Help Planning 3 Days with Kids

Blarson2

Earning My Ears
Joined
Aug 27, 2019
Hi Everyone!

We are working on planning our upcoming trip in November! We will be there 11/17-11/19 (Sun-Tues). There will be 4 adults who plan to spend all three full days in the park(s) and a family with 2 adults and 2 kids (one will have just turned 3, the other is almost 6). The family doesn’t want to spend 3 full days in the parks. That leaves us with a couple (or more?) different options.

1) they take a full day off and the 4 adults spend that day in Epcot (food and wine fest). The remaining two days will be 1 full day at MK and a day spent doing AK/HS.
2) Disney is currently offering half day tickets that allow entry to the park at noon. Would it be easier for the family to do 3 single park afternoon tickets to do AK, MK, and HS? Then the adults using the 3 day park hopper can do Epcot split up across the 3 days in the morning and meet the family in the designated park in the afternoon?

The concern I have with option 1 is that trying to fit AK and HS will be too much with the kids and the transfer between parks.

The concern I have with option 2 is that it will be too hard to split Epcot into small segments in the morning and that we will waste rope drops at other parks everyday! Accounting for the transfer between parks is he morning going to be worth it? But will planning a fast pass at the right time in the afternoon make up for that? But it does eliminate the need to transfer parks with the kids.

During this time there is the very Merry Christmas party two of the nights and MK after hours on the third. Is there a good way to take advantage of one of those that makes it worth the extra cost?

We are hoping that this week will be a little slower since it is in between the race and thanksgiving but you never can predict!

Sorry for the brain dump but I’m very torn between these options! Any advice is appreciated!!

Thanks!
 
This is what has worked best for us (4 & 7 YO last time we went), we get to the parks super early as the kids are up already, then around 2ish head back to the resort and get a little chill time in (pool usually) then head back to the parks after a few hours. We had park hopper's so we usually went one place in the morning then somewhere else in the afternoon, but I think this would work for single park tickets too. This way you can get into the parks everyday, but not run yourself/your kids into the ground. Also, not sure where you are staying, but this clearly works better on property.

The problem I see with the PM tickets is that you're missing the least busy time of the day (morning).
 
Thanks Max, I should have included that we will not be on property, we will be at an offsite resort, but they do offer a free shuttle to the parks.

Yes, it seems that coming at noon you are missing some of the best low crowd time!
 
The problem I see with the MVMCP or DAH is that the kids are young and may not be able to make it to the very end of either of those. Missing any hours of the special ticketed events, lessens the value of the ticket. If there is a chance they could make it to the end, I'd say doing one of those and one other park day for the family with kids would be their best bet. But I wouldn't park hop on their park day; I'd have them choose ONE park to spend the day.

You don't want to do Option 2 because the F&W booths don't even open until 11:00, so the adults wouldn't have much time to enjoy those before park hopping to another park in the evening.

I'll offer an Option 3...adults get 3-day park hopper tickets and the family gets 2-day park hopper tickets. You'll want to plan your evening in MK to coincide with the DAH event, so you can see HEA. It will be crowded, so you don't want to spend the whole day there. It's easier to park hop between EP and MK, but if the family doesn't want to do EP, then that wont' work. I would split their days with AK/MK and then MK/HS. The nighttime stuff at HS will be fun for the kids and doing MK during the day on a party day is the least crowded. The adults could then spend the whole 3rd day at EP or go somewhere else in the morning and hop to EP in the early afternoon.

We don't find hopping to be all that difficult. It actually provides a good break in the day, especially if you combine the break with lunch.
 


Great Sharon, I really like that option!
I doesn’t seem like we’d get anything out of Epcot in the mornings only, since the point will be the enjoy the booths. I think we can rule that option out and plan to have a full day (or most of a day) at Epcot.
 

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