How to pick a park?

What factor is more important in picking a park?

  • Park hours

    Votes: 8 57.1%
  • Park crowds

    Votes: 6 42.9%

  • Total voters
    14

Dream.in.dessert

Earning My Ears
Joined
Sep 14, 2017
hi! Planning my families one and only Disney trip. I really don’t want to get a park hopper unless I have to. Just wondering how you guys decide which park to go to on which day? Crowd calendar? Or park hours? Or some other magical thing?
Thanks 🤗
 
We start out by looking at the park hours. Always look to see which parks may be closing early for special events. We usually do our first full day and last full day at Magic Kingdom. Why? It's iconic Disney! (If park hours above agree).

Next we look at the restaurants we would like to eat and see what reservations you can make. Table service dining reservations can be made 180 days out.

After that we work on fastpasses, 60 days out of on site and 30 days of not.

If dining and fast passes match with hours, we are golden. If not, we just adjust. A trip to Disney takes a lot of planning (in my opiniom). The more planning and adjusting you do will make the actual vacation run smoothier, not smoothly.

You can also just wing it, sometimes we just change our plans at last minute and that's okay, too. It's a vacation, you will make magical memories no matter what!!
 
This upcoming trip for Princess Half Marathon weekend (just a quick 4 day trip), we picked which park based on what we had planned for other parts of the day as we only have one full park day. Race day will only be a half day in the park and departure day we're catching a late flight so we can have a half park day.
Usually we look at Magic Hours and plan around those. We also adjust our plan on if we get didn't the dinning we want based on what we actually got. I very rarely look at crowd calendars to make my decisions.
 
I look at park hours, special events, and which day of my vacation it is.

I always start and end with MK.

I typically do parks with EMH instead of avoiding them.
 


I take no stock in crowd calendars.
If I'm going at a time when its busy its going to be busy at every park every day.
I base which park which days on park hours and what I want to accomplish.
I personally seek out AM EMH because it works for me.
 
Lately the actual park hours aren't posted until just weeks ahead. The trend has been posting limited hours at first, and extending them later on. This makes planning based on the real park hours impractical for those who plan their trip half a year or more in advance.

If I'm doing a split stay, I'll usually choose parks nearer to where I'm staying at the time.
 
The last 3 years it has worked out that we visit the MK on the 4th day and on our last day based on AM EMH and the fact that we want to end the vacation at the MK. I kind of like the buildup to the MK day.
 


pretty much the same as most posters above.
i tell my clients to look at park hours in conjunction to crowd calendars..depending on how far in advance you are planning, because information is available to you in waves.

-it's sort of like a puzzle piece from there. i first decide whether or not i want to take advantage of the extra hours that are available or avoid those parks and plan according to that.
-If i know for sure i will be attending EMH at DHS that will help to start piecing things together. If there are multiple EMH days at DHS during our stay that is when i open up a crowd calendar and see if there are any differences.
-I ALWAYS need to see Fantasmic on our trips, depending on when you travel it may not be offered every night. For my past trip it was offered on my arrival night (nope), our departure night (nope) and one day in the middle of our trip..so my decision was made for me!
-Not a fool proof plan but since Avatar FOP is my top priority (or was on my last trip) i always knew my AK day would be later in my trip. generally speaking-not a science-it is a smidge easier to get a FP for FOP at day 60+4 rather than 60..not always but it worked for me and i was able to nab a FP
-I don't really use dining reservations to schedule my stay around unless there is a restaurant that is a huge priority, even for popular restaurants i haven't had a problem scheduling what i want for the day i already had planned...if anything ill just have to have an early dinner or a late lunch due to the times that are available
 
Crowd calendars are just someone's guess at how busy a park might be when they have no actual inside information about future attendance. Honestly, even Disney has NO idea how many locals with AP's or those staying in offsite hotels will go to which park on any given day. Some 3rd party projecting months in advance are as likely to be right as wrong. Parks are almost always busy, so if you can avoid obvious peak times like Christmas, you should plan your vacation about what works for your family. The months of June/July/August are also HOT/humid in Florida, so good to keep that in mind.
 
I always do it based on extra magic hours. If we’re staying onsite, we go to the parks the day they have EMH. If we’re staying offsite, we rarely go to a park on an EMH day. Then I try to make sure that MK is split evenly throughout the trip (we always go to MK the first and last day and 1 or 2 days in the middle. We only go to the other parks 1 day). If that doesn’t decide it, I go based off of park hours.
 
I do look at Touring Plans and Kenny the Pirate crowd calendars. I try to note if they both agree on a certain park being a bad choice on a certain day, and not go there if possible. I try to avoid EMH parks because the crowds get so crazy afterwards. You will find so many different opinions on this, but most of us will agree go with what you like best. We used to end with the Magic Kingdom, but that stopped this last trip!
 

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