Park Hoppers

DisneyCrazy10

Earning My Ears
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
We are going to WDW the first week of June 2020, in park for only 6 days. Me, hubby, boys (20 and 17). We have been to WDW many times but we have never purchased park hopper tickets. Do you hop? Thoughts? We like to rope drop each day. Thanks in advance for your advice.
 
There are quite a few threads with this question, and you'll find the answers vary greatly. It really comes down to personal preference on how you like to tour. Some like the flexibility of being able to bounce around if a park gets busy or favorite rides go down. Some like eating at particular places at night in one park, but want to visit other parks during the day.

For the way I like to plan and the way we tour, hoppers are not useful for us. We don't take breaks, we like to plan full days and for me it's much easier to stay in one park and plan around that park. We are RD to close people :)

Something to keep in mind - if you aren't sure you want to hop, you can always buy non-hopper tickets and then if you decide you want to hop, upgrade them (paying the difference in cost) while you're there. You don't have to do it on the first day, but just be aware that they don't pro-rate the upcharge (so if you have a 5 day ticket and decide to park hop on the 4th day, you'll pay the cost difference of a 5 day parkhopper).

If you like to take midday breaks at the pool or outside the parks, you can still do that with non-hopper tickets, you just have to return to the same park you were in on that day.
 
We always hop. And we find that the older our kids are the more we like to hop. As mentioned above, there have been a few Hopper threads just in the last few days, so you can probably find a bunch of ideas/opinions in those as well. :)
 
Thank you guys for the quick reply. I assumed there are other threads that address this question, I just didn't take the time to find a search feature. In the past, we just rope drop and stay in that park until we are ready to leave at night. We don't usually take afternoon breaks so I have not considered park hoppers before. I was wondering about upgrading while we were there, good to know you have to pay for the entire ticket not just the remaining days. I appreciate your help.
 


Sounds like you guys do okay already without hoppers. It depends on your touring style. Are you commandos who stay at the park all day? We are rope droppers too, but we always get PH's. We like touring that way. We usually go the park at rope drop, stay til after lunch, go back to our resort to recharge, then decide where we want to go for the evening. We never make plans for the evenings ahead of time. We just do what we want. We like to have some spontaneity in our WDW vacation and we don't like to plan each day completely. What if you don't really want to go back to the park you have a ticket for, for whatever reason? What if the crowds are horrid, it rains, you just don't want to stay at AK all day and night? Anyway, if this is the way you have done it it must work for you but we would never go to WDW without PH's.
 
We never park hop. There are times I wish we did but only for a night show or a dinner at Epcot. I have no desire to ride at one park and to switch and ride at another. We will have park hoppers on our upcoming trip only because they will be military salute tickets but I still don’t have hopping in the plans.
 
We are going to WDW the first week of June 2020, in park for only 6 days. Me, hubby, boys (20 and 17). We have been to WDW many times but we have never purchased park hopper tickets. Do you hop? Thoughts? We like to rope drop each day. Thanks in advance for your advice.

We always buy park hopper if we can afford it. Most trips, we'll pick a park a day and spend most of the day there, then pop over to MK for the last 2 hours of business or so. You'd be surprised by how much you can get done in MK in those 2 hours without having to deal with the crazy crowds. Plus it's in the evening so it's a little cooler weather wise and the castle is so pretty all lit up. We usually HATE the day that we spend in MK, but those 2 hours in the evenings are some of our favorite memories.
 


Its all about your plan. I think its only worth the hopper if you plan on using the hopper more than three times per person (for its value). Its nice to have the "freedom" to go from park to park. It would be a really cool thing if you and your kids to do the Mountain challenge (ride all the mountains in one day).
 
We like to hop, primarily because if I'm going for 6 days and going to all 4 parks, that means I'm going 3 days on my trip at some point without going to MK. I like to have a flavor of all the parks and aside from AK, which we usually do less than the other parks, we never go more than 1 day in between going to every park. Our trips are usually 10 days in parks, so 20 time slots, and we do 6 MK, 5 DHS, 5 EP, 4 AK. We go to our first park from say 9-2, then our second park from 4:30-whenever we feel like leaving/kids get tired lol.
 
We always Hop. But only for like 2 days where it is needed for certain reasons. Generally we go 8 or 9 park days and actually USE the hop 1 or 2..... even still we are forced to buy it.
 
We always have the hopper. This last trip we used it less than normal but did hop to 3 parks one day. We are not planners, we don't make FPs until morning of or while standing in line for another ride. We almost always spend part of every single day at Epcot - there is just so much food there.
 
We always get the park hopper, more as an insurance policy, since crowd calendars are no long accurate with the growing parks and attractions. Plus, we like to be able to book meals wherever and not be pigeonholed into a park.

I always recommend a park hopper to first timers which probably doesn't seem needed but it is great if you find a park isn't your style or someone is dying to experience an attraction again.

Gotta love and appreciate all of the different styles and yet we all have a magical time. Proof there is no one "right" way
 
We hop all the time. We love the flexibility to do things like we did on our last trip: Skyliner'ed into Epcot to have breakfast, ride something like Soarin', and then monorail to MK. Spend a portion of the day there and monorail back to Epcot for a Test Track FP I got while finishing up in MK. On a whim we decided to Skyliner to HS for the late afternoon/evening hours (my favorite time of day at HS!). The transportation system is so plentiful, it makes hopping very easy and fun to do.
 
We almost always get hoppers and the only 2 times we didn’t, we added them during our trip.

We love the flexibility they offer, and that makes it worth it for us. We usually book our 3FP at our first park in the morning. Then we decide what we’ll do - stay at the same park? Take a break? Hop somewhere else? We like to go where the spirit moves us.

Examples: we don’t like AK in the rain. If it rains while we’re at AK (and it’s gonna be a long rainy day) we may hop somewhere else. Sometimes, we hop to another park just for their night show/fireworks. We love bouncing between HS and Epcot. Most of all, we just love the option to go anywhere we want to.

Committing to one park a day doesn’t work for us. We do not hop every day, but we like being able to hop when we want to. The added flexibility is key for our “not planned to the minute” touring style.

Everyone is different though. Many people do one park a day and that works best for them.
 
I know people love it, but I just hate the wasted time traveling from park to park. I'd rather just fill out my day with one park and save some money.
 
I love to hop. We usually take a midday break so going to another park isn’t a big hassle
 
We are going to WDW the first week of June 2020, in park for only 6 days. Me, hubby, boys (20 and 17). We have been to WDW many times but we have never purchased park hopper tickets. Do you hop? Thoughts? We like to rope drop each day. Thanks in advance for your advice.

We were at WDW over MLK weekend. Our 5th trip in 5 years. This was our first year with park hoppers. We loved them. Me, hubby, son (11). Ours was a short trip, 4 days and HS and RotR was a priority. With not knowing how it was going to work out, we decided on the hoppers so glad we did. We were also at CBR so the Skyliner made this so easy!
Thursday - our arrival day, we went to HS
Friday - HS until lunch, headed over to AK
Sat - EPCOT until lunch, resort, MK in the evening
Sun - MK / AK / MK

It gave us the flexibility we needed.
 

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