Has Your Trip Ever Been Too Long?

[nolanboys]

We usually stay a week, but have done 10 days and will be doing 9 nights this spring. If it is over a week, we do a split stay as the resorts are a huge part of out trip. We love pool time, and our boys are so busy normally, that after going to the park in the morning, they are happy to enjoy some veg time in the room. We don't go commando anymore so the longer trip allows us to come back rested.

 

[AliceAndJohn]

Our 21 day trip was probably 1 or 2 days too long; we started to find the noise of Disney grating. It is a very loud place to be, especially as we were staying at Pop Century so music outside the room, music in the main building, music waiting for the buses, music on the buses, music in the parks, noise in restaurants etc ...! We were incredibly glad to get home and sit in silence for a couple of hours!

 

[PrncessA]

Until our last trip I would have said that you can never be at Disney for too long, then we went over Thanksgiving. I don't think our trip was too long in reality (10 nights) but our last 5 days we hit horrible crowds, and since we are use to moderate to light crowds, it really put a damper on the end of our trip. Everyone was grumpy at the end, which has never happened before.

We will definitely do 10 nights or longer next time, but I learned that even though we are ok with not going on a ton of rides due to wait times, the overall feel of the parks changes for us dramatically when it is overcrowded and we will always travel during non-peak times in the future.

 

[Jannephotog]

We did 6 days for our honeymoon this past June & I was so tired from running around so much & was ready to go home or have a few more days to just rest.
(Yeah, we had to go home heh)

 

[BagOLaughs]

Being from the UK we usually do 14 night trips and every trip we take I've come away with 101 more things I want to do on the next trip. I've never been bored at the Disney resort and I've also never got to the point where I'm thinking "We've already done so much, what should I do today...".

But then of course we'd always get a hire car for at least a couple of days so we could go to Universal Resort and also spend some time shopping in the Orlando area.

 

[sasmom]

In 2014, we stayed for 11 nights and then spent 4 nights at Universal. It was fine for me but a little too long for the rest of my family. They were theme-parked out by the end. Also 5 of us stayed in a regular room at Yacht Club. Everyone loved it there, but with the kids getting older we plan to stay in villas on future trips, which would make longer trips more comfortable. For my family probably 8 nights or so will be our max in the future, because they just don't have the endurance. But different families have different limits!

 

[eagillinois]

After 5 days - I want different food! It seems that Disney food is so heavy (I felt the same way on the Disney cruise). If you had a unit with a small kitchen or a car to go off site, that would help. Long trips can be nice, but I agree with other posters who have said you need to have some down time and enjoy the resorts and water parks. I am sure you will have a fantastic time whatever you decide!

 

[GatorChris]

Anytime we've gone Saturday to Saturday (which gives us 6 full days in the park because of the long CA flights), we always leave feeling it needs to be longer....like we need to get back as soon as possible. Then we did a few vacation at 9 nights and 8 full days. That was really nice, with 2 days in each park. Then we did 10 nights and 9 days with the last day as a 3rd at MK. When we were done, we were done. Literally. We haven't gone back since. We've been doing DL the last 3 years. I guess we got our fill!!! OK, there's more to it than that, but 9 days was a lot of fun. We were able to take a slow pace, and for the first time we went back to our resort for a swim on one of the MK days. Every other trip, we felt we were shorting ourselves by not spending every moment we could in the parks. But that last trip, we finally were able to "chillax".

 

[bullcat_02]

I think it really depends on how often you get to go. I have been 9 and 10 days but I only get to go every few years. So it is nice to have time to slow things down. Take a day or two off to decompress. If I went every year I think a week would be perfect.

 

[LSchrow]

we are always tired on day 1 (no sleep & early flights), but finally get into full vacation mode about day 3-4 (the point where you finally stop thinking about work & all the day-to-day worries & concerns of being an adult ). the last 2-3 days are the leaving prep - making sure all that stuff fits into the suitcase & owner's locker, returning car, etc.
the days between are perfect, full of no worries, doing whatever we want, whenever we want - a week was waaaaay too short (really just a day or 2 of full down-time), and 10 days still only gave us about 4-5 relaxing days.
13-14 days total works the best for us - we dine offsite quite a bit, maybe see a show (cirque, mystery dinner, etc), play mini-golf, do things that without worrying about "wasting" precious vacation time, and make our villa home - it's just so nice to come back totally refreshed & invigorated

 

[Accident]

My answer is sometimes...

If I haven't been out on vacation much, then any trip over a couple days feels too long, not really a disney thing.
If I rush out of the gate with excitement for a couple days, besides being sore I do start to get a "how much longer do we have" day or two.. after slowing a little, I get the "ZOMG we're almost going home" feeling and it all changes back to RUSH RUSH RUSH
If I do my relaxed thing, I love it and enjoy every moment but the we should extend the trip at any cost and we're almost done feeling hits a lot harder.
Going too often to fast for longer stays and I get a burnt out feeling like I did in 2014. It can really change your frame of mind for awhile on if the trip is worth it or not, especially when there isn't something special your heading to WDW for.

But there are so many factors. Feeling under the weather or really tired and I go more towards negative about the length of stay...

This last trip my daughter got hit really hard with I want to be home.. It wasn't about how long at disney, she was traveling most of the summer and this trip was just a little too much and she was done being on the road and just wanted her room/bed.

 

[AnnaS]

8/9 nights seems to be perfect. We have stayed twice 10 nights and were ready to come home but the 10th day. If we had no one at home, kids, pets, etc. We would have no problem staying longer. We can definitely do longer trips (two weeks) and have but it is usually a split trip (cruise/HH/Vero, etc.). Sometime in the near future, we plan to stay a little longer in the winter. If it all works out!! It's fun to plan

 

[Castillo Mom]

Our longest stay has been 13 nights and our shortest one week. Honestly, I think two full weeks would be the sweet spot for me. I hold a high stress management position in healthcare so it's nice to completely disconnect while on vacation. I enjoy getting up whenever I please on non park days, sitting out on the balcony watching the animals while drinking my morning coffee, then dragging myself over to Boma for a late breakfast, maybe enjoying a nice drink by the pool in the afternoon. Other options are spending an evening at Jelly Rolls or Disney Springs for dining and bar hopping. Plenty to do for two weeks. Or even three....

 

[RachaelA]

We are always ready to go home by our last day (7 night trips) so this next time we are staying like 12 hahaha! I think if as long as I stick to the plan of taking it slow rather then cramming so much in, we should be ok.

We are also going to go venture outside of Disney this upcoming trip which should be interesting.

 

[dclpluto]

I use to stay for 12 nights before I got into DCL. 12 nights seemed perfect back than.

 

[ellie05]

I think the length of the trip has nothing to do with having the trip feel is too long. It depends how the trip goes. We stayed over 14 days and it was a great stay. However we had a 5 day trip that was terrible and I couldn't wait to leave.

 

[ludari]

I did a combination of a two week Disney Cruise and five day WDW visit and it didn't feel too long at all. I guess it was a good mix of experiences (DCL and WDW) which seem to go by really fast especially the cruise.

 

[squirrel4569]

Our first trip we did 6 days and we were commando touring and by the end we were done. We had friends who would do 10-14 night stays when they would come and I thought they were out of their mind. We learned the benefit of rest days and downtime and that's made longer stays more enjoyable. We have to fight the urge to try to do everything and force ourselves to go back to the resort, but when we do it we enjoy the trip so much more. We had 10 nights/11 days in August and routinely took breaks, swam, etc and that was one of the best trips ever. We just did a 3 day trip over New Year's Weekend that wore us out because we had so little time we felt like we had to get as much in as possible, so I think it's not so much about the length as it is about how you manage your time. If money was no object and we didn't have work/school obligations I could easily see spending 2-3 weeks there without an issue and having a great time.

 

[AnnaS]

After 5 days - I want different food! It seems that Disney food is so heavy (I felt the same way on the Disney cruise). If you had a unit with a small kitchen or a car to go off site, that would help. Long trips can be nice, but I agree with other posters who have said you need to have some down time and enjoy the resorts and water parks. I am sure you will have a fantastic time whatever you decide!

It's funny - we cook 6/7 nights a week and once in a while I/we wish we had a menu at home to order our food. (We go out to eat here and there and order out once every 10 days or so). When we go away, by the 6th/7th night, after eating most of our lunches and dinners out, we crave a home cooked meal.

We always take it easy in WDW. We are definitely not park commandos. We will do non-park days. If we have an AP, then we might just go to a park for a meal.

 

[moericus]

We only go every 2 years so this might not apply to you. But at 10 nights we manage to ride all of our favorite rides at least twice and still have plenty of down time. We never feel rushed. We also don't get to enjoy the resort as much as we would like and some of the longer events aren't worth the time invested. But we're happy with it.