Are you all more inclined to purchase park hoppers for upcoming trips?

[Disneylover99]

We often get tickets with hopper for free dining and then upgrade to AP’s, but when we don’t, we’re happy to take the savings and go without parkhoppers.

I don’t think we’d feel compelled to get parkhoppers because of boarding groups.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

Nope. Too expensive for a family of 5 with very little value. Too much hassle to park hop at Disney. We plan to spend 2 days at HS. There feels like enough for us to do between attractions and shows and just hanging in Batuu.

Universal is a different story though. We always get them there.

 

[Jacq7414]

We have always got hoppers for our 2 previous trips and our upcoming trip. It's just 3 of us so it's around $240 extra for all of us. We leveraged it more last trip which was nice. Now could we manage WDW without them, of course. Our friends are a family of 7 we are going with this year and they bought normal park tickets, but for them it's almost $600 to get park hoppers. And they can always upgrade at the parks if they so desire. We just like the flexibility it gives us, especially with the dining options to bounce around for dinner and such.

We are a family of 3 as well, so when spending what we spend at Disney - it’s not that much extra. I could see if we were a bigger family though, the cost being prohibitive. I really like the hoppers though. We use them every trip

 

[ClapYourHands]

Depends on who is going and the length of stay. The first trip, we did base tickets because it was a short trip and everything was new to our kids (and many things weee new to the adults). We had so much to do in each park that hoppers would have wasted time we could have been enjoying the parks. It was also in the days before additional FP could be booked on the app.

When I went with my older two on a shorter trip, hoppers were incredibly valuable for commando touring that allowed us to blitz through headliners and make the most of refreshing. We were also at a crescent lake resort, so the easy access to two parks was enticing.

My upcoming trip will be DD’s first real trip. We have base tickets. I think there’s more than enough to do in each park, and many of the things that will interest her are the secondary rides and non-ride attractions. We will probably take rest breaks in the afternoon, but it’s easy enough to return to the same park as the morning. It’s also a long enough trip that we don’t have to rush around to try to get everything done. I purposely am trying to slow down the pace so she won’t get overtired, and I think having hoppers would make me try to push to do more, which would ultimately be less enjoyable.

 

[GillianP1301]

We always get hoppers anyway, but I do think that the Boarding Group situation at HS is a good reason to have hoppers. You may end up having to try more than one day to get a boarding group, but you won't necessarily want to give up all your park time at another park, so hopping is ideal. It would be super easy to scan in at HS, secure a boarding group and then Skyliner over to EP.

 

[Farro]

thanks all for responses!

So seems people who already got hoppers will still get them, people who don't like them still don't and some people who didn't get hoppers before may now get them due to the new boarding group situation.

I guess if you can add hoppers while you are there, you can make the decision to try again the next day at DHS if you didn't get a boarding group first try.

 

[hes122]

I've had the PH option on my tickets twice. The first time we never used them. The second time we purposefully got them because of what all we wanted to do in the short trip. I would get it again in the future, but only if it made sense according to our plans.

 

[Kitty & Covs Covs]

I'm kinda the opposite-ish, though it's different. If my trip is 3 days or less, I will get hoppers so I can go to all the parks. If its 4 days or more, no hoppers. Even with an AP I do not hop on longer trips. I dont take breaks and ther is way more than enough in each park for a full day.

The latter is how I feel-we’ve been doing once a year trips with only 2 park days, and I don’t think I’d feel satisfied if we left only seeing 2/4 parks each time. I also feel like it breaks up the day for 4-8 year old kids who might not have the stamina for a full day RD to close but can recharge some if we switch parks. The switch in scenery has worked well to keep my daughter moving on 28,000 step+ days!

 

[Rockette]

Depends:

California: It's always worth the park hopper. It almost doubles the amount of rides you can jump on in a given day. Plus you have two shows at night too.

Florida: Like others said here, it really depends on the length of the trip. If it's just a few days? Don't bother with a Park Hopper because you'll waste so much time in between parks. Although the Skyliner seems quick enough where you can jump quickly between MGM & Epcot... but I haven't done it before. I usually go for 7-8 days in the summertime, so I usually splurge with the Park Hopper that allows me the water parks.

 

[DisneyChris2016]

We (family of 5) have never had park hoppers before, but got them for our upcoming trip (10 day tickets). We got the Canadian discount though, before the ticket price increases. At the current ticket price, I don't know if we could have justified the splurge. We got them for this trip for a number of reasons:
1. This is our first time going in the summer. We figure we'll do more afternoon breaks, so if we're leaving and returning anyway, we want the flexibility of going to a different park in the evening.
2. DS and DH are big Star Wars fans, and if they love RoTR, I'm sure they'll want to try to do it more than once. But two full days in DHS would be too much for us.
3. Our kids are older, and can stay up later (without massive meltdowns the next day), so we'll be able to experience more of the nighttime entertainment than we have in the past.
4. We're going during Halloween party season. The kids will want to see MK fireworks, but we may not want to spend all day at MK on the busier non-party days.
5. Since we're going in August, we decided we'd like to try out the water parks. Upgrading to PH+ was just a few dollars more per ticket than one visit to a water park would have been.

Also, this will very likely be our last big family trip to WDW (at least while our kids are "kids"). We won't have that mentality of "if we don't get to it, we'll just do it next time". Hoppers will give us a much better chance of doing everything we all want. It feels worth it - hope I'm right.

 

[hes122]

I'm kinda the opposite-ish, though it's different. If my trip is 3 days or less, I will get hoppers so I can go to all the parks. If its 4 days or more, no hoppers. Even with an AP I do not hop on longer trips. I dont take breaks and ther is way more than enough in each park for a full day.

I agree with this 100%.

 

[FinnsMom7]

We used to always get hoppers but the more we go the less I like them, and given the extra cost no thanks. IF they had kept the park to park express transportation I would see a better use for them but otherwise 2 security runs, getting to the buses (although E to HS on skyliner is a help) sucks up about an hour possibly of your already expensive park ticket. MK is our least fav park so we just plan a day and take our time going thru our must do's. We tend to repeat Epcot but with FW in the current state that may change.

 

[Kaadk]

Depends:

California: It's always worth the park hopper. It almost doubles the amount of rides you can jump on in a given day. Plus you have two shows at night too.

...

Agreed, on our DL trip, we hopped like 3 or 4 times a day. There, it was not much different than the experience like going from Adventureland to Tomorrowland. It didn't feel like park hopping. At WDW, because it takes an hour or more, and security checks, and need for more stringent pre-planning, we might only hop once during the whole vacation.

 

[Sarahslay]

I have an AP but the rest of my family always gets hoppers, it's really helpful since we generally love eating at Epcot, and also if we find a park is just too crowded we can look on the app to see if another park looks better crowd wise and go there instead. It just allows for greater flexibility. Even if I didn't have an AP I would have a hopper, and it would have come in very handy on my trip this past month when I didn't get a regular BG on my HS day (I had a back up, my app messed up and wouldn't recognize that it was time for BG despite refreshing and closing in and out of my app a good dozen times). I was able to go the next morning, on my AK day, and get a BG. I got a high enough group that I was able to ride ROTR and make it over to AK for all of my FP there, then I went back to HS that evening because I was at BWI so why not hop over for a few hours and get in a few more rides. If I didn't have hoppers or an AP I wouldn't have been able to do that and would have never ridden ROTR.

 

[redc]

We always have purchased Park Hoppers.
They are an invaluable tool for touring the parks and dining experiences.

 

[dprincessmom]

We got spoiled when we had the APs, so now we do park hoppers. We might not hop everyday but having that option makes our touring that much more enjoyable

 

[sleepymouse]

First time we went to Disney World we bought hoppers. This was in 2015, and we had 8-day tickets. I felt like we could maybe skip them next time. Fast forward to 2020, and we are going again this August. I hate paying extra but decided to buy them again. We will have 10-day park hoppers. Obviously, we don't visit the parks every year so I want to have the flexibility to adjust plans as needed to deal with crowds, heat, ride breakdowns, etc. Also, we are spending most of our vacation at YC so have easy access to HS and Epcot. I love the idea of popping into World Showcase and strolling and eating. I also consider the monorail a ride and could see us making our way to the front entrance of Epcot and taking it over to MK. Another great use of the park hopper for us will be going to MK during the day when the park closes at 6pm for MNSSHP and enjoying lighter crowds and then finishing the day at a park with regular hours.

 

[vinotinto]

We have an AP, but I would not get hoppers just for ROTR. We really enjoyed it, but didn’t enjoy the whole BG experience (having to get up super early, having to take the bus from AoA because Skyliner wasn’t running that early, park being very crowded at rope drop, etc.) so we only went one day, on our planned DHS day. I would assume someone can just plan to get the BG on their planned DHS day(s).

 

[ClapYourHands]

I would assume someone can just plan to get the BG on their planned DHS day(s).

People can and do plan to get the BG on their planned DHS day. But if you've followed any of the threads about DHS crowds and BGs, you'll see that there are LOTS of people who don't get BGs. On some mornings, they are all distributed in the first minute. If your phone doesn't have good signal or wifi drops you or the app glitches, you might not get a BG low enough to ride (or a BG at all). And since it's a finicky ride, if it goes down, there might be a lot of people not getting to ride it after all.

 

[chaboyd]

We've never done hoppers before. We usually only stay three or four days and maximize our time at one park per day. For our 5 day trip in August I am seriously considering it if ROTR remains where you can only ride it once per day If you even get a boarding pass and IF the ride is having a good day. I can see us wanting to ride it more than once, but not wanting to take up 2 full days at HS.