UPDATED: Ultimate park hop - 6 parks in one day - WE DID IT!

[snuggly duckling]

We are doing a WDW to DL trip this summer. We did a similar trip last August where we were able to rope drop MK and then close down DL on the same day. I have photos of the kids, wearing the same clothes, in front of both castles. So much fun!

This year, the timing of our cross-country flight opens up the possibility of doing at least one attraction in each of the 6 domestic parks in one day. Which we are totally stoked about trying.

Of course, we are going in late August, which is value season and has less than ideal park hours, so we will really have to rock to pull off all the FL parks before our flight. Ideally we'd do attractions that have an equivalent on the west coast but that may not be possible.

We have brainstormed one plan but we're definitely open to other ideas, regardless of cost. Would love your ideas!!

Relevant info: We are staying at the Cabins. We will have a rental car and are willing to do the express bus service as well. The date is 8/29, with all parks slated to open at 9 (will likely remain that way based on the same week last year.) There is Early Morning Magic at MK. Our flight is ~2:30 pm. We are AP holders.

Our rough plan:

1. Pack all suitcases in the car
2. Park the car at EPCOT early in the morning; monorail or Uber to TTC/MK
3. Go to Early Morning Magic, ride Peter Pan, Mine Train, and Pooh
4. No later than 9 am, walk to Contemporary and take a bus to AK (express bus doesn't start until 10 am)
5. Ride Dinosaur at AK (or TriceratopSpin if the wait at Dinosaur is too long)
6. Take express bus to DHS around 10 am (10:10 am based on current EB schedule)
7. Use FP+ to ride TSMM or maybe TOT
8. Take express bus to EPCOT (11:00 am)
9. Ride whatever has the shortest wait; would love to pull off Test Track or Soarin but time will likely not allow
10. Leave straight from EPCOT for the airport, no later than noon.

We will be at WDW for a week prior to this so if we get any paper FPs we will hoard them for this day, but we can't bank on that.

What do you think? Other ideas???

We know we're crazy. But this is super fun for us even to strategize!

 

[BrianL]

That sounds pretty insane. I love it! It sounds like you have a great strategy. Have fun!

 

[Lizzards]

I am tired just thinking about it!! But I love it!!!! I have no advice for you because I do not know WDW at all. My home base is DL, so it is definitely easy enough to do an attraction at each of those parks in an evening. Have a great time and I hope you accomplish your mission!

BTW: what time does your flight get into So Cal? which airport and where are you staying at DL?

 

[thelittlemermaid2]

Wow this is nuts, but also the best thing I've heard all day! Your plan sounds literally awesome, but I would utilize FP+ more! You could get a FP for Soarin or Test Track so you could for sure do a headliner in EP. Good luck, I can't wait to hear how this works out!

 

[scrappinginontario]

Sounds crazy but fun! We did 4 parks in one day once and my DD still talks about it even though she was only 4 at the time.

Have fun!

 

[Accident]

2. Park the car at EPCOT early in the morning; monorail or Uber to TTC/MK

monorail tends to break a lot and will easily ruin this right away, if you are going to uber, uber to contemporary and run over to mk from there. lately ttc first thing in the morning is a mad house, contemporary walkover fairly empty security on the walkway.

4. No later than 9 am, walk to Contemporary and take a bus to AK (express bus doesn't start until 10 am)

If park to park buses are running (normal ones) the stop is closer than contemporary. I have no clue how reliable they would be at 9am.

5. Ride Dinosaur at AK (or TriceratopSpin if the wait at Dinosaur is too long)
6. Take express bus to DHS around 10 am (10:10 am based on current EB schedule)

these are opposite sides of the parks but I can't think of much better option except for longer rides unless you happen to snag a pandora fastpass for something.

8. Take express bus to EPCOT (11:00 am)

depending on stamina, jogging over to epcot international gateway entrance would probably be faster than the wait for any type of transportation.

What do you think? Other ideas???

1: The teens that did all rides in all parks last (most rides ever as new stuff has opened since last attempt) had disney kind of involved by the end.. maybe reach out to both disney world and disney land to let them know you are doing this or at least be there when you leave epcot and finish at disneyland as they love social media news.
2: since you are at wdw for a week, talk to any vacation club desk about it.. they will try to get you to take a tour to find out more.. make it sound liek you don't have the time and they will offer 3 fastpasses for your time. Take the tour, no commitment and then you get 3 almost no restriction passes to have. some of hte big rides will be excluded but it's 3 passes to have on this last day.

Depending on date, if you want a fastpass jockey to keep trying to get you better fastpasses without having to slow down I might be free to help.

EDIT TO ADD: add a charity element into this, I'll toss a few dollars to somethign liek GKTW for every park you make it too.

 

[missangelalexis]

Wow that sounds amazing! No real advice to give, just hope you will give us an update if you pull it off

 

[danikoski]

I'd suggest Spaceship Earth at Epcot...it is right where the Express Bus drops off and you can quickly get off and get to TTC (as long as monorail is not down).

Also TOT is right by the Express Bus stop, so if you have a fast pass, you can jump on that and possibly be done in time to catch the next Express Bus.

 

[pbb322]

With Pandora still being fairly new, your AK plan may need an adjustment to plan for potential longer security lines at AK. No way to tell this for sure until closer to your visit. With EMM at MK, you likely will be able to ride all three rides quickly, so hopefully you will be able to leave MK much earlier than 9 am, walk to Contemporary and grab an Uber from there to AK (probably faster than waiting on a bus, unless as mentioned above, the park to park bus is running by 9 am from MK to AK).

So what is your plan when you get to DL?

 

[Tozzie]

Barring flight delays and LA traffic (if you are flying to LAX that might be a problem) I would make one suggestion is since you are staying on Disney property is check all your luggage with RAC in the morning and just have your carryon's with you. RAC will print your boarding passes and that will save you some time at the airport.

 

[keepswimming76]

Wow, that's awesome! We've only pulled off three parks in one day but someday I plan to accomplish four parks in one day.

 

[snuggly duckling]

I am tired just thinking about it!! But I love it!!!! I have no advice for you because I do not know WDW at all. My home base is DL, so it is definitely easy enough to do an attraction at each of those parks in an evening. Have a great time and I hope you accomplish your mission!

BTW: what time does your flight get into So Cal? which airport and where are you staying at DL?

Thank you!

We land at LAX at 5:30 pm so I'm sure rush hour is going to suck. But we will do the private Super Shuttle again this year so we don't have to waste time picking up and dropping off other people. We're staying at the Grand Californian (major splurge!) and will hit DCA first through the special entrance. Just need CA park times to come out so we can plan the other half of the day!!

 

[snuggly duckling]

Wow this is nuts, but also the best thing I've heard all day! Your plan sounds literally awesome, but I would utilize FP+ more! You could get a FP for Soarin or Test Track so you could for sure do a headliner in EP. Good luck, I can't wait to hear how this works out!

We definitely want to use FP as much as possible! We generally don't hop a ton so I'm less versed in how to do FP in multiple parks on the same day. We don't need FP for MK because of EMM. But we could do our prebooked FP at AK. If we only prebook one FP at AK, can we then try to do a same day FP in the app for DHS? And then repeat for EPCOT? That would be a game changer!!

 

[snuggly duckling]

monorail tends to break a lot and will easily ruin this right away, if you are going to uber, uber to contemporary and run over to mk from there. lately ttc first thing in the morning is a mad house, contemporary walkover fairly empty security on the walkway.



If park to park buses are running (normal ones) the stop is closer than contemporary. I have no clue how reliable they would be at 9am.



these are opposite sides of the parks but I can't think of much better option except for longer rides unless you happen to snag a pandora fastpass for something.



depending on stamina, jogging over to epcot international gateway entrance would probably be faster than the wait for any type of transportation.




1: The teens that did all rides in all parks last (most rides ever as new stuff has opened since last attempt) had disney kind of involved by the end.. maybe reach out to both disney world and disney land to let them know you are doing this or at least be there when you leave epcot and finish at disneyland as they love social media news.
2: since you are at wdw for a week, talk to any vacation club desk about it.. they will try to get you to take a tour to find out more.. make it sound liek you don't have the time and they will offer 3 fastpasses for your time. Take the tour, no commitment and then you get 3 almost no restriction passes to have. some of hte big rides will be excluded but it's 3 passes to have on this last day.

Depending on date, if you want a fastpass jockey to keep trying to get you better fastpasses without having to slow down I might be free to help.

EDIT TO ADD: add a charity element into this, I'll toss a few dollars to somethign liek GKTW for every park you make it too.

All great thoughts!!! Thank you!!

Good call on the monorail, especially early in the morning. I'm a project manager / risk manager by trade so we will likely have plans B-Z worked out for anything that goes wrong!

For the MK to AK hop, we were worried that park to park busses wouldn't be running at that time. Back in January I waited forever at the MK bus stop for a bus back to ASMo at park open. I hate entrusting resort buses for any of this! We figure we will walk to the Contemporary, check the board for the AK bus time, and based on that make a decision about bus versus Uber.

AK is a tough park since many of the attractions are long. We thought Dinosaur because we could then potentially ride Indy at DL later on. We figure we will scope wait times while traveling between parks to optimize where to head on the fly.

Love the DVC idea!!! We are very likely going to dive in to DVC later this year anyway so we could use a day earlier in the trip to take care of the tour!

And the charity idea too. Definitely something to think about!!

 

[snuggly duckling]

Wow that sounds amazing! No real advice to give, just hope you will give us an update if you pull it off

Of course!!

 

[snuggly duckling]

I'd suggest Spaceship Earth at Epcot...it is right where the Express Bus drops off and you can quickly get off and get to TTC (as long as monorail is not down).

Also TOT is right by the Express Bus stop, so if you have a fast pass, you can jump on that and possibly be done in time to catch the next Express Bus.

Yup! Spaceship Earth is our leading contender in EPCOT, based on location and likely wait time.

We're leaning towards TOT in DHS but we just have to talk our son into it. He's ridden it a million times but still has to be coaxed on! Plus then we could try to do Guardians at DCA to match!

 

[snuggly duckling]

With Pandora still being fairly new, your AK plan may need an adjustment to plan for potential longer security lines at AK. No way to tell this for sure until closer to your visit. With EMM at MK, you likely will be able to ride all three rides quickly, so hopefully you will be able to leave MK much earlier than 9 am, walk to Contemporary and grab an Uber from there to AK (probably faster than waiting on a bus, unless as mentioned above, the park to park bus is running by 9 am from MK to AK).

So what is your plan when you get to DL?

True about Pandora. We will definitely be keeping an eye on how that impacts things. We will be going bagless so hopefully security will be as quick as possible!!

I'm sure we can get out of EMM fast. It will hurt a little to know we're paying for it but leaving it behind. But trying to rock 6 parks in one day is worth it!!

Park hours aren't out for CA yet so we haven't really planned much. But based on last year, we expect DCA to close earlier than DL, so we will go there first. Do what we can fit in and then hop to DL. Just hoping that LA rush hour traffic doesn't screw us over too bad!!

 

[snuggly duckling]

Barring flight delays and LA traffic (if you are flying to LAX that might be a problem) I would make one suggestion is since you are staying on Disney property is check all your luggage with RAC in the morning and just have your carryon's with you. RAC will print your boarding passes and that will save you some time at the airport.

Unfortunately we're flying Frontier who doesn't participate in RAC. I really, really wish they did because that would make things so much easier!!

At least they have mobile boarding passes so at least we don't have to worry about that!

 

[snuggly duckling]

depending on stamina, jogging over to epcot international gateway entrance would probably be faster than the wait for any type of transportation.

Absolutely! This will be well into my Dopey Challenge training so we can definitely haul on foot. The only advantages I see to the express bus would be skipping the tapstiles and bag check and having it drop us off right at Spaceship Earth.

It will likely be a game time decision based on the timing of the next express bus and how hot it is outside (since we are talking August - ugh!)

 

[Tozzie]

Unfortunately we're flying Frontier who doesn't participate in RAC. I really, really wish they did because that would make things so much easier!!

At least they have mobile boarding passes so at least we don't have to worry about that!

Wow I thought after Southwest was added that all airlines were participating. Sorry, good luck and I will be looking for your posts when you are done in 6 parks.