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.
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