How Many Trips Per Year?

[Becca1007]

Bay Area native over here ... Got signature passes in August of 2019 and planned a 5 day trip to start off the year, was planning on one trip a month except a couple months where work would be too busy for me to get away. We ended up going August, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, and I hopped down for a one day trip in March right before the closure. We had April, May, June, July and August trips on the books (airfare and hotels booked) but alas ... none of those are going to happen now.
So in the perfect world we would have done 11 trips.

 

[mentos]

I missed this thread the first time around! In the pre-covid world, we went about 5-6x a year coming from the SF Bay Area. Our travel patterns were usually as follows

1. January -- long weekend (Fri-Mon)
PRO: cheap rates, relatively low crowds (once the holiday decorations are down)
CON: sometimes crummy weather, no holiday decorations

2. March -- Food & Wine festival (no kid on this trip), we've even done same-day FIFO (fly in 7am, fly out 11pm). Best to use a charter plane/semi-private to cut down on time at airport if you do that.
PRO: food! great weather
CON: variable attendance because of spring breaks

3. June -- longer weekend (Fri-Tuesday)
PRO: not yet hot, june gloom! love june gloom.
CON: schools are starting to get out, local APs not yet blocked out

4. September -- mid-week post Labor Day, 3 days
PRO: this place is just dead after Labor Day (relatively speaking)
CON: still hot as heck, no halloween decorations up

5. October -- Short weekend (Friday-Sunday)
PRO: Halloween!
CON: absolute worst crowd levels ever, like 9-10/10...almost as bad as Christmastime (thought we haven't been lately), weather still unsettled (we've been when there were Thunderstorms that required an emergency landing at the wrong airport, followed by extreme heat in the 90s + humidity).

6. November -- Long week (Sunday-Thursday encompassing Thanksgiving)
PRO: Holiday decorations, weather is pretty uniformly cool (no more 90+ degree days)
CON: it's fairly crowded

Total of 21 days in-park by my count, that's about $31/day if using a $649 flex pass not including any discounts the pass affords. Most of these stays are using off-site hotels, except our November trip is typically on DVC points, and we will occasionally book DLH or GCH if the stay is short in order to minimize transit time to/from the parks.

 

[GatorChris]

Ah, the wonderful feeling of having an AP. Where you can show up nearly whenever you want. Nothing like that!

Before "the dark times", when we had an APs every other year, we would go every mid-November (kids were homeschooled then). And those would be 6-7 day trips. We would always take a late Feb/early March 3 day trip and combine it with Great Wolf Lodge. So those trips were solid. Then we'd add whenever. The kids had a DL-behind-the-scenes drama day - we went. Friends in SoCal had a wedding - we went to DL for a few days. In-laws taking a two day trip? We were there.

Honestly, those were the best times. If the APs weren't so stinking expensive, we'd still be doing it that way. We actually did that with Universal Hollywood last year. Bought Season passes for a 3 day trip in June. Then we went back in November. Loved that place!

 

[taaren]

We're from the Bay Area as well, so about the same length of time to get there. We used to only do 2-3 times a year and go for 4-5 days, but now that the kids are older and can't miss school we aim for a weekend every two months, preferably a 3 day weekend where we can fly in Friday night, do the parks Sat/Sun, fly home Mon.
Because we try to arrange to be there on the weekends closest to birthdays our group wants to celebrate or sometimes are trying to time a food festival it doesn't end up being exactly every other month/every 8 weeks, sometimes its two months in a row then not for 3 months, etc.

 

[StarlitNight05]

We are from Sacramento and have had APs on and off for a few years now. Before we would make a yearly trip to DL, but after APs we would try to go 3-5 times a year. Those trips were 2-4 days depending on how much time we had.

 

[Jaina]

I'm about 6 hours away, and I've been trying to go every 6-8 weeks. But if I was dragging all my kids along (and paying for food and accomodations for them, haha) I'd say 3-4 times in a year, with a 2-4 day stay each time. Instead I'm taking each kids (and the youngest two as a pair) for their own 2-ish day trip while I have my AP. That's really fun!

 

[StormyCA]

"Once is (not) too many, a million is never enough"

 

[darph nader]

Used to go every 3-4 years. Been almost 11 now.