Help planning vacation

[GianN]

Hi everyone. I'm from Brazil and I'm going to Orlando next month for the first time with a group of friends and would like some help planning which park per day.

We decided as a group that we would like to go to:
- MK
- AK + HS (park hopper)
- Universal Studios
- Island of adventures
- Busch Gardens

I know that we left Epcot out but as I said, is a large group and everyone had the right to vote so this is the list that we got.

We will have these days available for going to parks:

May 24 - Tueday
May 25 - Wednesday
May 26 - Thursday
May 27 - Friday - Cosmic rewinds debut at epcot
May 28 - Saturday - Memorial day weekend
May 29 - Sunday - Memorial day weekend
May 30 - Monday - Memorial day weekend

We have been looking at several websites with crowd calendar and we thought that saturday and friday (weekends and memorial day holiday) would be the two worst days to go to park and we'll leave those days for shopping and etc. Is this the right choice?

For monday (memorial day) we are planning to go to Busch Gardens as the park hours are much longer than the park hours on the weekdays before.

For the Disney/Universal days we didn't choose yet. Any tips for allocating these 4 parks (considering ak+hs as one) from tuesday to friday?

Is friday pre memorial day weekend a terrible day?

thanks for all the help and sorry for my bad english

 

[Smugpugmug]

I would ignore any and all crowd calendars for this year as they have been shown to be extremely unreliable (for example Jan/Feb is usually a slow period but Disney and Universal were packed the entire time). Regardless of a crowd calendar Memorial Day weekend is always busy since kids are out of school/the summer season begins. You should expect that entire week to be busy but that doesn't mean you can't have a good time; just have an expectation that it'll be crowded regardless of which parks you go to on which days.

Personally I would put Universal on tuesday or wednesday. Admittedly I haven't been to Studios or Islands of Adventure in years but all of the times I have gone were on a tuesday or wednesday and it wasn't TOO terribly busy. I did have Express Pass so that definitely contributed to how much I was able to get done. If you're doing one park per day I'm not sure it matters which you start out with. I did Islands first and then Studios but that's just my preference. Maybe someone else with more experience at those parks can answer that for you.

Definitely avoid MK on a friday, that friday is the "beginning" of Memorial Day weekend so a lot of people start their trips off at the Magic Kingdom. But who knows how the crowds will be with Cosmic Rewind opening that day. You could do AK + HS on friday or sunday, with the holiday weekend they'll be busy no matter what day it is. I've also heard from other people that MK is less busy on sundays so maybe that might be the way to go.

 

[g-dad66]

I think Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday will be your least crowded days, so you could do MK, AK/HS, and Islands of Adventure on any of those 3 days.

I think Universal Studios has the fewest top-tier attractions so it would the best choice for the busier day of Sunday. (Sunday will be more crowded than Friday, so you might consider doing Universal on Friday and then have both Saturday and Sunday as the shopping days).

 

[Chumpydo]

Here's how I would play it:

• May 24 - Tuesday: Universal Studios Florida and Universal's Islands of Adventure, do them both and take advantage of the Hogwarts Express inter-park transport system! You can easily move back and forth between the two parks.
• May 25 - Wednesday: Universal Studios Florida and Universal's Islands of Adventure, do them both again - you won't have time to experience everything on Tuesday. If you don't want to do the Universal Orlando Resort two days in a row, swap today with Magic Kingdom Park.
• May 26 - Thursday: Magic Kingdom Park, either Wednesday or today depending on if you want to do the Walt Disney World parks consecutively. If it's your first time at the Resort, this is the park to start with.
• May 27 - Friday: Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park and Disney's Hollywood Studios, I normally would never recommend Disney's Hollywood Studio on a Friday. But take advantage of the opening of Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind and the fact that the focus will be on EPCOT. It may help you experience attractions like Star Wars: Rise Of The Resistance which fills up very quickly. This is pure speculation.
• May 28 - Saturday: Busch Gardens either Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.
• May 29 - Sunday: Busch Gardens either Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.
• May 30 - Monday: Busch Gardens either Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.