How do you use your Park Hoppers?

[JessicaW1234]

Can you tell me your park strategies for using Park Hoppers? Have them for the first time (required for FD)

Tell me what parks you go from/to,
What you do with FP (do you save them or use them up @ first park)

Any tips about traveling Park to park midday, anything else I should know?

 

[china mom]

We usually make our FP for our morning park, come back for a midday break and then go to a different park in the evening.

We also have gone to a park for EMH, ridden stuff with no wait and then headed to our second park around 10ish to use FP at that park.

 

[Klayfish]

We don't often have a pre-planned "strategy" for using park hoppers. It's more for the flexibility. We'll have our "plan" for the first park we're going to...though I use that term loosely as we're very much wing it type people. When we're done with that park, if we feel like hopping to another, we do. Sometimes we chose to head back to the rental house and chill for a while, then we'll decide spur of the moment if we want to go to another park. So as for which parks we go to/from, it's purely random. Could be any combination, just depends on what we feel like. We always drive, so park to park is done via car...unless we do MK to Epcot, then we'll use the monorail.

As for FP+, we always use them at the first park. Same day availability is pretty darn good most of the time, so we just do that for the second park we hop to.

 

[Mome Rath]

We start in one park and hop to another. We are rope droppers, so we save our FP's for our second park. Usually now-a-days we find ourselves hopping from MK to EPCOT and vice versa. However, one spontaneous hop we love is taking the boat from EPCOT to HS. The most valuable to me is when a park is absolutely packed to the gills (usually MK) and you can simply escape and go wherever you want.

 

[vicb]

I have always used hoppers (7 trips). This upcoming trip we plan to visit Epcot at rope drop one day staying through lunch, then a brief stop at our hotel (Dolphin) to regroup then into AK late afternoon till close. We will not be using our FP in Epcot that day but rather scheduling them in AK. Another day we are using the hoppers to enter MK for eve. emh after being at another park during the day.

On previous trips we have used the hoppers a lot to dine in Epcot world showcase after doing another park during the day. We usually stay in the Epcot area resorts so we were able to hop into Epcot just for Illuminations if we wanted, or quick boat trip to HS for F!. Last trip down we were having our Epcot day and the kids decided spontaneously they wanted to go over to AK to ride Everest a few times as the app showed low wait times. We hopped the bus over and they rode three times straight! Hoppers are great for the night time shows, you can just pick your park and hop in one hour before close.

Now with HS having so much closed I think hopping is a great option, that however will probably change after Toy Story Land opens.

 

[Tomh]

I don't . . . in 10 visits to Disney World, only one time did I ever consider getting park hoppers. There was one year that I believe Spectro Magic was only running select nights, and it wasn't running any of our MK nights. I did consider getting Park Hoppers in order to go from Epcot over to MK so that we could see Spectro, but in the end, decided they weren't worth it.

 

[AFwifelife]

RD in one park (using morning EMH if available), leave right before or right after lunch depending on what we want to eat, and head back to the hotel for a few hours to relax/nap/swim. Then we will go to a different park in the afternoon. Only occasionally will we do the same park after the break but it would be for a WS restaurant in Epcot.

 

[Mrs Geek]

We bought park hoppers to get free dining one time, too, so what we ended up doing is scheduling our trip (our honeymoon) around food We picked breakfasts and dinners for each day without worrying about where they were, necessarily, and that set the schedule for what parks we'd be in on which days. This was pre-FP+ though, so I'm not sure how our hopping strategy might be different now. (Our last trip we brought our two little kids, and made it a point to only to one park per day so we could sort of take it slow.) But I do think you sort of decide what is going to "anchor" your trip- rides? meals? character meets? Plot those out, and then schedule the rest around those anchors. Take advantage of EMH since you're staying onsite (at least the morning EMH's. It makes for a super-early rope drop but it's worth it.) and then try to cut to a different park in the afternoon. Honestly, with the meal plan, probably the best use of hoppers is to spend the day in whatever park you want and hop over to Epcot every night for dinner

 

[DavidNYC]

Key strategies:
1. Use hopper to facilitate seeing evening end-of-park shows or go to restaurants for dinner without being trapped into that park for the whole day.
2. Morning in one park using FP then hopping to park either where FP not as important (countries in Epcot) or where we can get some add'l FP fairly easily (MK).
3. Morning in one park standby rides for a few hours until it gets busy then hopping to another park where we saved our FP.

 

[PlutoTheDog89]

The biggest use is for DHS/Epcot. We go during Christmas week, so big attractions usually have 2-hour-plus waits.

With DHS being our favorite park ride-wise and having tiered FP+ selections, we usually break it up.

On one day, we'll spend the morning at EPCOT exploring the World Showcase and eating around the world. Then we'll take a break in the afternoon and head over to DHS for TSMM FP+, Tower of Terror FP+, Star Tours FP+ and Fantasmic. Another day we'll do DHS in the morning, with a FP+ for Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, Tower of Terror, and Frozen Musical. We take a break in the afternoon, then head to Epcot for Illuminations.

We stay at BC, which makes this really efficient and we normally stay around 8-9 days.

 

[JETSDAD]

Morning in one park, back to the room for afternoon, then whatever park we're in the mood for or that stays open the latest for the evening. It's also nice to be able to hop over to Epcot just for dinner if there's a place there that we feel like eating at.

 

[Micca]

As WDW vets we seldom spend an entire day in one park, for us the hopper or AP is a must. We've probably done every combination possible of moving from one park to another. We do plan our park days, but the hopper offers the option to make a change on the fly.

 

[sponica]

I've never not had hoppers. Some days we hop, some days we don't. When we were kid free adults, we mainly hopped to spend our evenings in the world showcase.

 

[wdwjeffc37]

Key strategies:
1. Use hopper to facilitate seeing evening end-of-park shows or go to restaurants for dinner without being trapped into that park for the whole day.
2. Morning in one park using FP then hopping to park either where FP not as important (countries in Epcot) or where we can get some add'l FP fairly easily (MK).
3. Morning in one park standby rides for a few hours until it gets busy then hopping to another park where we saved our FP.

This exactly!!! Cheers!!!!!

 

[JessicaW1234]

We start in one park and hop to another. We are rope droppers, so we save our FP's for our second park. Usually now-a-days we find ourselves hopping from MK to EPCOT and vice versa. However, one spontaneous hop we love is taking the boat from EPCOT to HS. The most valuable to me is when a park is absolutely packed to the gills (usually MK) and you can simply escape and go wherever you want.

I've never taken the boat between EP & HS. Is it on a set schedule? How long is the trip, dock to dock?

 

[Mome Rath]

I've never taken the boat between EP & HS. Is it on a set schedule? How long is the trip, dock to dock?

Around 25-30 min. They run continually except in bad weather. They stop at the hotels along the way as well.

 

[JessicaW1234]

Around 25-30 min. They run continually except in bad weather. They stop at the hotels along the way as well.

How many hotels does it stop at?

 

[Mome Rath]

3: Boardwalk, Swolphin, YachtBeach

And, just FYI, if you can walk at a fairly good stroll, you can beat the boat walking from park to park. Also, you can get off the boat at any stop and back on at any stop, just make sure it's heading in the right direction when you go to get back on. Also, like buses you may have to wait for a boat for up to 20 min depending on your timing.

 

[kdisser]

We love park hoppers because we have the option of switching parks even when we didn't plan on it. We usually use our hoppers for nights when our designated park for the day closes, we can go to another one that is open later. We also use it for EMH in the morning, go to the park offering the extra time then switch. Or we have done it for dining reservations as well, but we stay for 8 days when we go and we are big on park time.

 

[gogiantsfan11]

Just used my park hopper last Monday and did all 4 parks with my daughter. Rope Drop EMH at AK and hit FoP, EE, Safari and Dinosaur, Drove ourselves to MK we had FP set for 10, 11 and 12 at Thunder Mountain, Space and Buzz. After that we kept getting whatever FP popped up one right after the other. Stay a few more hours and hit only FP+ rides and then grabbed a FP for Toy Story .. drove over there spent a little time in HS.. after TS we grab FP+ for test track and ended our night at Epcot for dinner etc. Considering the park had been so crowed with 45+ waits on everything.. we never waited at AK and had about 10 minute wait using our FP+ at MK.