option this year. I am a huge fan of Park Hopping. I love the freedom that it allows, but this year we are staying a couple of days more than we normally do and thus I need to cut cost somewhere. For my family, the added cost of the Park Hopper would be $275. So, as much as it pains me, we are going to stick with one park a day.
Initially, I was thinking that we could spend three days at the Magic Kingdom and two days at each of the other parks. I am now leaning towards going to MK three days, Epcot three days, Animal Kingdom two days and Hollywood Studios just one day. My two favorite parks are Magic Kingdom and Epcot. I'm pretty sure that I could spend all nine days at those two parks but I don't know if the fam would go for that. My son absolutely loves Animal Kingdom. One of my goals this year is to experience AK as the Imagineers intended, and that is at a much slower pace. I also like Animal Kingdom because they close early and that means that you can plan on hitting the parks early the next morning after having an evening off.
The drawback to the plan is that it means only one day at Hollywood Studios. I think my family can do everything we want to do there in one day. I would like to do Toy Story Mania and Star Tours a couple of times, Tower of Terror, and I want to make sure we see Fantasmic. We have never done the Backlot Tour or The Voyage of the Little Mermaid, so I would like to do those. The rest I can live without. I hope to post a detailed agenda as we get closer.
I never feel like I get to see all of Epcot. So this trip we are going to give three days to that park. This is also where relaxing at the parks comes into play. I believe the more days you spend in a park, the slower the pace you can go. I would really like to spend an entire day just experiencing World Showcase. We also have several restaurants we want to visit at Epcot. We would like to try Coral Reef, and the breakfast at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall. I also want to try to "snack" around the World and taste something from all of the pavilions. I think the motto for this trip is going to be "let's get fat."
To be continued...
*Stay tuned for a look at how to create a touring plan for each park and how to build in some relaxation time during your Walt Disney World vacation. Thanks for reading.
2 comments:
Nine days and only one at HS? You will enjoy Coral Reef. Make sure to ask for a table by the aquarium. Late afternoon seemed to be a good time to get a table there for us. I think our reservation was 2:45 or so. You'll also enjoy the Akershus Royal Banquet Hall. Good breakfast food, and great character meet for the princess. I know you, I mean your kids, will love that.
I thought of you as I was making that decision. I knew you would be hurt! I really wanted to spend three days at Epcot and Cal really wants to spend time at Animal Kingdom. To me HS is three great rides, a show, a cupcake and Fantasmic. I'll be sure to let you know how I feel about it after we do it. Thanks for the post.
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