What is your touring style with kids?

[mshanson3121]

I'm curious just how many here do rope drop to close with kids (especially older kids, say 8+)? Or do you prefer rope drop, afternoon break and evenings? Days only? Evenings only? Rest days? Go every day? How do you do Disney?

 

[Disneypro1]

We open and close the parks. We don’t park hop. Just one per day. MK we do two days. The other parks one each. Yes our Disney trips are parks parks and parks. Lol. But we love it. We will have one day off in middle. Well do the pool or Disney Springs.

 

[SaintsManiac]

Some early mornings. Some sleep in days. Rarely do we take a day off from the parks. On short trips we do morning to close, but not necessarily rope drop.

We like to hop after breaks, too. We do it all kinds of ways I guess.

 

[mshanson3121]

Some early mornings. Some sleep in days. Rarely do we take a day off from the parks. On short trips we do morning to close, but not necessarily rope drop.

We like to hop after breaks, too. We do it all kinds of ways I guess.

Disney Touring Potpourri? lol.

I like the idea of afternoon breaks, but I know my kids prefer not to. For my daughter (ASD), it's just too much transitioning back and forth. So for us it'll either be like a 9-4 or a 1-9 type thing.

 

[itstrue56]

Kids are eight and six. No off days, but a couple where we only go in evening. On park days, we rope drop every day, go back to resort for a rest and back at night to a different park. Sleep and repeat.

 

[TravelandLeisure]

We usually do rope drop, afternoon break, and then back to parks for evening/night. This works well for us because we usually stay on property at least a week. We also drive so don’t have to rely on Disney buses.

 

[Amy11401]

We have only gone one time in October DS was 5 years old. We stayed Sunday to Saturday. We got to Disney in the morning on the first day....we did not go to the park that day but did go to Disney Springs; we also did not go to a park on the day we flew home. All other days we went to Parks but one day we just went to the Halloween Party and did not go to a park until the Halloween Party. Most days we rope dropped. We park hopped....often going to a different park for nighttime entertainment. We stayed until park close and never took a midday break.

 

[3gr8boys]

We hit parks every day....but my kids don't enjoy following a plan. We tend to arrive close to opening....but not by rope drop (with the exception of PPO ADR)....daily plans include 1st 3 FP+ and an ADR.... sometimes a special event like the Void or a tour. Beyond that, we do whatever kids want. We hop daily and split up as needed. Someone wants to hit a ride in a different park? Check for FPs and head for the buses . TS ADRs are a fun time to talk about what everyone has on their to-do list. I get time to enjoy attractions the guys aren't interested in when someone wants a resort break- my husband usually heads back with the youngest when needed. Last trip DS15 spent chunks of each day on his own.

 

[MooseBucks]

We open and close the parks. We don’t park hop. Just one per day. MK we do two days. The other parks one each. Yes our Disney trips are parks parks and parks. Lol. But we love it. We will have one day off in middle. Well do the pool or Disney Springs.

This is us! (Exactly!)

Rope drop till kids drop and even then we have a stroller for that but our oldest just turned 6 so it’s a bit different for us.

 

[Hope Soda]

We are mostly rope droppers, with kids 5 and 8. We stay until we've done all of the things we want to do, or until someone's had enough (usually the 5 year old). We have stayed from open to close twice in Magic Kingdom, and once in Animal Kingdom before Pandora. One of those MK days was a huge mistake as we wound up carrying the little one all the way back to the car (he fell asleep during fireworks, and would not wake up - he was OUT!). If we have a longer trip, with multiple days in MK or Epcot, we do one evening day (starting around noon) and one morning day so that we get to see the fireworks in those parks. One time, we went to AK in the morning and Epcot after an afternoon nap.

All of that said, we have found that it's getting harder to make rope drop, as the kids don't get up as easily in the mornings as they did a couple of years ago. But we'll still try, as those mornings are our favorite time in the parks.

 

[Tiggerlover91]

I have an early riser! He's been that way for about the past 5 or 6 years...he's 11! He kills me on school breaks coming upstairs at 7am to wake me up. He was up at 5:30, but hubby made him stay in bed another hour or so. UGH! Whose child is this??!! So for us....it'll be rope drop everyday except our arrival day. We'll be going to AK on that day as I'm driving and should arrive in Disney around 11am their time. I'm coming from the Panhandle. Checkout day will be our sleep in day as we'll have done MK's evening EMH the night before, and crossing my fingers it's from 11pm to 1am! We will try to leave the parks around 1 or 2 everyday and go back to the resort for a nap and/or swim break. We'll go grab lunch offsite as we eat kosher and then I'll just drive to whatever park we're going to when we return back onsite.

 

[Bellex917]

Last year we did mornings for about 2 hours, then went back for my daughter to nap and my son to swim. We're here now and my daughter is a year older (3.5) and we have done rope drop-8/9pm each day.

 

[kiramay]

It varies. We usually go 8 days. 2 days for each park and hoppers for the evenings. About 4-5 days we’ll RD. About 2-3 days we’ll stay through fireworks but the rest of the days we’re asleep before 10. We rarely go back to the resort, but we’ll book long late lunches and take breaks in the parks.

I’ll have two teenagers this next trip so that might change. One of them likes to stay up late and sleep in late so I’ll have to see how he is during our trip and adjust his fastpasses if needed.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

We have 5 kids, all ages. We go the two weeks after Thanksgiving, arriving on Saturday every year. We are rope drop to close people, but we take one rest day and one sleep in day per trip. We figure we go to Disney for the parks so that’s where we want to be. Kids are pretty good with it, though we do usually do a sit down lunch most days to rest.

 

[Magical2017]

It varies--we play it by ear. We try really hard to be rope drop people, but we prefer the parks in the evening. If we do rope drop, we take a break and come back late afternoon/early evening. After two full park days, we take a break and do a resort day or just a late half day. The kids are 13 and 10.

 

[mshanson3121]

It varies--we play it by ear. We try really hard to be rope drop people, but we prefer the parks in the evening. If we do rope drop, we take a break and come back late afternoon/early evening. After two full park days, we take a break and do a resort day or just a late half day. The kids are 13 and 10.

My kids really want to focus on evenings in the park, too. None of us are really morning people even at home.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

We RD pretty much every day unless the kids 6, 9, 10 get too worn out by the end of the trip then we have a later arrival. We pick 2 or 3 nights to see an evening show with one of those nights being the day before our resort day. We leave the parks on the other days before close when kids get tired or we feel we need to go to preserve RD for the next day. We don't take afternoon breaks in part because we don't go during the hottest times if the year (although the forecast for next week is all high 80s) and in part because the kids like a lot of the things that are easy to do in the afternoons (Pirates Adventure for example). When we used to have to take kids back for naps we found it to be a stressful hassle to deal with mid day Disney transportation.

Based on the other answers it seems like our style is not the norm but it works for us.

 

[Klayfish]

It really depends on the kids, when ours were younger they didn't sleep in so we did rope drops. But you specified 8+ years old, so here's what we've done since that time (and the advent of FP+). Here are our patterns.

- We never do rope drop. We get up at a ridiculous hour when at home, so we have zero desire to wake up extra early on vacation. Besides, rope drop isn't any more "productive" than using FP+ effectively, so we see no reason to stand around outside the park. We can get on just as many attractions as rope droppers.

- We don't "plan" mid-day breaks. Sometimes they happen, but it's by spur of the moment. A mid-day break seems very inefficient, as you're spending time commuting back and forth, regardless of onsite or off. If we have a morning when we're in the parks, we stay until we're done...sometimes it's 2pm, sometimes it's 4pm. We then go back to our rental. If we decide we're good and want to chill for the night, we do. If we get an itch to go back and hit another ride or a night show, we do. But it's never "planned" to do mid-day breaks.

- We vary our times up, sort of as outlined above. Once we get to the parks, we stay until we're ready to leave. Sometimes we'll do 10am to 4pm, sometimes we'll do 4pm to 10pm or anywhere in between. We're not planners at all, any plans we make are very loose.

- We park hop some, but not a ton. The park hop usually happens on those days I describe where we do a spur of the moment return to the parks at night.

- We never do a "resort day". Yes, we're offsite, but some of the places we stay are quite nice. However, we didn't come to WDW to see a fancy pool or things like that, we're there for WDW...the theme parks. Spending an entire day at a resort sounds like a waste to us. We try to pace ourselves in the parks, so we don't get exhausted. If we do find we're tired, we'll have a short park day such as 10am to 1pm and then spend the rest of the day/evening relaxing at the rental and call it an early night.

-

 

[Sara_H]

We tend to Rope Drop and spend all day in the parks. Last time we did leave AK around 3:00, spent a little time at the pool and then headed to DS for awhile. We like to get the most bang for our buck however there is a lot to be said about a resort day...we just haven't brought ourselves to do it yet. I'd feel like I was missing out on the parks. Our kids were 9 and 7 the last time we went and they did great...by the last day you could tell my daughter was wearing down a little but she was a trooper.

 

[tinkerjo]

We rope drop and stay till 2-3, go back to resort, swim and supper. Sometimes we go back and sometimes we don’t. Kids are more likely to go back without us. (My youngest are 11 and 20) we like to schedule a resort day 1/2 way through the trip just because