How Do You Plan Your Days? About This Page:

[guerns17]

Do you go by EMH? Or....do you use touring plans and go by the lowest park attended.

I'm having a difficult time setting up my days because I'm not sure which would be better.

Any advice?

[Colexis Mom]

We usually just wing it! We usually do morning EMH at MK, but otherwise we just go with the flow!

[Caldercup]

Do you have park hoppers? If so, EMHs wouldn't be a major consideration for me because I could hop away if the park is too crowded -- and I love the morning EMHs because I can get so much done when the crowds are low. After about 11AM, I have to hop to another park....

My first consideration when planning out my days are the "Best Park" recommendations from the crowd calendars (and I love Touringplans.com for their chart. They did stumble last Spring, but they've been otherwise very reliable.)

Then I check out the special events -- parades, shows, etc. -- and see which shows fit neatly into my plans, or whether I need to shift things around to hit them all.

I arrange my dining according to the parks I've selected for each day.

You can see my planning process over at my PassPorter Blog: How do I plan out my dining reservations? | PassPorter Blogs

[acidreignn]

I get the park hours, then plan my dining around which park we are going to that day. I don't do the early morning hours, but the late ones I do go to. Not too much planning, since we are adults and when we get to the parks, we just wing it there.

[renbugs]

I too get a park hopper so for us I try to use the EMHs in the morning as well and also the evening for MK...I make my ADRs for which park I will be at but hopping really is a plus..If I plan a day at a park and I find it is to busy and overwhelming we than hop and try it again another day...although I usually have a plan I too for some reason am finding our August trip more difficult thank goodness I still have plenty of time

[apqsmom]

I'm having the same problem. This will be our first time we won't have park hoppers! I'm hoping it will be a little more relaxing for our family knowing we are at one park and will be there the whole day. With a family of 6 and park hoppers there is some frustration with the hoppers because not everyone will agree on where to go next. Plus with hoppers we feel we "have" to switch parks to try to get every hour we can. We are going to the parks for 7 days this next trip so I'm hoping we will have enough time.
I am worried about picking the "best" park since we will be there the whole day. Thanks for asking the question!

[krisk11]

We don't do EMH in the morning as we hate getting up early but we do head to the park that's open late. We always have hoppers so we can move around if we want to. We plan out where we want to go and eat and then if we change our minds we hop

[2Peanuts]

I use Touringplans.com's crowd calendar to figure out which parks we want to be at on any given day. Then I look at where we want to eat & figure out those ADRs, matching restaurants to where we'll be.

In my mind, I organize my days by morning, afternoon, evening. For example, if Touringplans recommends going to MK one day, I'll mark the morning & afternoon at MK. My family likes to take a break at the hotel in the mid-to-late afternoons. Then, for the evenings, if we want to be low-key, we head to DTD or stay in at the resort. Otherwise, we try to head back into either MK or Epcot, avoiding whichever one has evening EMH.

Have fun with the planning! It's like a jigsaw puzzle, but luckily, there are multiple solutions.

Carol

[Kynna]

We tried to go without hoppers last time and will never do it again! We love the flexibility. We go to EMH in the AM and then head back to the hotel for down time once the park gets crowded. We head back out in time for dinner ADR's and enjoy the parks at night. The only park we don't do that at is Animal Kingdom. We go on a low crowd day because they usually close early and plan for a relaxed evening.

[Lemonie]

We like to take advantage of the morning EMH, less crowded and then by lunch time or just thereafter, head back to the room for a pool break. We have done the later EMH, but they seem to be more crowded. We did not get park hoppers on our last trip in Sept. 2011 and really liked being able to just focus on one park per day. I didn't use the crowd control calendar, but I was there at a low attendance time.

[mfirst]

Originally Posted by 2Peanuts

I use Touringplans.com's crowd calendar to figure out which parks we want to be at on any given day. Then I look at where we want to eat & figure out those ADRs, matching restaurants to where we'll be.

In my mind, I organize my days by morning, afternoon, evening. For example, if Touringplans recommends going to MK one day, I'll mark the morning & afternoon at MK. My family likes to take a break at the hotel in the mid-to-late afternoons.

Carol

I did this too - we knew that we HAD to fit in the Star Wars weekend events at DHS so that was the first park day I schedulled...I planned a lunch ADR because I knew the kids would enjoy the Disney JR characters...
From there, I looked at the crowd calendars from Touring Plans.com and compared their numbers with what I knew the numbers and crowds to be from a previous visit (though for most of the time we're there, it has Epcot listed as a 1 and the other parks are 6's...) and then planned for ADR's in a park or near where I though we might be.

When I plan, we usually hit EMH's in the am at MK once because we can get a lot accomplished. Other than that, we try to avoid parks with evening hours because they don't work for us. We plan am in parks, break mid-day and either return to a park for evening for a bit or hang out at the resort (depends on the moods of the kiddos).

[lazanya]

Originally Posted by krisk11

We don't do EMH in the morning as we hate getting up early but we do head to the park that's open late. We always have hoppers so we can move around if we want to. We plan out where we want to go and eat and then if we change our minds we hop

[chezp]

We usually plan around where we want to eat.

[Ryans Mom]

It really depends on your preferences and the time of year you are going - if you don't have hoppers and it's going to be really busy while you are there - go to the lowest attendance parks. If you can hop, you can take advantage of the EMH, but as others have said, PM ones are still fairly busy - AM are really nice. Depending on where you hop from, sometimes it's not worth it for the EMH, because of how long it takes to hop.

I always use the crowd calendar to plan my days - add in EMH if time permits (ex. AK closes really early, we may hop to another park for EMH at night).

We didn't have hoppers on our last trip and I won't do it again - some things came up during our last trip (free tix to US and IoA - yay Harry Potter!!) and I wanted to hop 2 days to get to some stuff that we couldn't with the lost day and weren't able to...we really like the flexibility.

[Coop]

We are like Cheryl. We plan our ADR's first. Then we plan touring around that.