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

All tickets now do photos, including one-day park hoppers.

Grand California entrance is much much faster than DTD. And far fewer people.

As for attractions I would check the wait times as you are about to enter. Recommended options would be Ariel, Mater, or Monsters Inc. You can even consider something in A Bug's Land (Heimlich is the cutest in my opinion).
Also, wait times at the end of the night tend to not get updated at DLR, so something may say 20 minutes when it's really a walk on!

At least DCA is fairly compact so it's easy to get to any of those and then get across esplanade. A couple weekends ago I had a FP for GotG from 9:30-10, but wanted to see the fireworks in DL at 9:30. So I watched those from the end of Main Street then walked out of park and across to DCA (couldn't even go as fast as I wanted because I had blisters) and up to GotG-was able to get on ride before 10!

For checking prices make sure to consider the food and merchandise discounts. At DLR most permanent food places (QS and TS) have AP discounts, unlike WDW where there's a much more limited list.

Grrr on the ticket photos. Guess we won't save time there.

We will definitely use the GCH entrance then, and I think Mater or Heimlich would be ideal. Both are family favorites and theoretically would have shorter lines!

I've started working the math on the tickets versus APs. I need to figure out how much $ credit we get for our existing APs towards the price of the Premier Pass. I've got a question in on Robo's ticket thread to find out. And I also need to figure out if August 29th (or any of our days) are considered value or regular season at DL since that impacts the one-day ticket price too. In the most favorable math, upgrading one of the adults to a Premier Pass might be only $149 (or $141 for the kids) which would totally be worth it for the discounts. Worst case math, it would be $294 to upgrade one of the adults (or $286 for one of the kids.) Still might be worth it for the discounts.
 
I've done the WDW parks in one day (at least one ride, one photo and one food per park was our criteria lol) but now I'm thinking I would LOVE to try this. Adding it to my Disney bucket list!

Looking forward to seeing how well you do and cheering you on!

Thank you!

Definitely pick a day with better park hours! LOL DL/DCA are killing us!!
 
I wish you the best of luck - but yikes, with those park hours for the CA parks, you are going to need some serious luck. Rush hour traffic in LA and Orange County on a Tuesday afternoon/evening is no joke. Even if your planes are on time, you hustle through the airport, and somehow are in your van and on the road by say, 5:15pm, you are hopping on the 405 Freeway at the absolute worst possible time. My guess is you will be pulling in to the Grand Californian around 7:30pm at the earliest. Battled the 405 freeway for 20 years of my life, no thank you...

Ugh. But there's nothing I can do to change LA traffic. Just have to hope for the best!
 


Intrigued by your challenge - I wonder if anyone (with serious expendable income) has ever tried doing all 12 Disney parks in 6 days or less? I think it could be done, especially if you go "Amazing Race" style and live out of a backpack to minimize time dealing with luggage.

Day 1 - Tokyo Disneyland - Tokyo DisneySea - Fly to Shanghai
Day 2 - Shanghai Disneyland - Fly to Hong Kong
Day 3 - Hong Kong Disneyland - Red eye flight to Paris
Day 4 - Disneyland Paris - Walt Disney Studios Park - Red eye flight to Orlando
Day 5 - Magic Kingdom - Disney Hollywood Studios - Epcot - Animal Kingdom - Red eye to Orange County
Day 6 - Disneyland - California Adventure

Good luck with your 6 in 1 day challenge...sounds awesome!
 


Intrigued by your challenge - I wonder if anyone (with serious expendable income) has ever tried doing all 12 Disney parks in 6 days or less? I think it could be done, especially if you go "Amazing Race" style and live out of a backpack to minimize time dealing with luggage.

Day 1 - Tokyo Disneyland - Tokyo DisneySea - Fly to Shanghai
Day 2 - Shanghai Disneyland - Fly to Hong Kong
Day 3 - Hong Kong Disneyland - Red eye flight to Paris
Day 4 - Disneyland Paris - Walt Disney Studios Park - Red eye flight to Orlando
Day 5 - Magic Kingdom - Disney Hollywood Studios - Epcot - Animal Kingdom - Red eye to Orange County
Day 6 - Disneyland - California Adventure

Good luck with your 6 in 1 day challenge...sounds awesome!

That would be so much fun!

Our plan for when we win the lottery (notice I said when, not if LOL) is to do a Disney World Tour, but at a more leisurely pace...

We'd start in Florida (because it's our Disney home base) and hit all the parks.

Then fly to CA and hit the parks there.

Next we'd head down to Aulani.

Then over to Asia to hit Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

Next to Europe for DLP and some sort of Adventures by Disney.

Then we'd head back to the east coast on a transatlantic Disney cruise.

We'd wrap up, back in Florida, where we would buy our home in Golden Oak,

Someday, right? :)
 
That would be so much fun!

Our plan for when we win the lottery (notice I said when, not if LOL) is to do a Disney World Tour, but at a more leisurely pace...

We'd start in Florida (because it's our Disney home base) and hit all the parks.

Then fly to CA and hit the parks there.

Next we'd head down to Aulani.

Then over to Asia to hit Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

Next to Europe for DLP and some sort of Adventures by Disney.

Then we'd head back to the east coast on a transatlantic Disney cruise.

We'd wrap up, back in Florida, where we would buy our home in Golden Oak,

Someday, right? :)
Hey, by the time that happens, maybe the new DCL ships will be ready and there will be a Pacific route to get you to Asia? And on that note, you could even take a Panama Canal route to get from Florida-CA!
 
Well this just got a lot harder:

jetblue-recommends-arriving-3-hours-early-to-mco

Basically they are doing construction and only one tram will be servicing gates 1-29 at MCO. Frontier is on the list of airlines impacted. I really don't think we'd be able to pull off visiting all four WDW parks AND get to MCO 3 hours early. Our plan had us getting there about 2 hours before our flight.

We do have TSA Precheck, so at least the security aspect of the airport experience should be quick. But that won't help us if we miss our flight because we are stuck waiting for a tram to the gate.
 
Well this just got a lot harder:

jetblue-recommends-arriving-3-hours-early-to-mco

Basically they are doing construction and only one tram will be servicing gates 1-29 at MCO. Frontier is on the list of airlines impacted. I really don't think we'd be able to pull off visiting all four WDW parks AND get to MCO 3 hours early. Our plan had us getting there about 2 hours before our flight.

We do have TSA Precheck, so at least the security aspect of the airport experience should be quick. But that won't help us if we miss our flight because we are stuck waiting for a tram to the gate.
Could you leave MK earlier so you definitely get to AK for opening? And you could try using an Uber rather than busses?
 
Could you leave MK earlier so you definitely get to AK for opening? And you could try using an Uber rather than busses?

That's what we're thinking... Only do 7DMT at MK and skip the other rides. Then we can call for an Uber or a Minnie Van and get to DAK in time for rope drop. If things go smoothly, we could be done 2 of the 4 FL parks by just after 9 am. That would give us a bit more time to knock of DHS and EPCOT and still allow enough time to get to the airport!
 
Luggage...

This is what I'm currently thinking through.

With the construction and reduced tram service at MCO potentially slowing us down and the need to get out of LAX as fast as humanly possible, I've been trying to think of ways to make the luggage part of this trip easier. With no checked bags, we could go straight to TSA and the gate at MCO (time savings) and then straight to the Super Shuttle at LAX (time savings.)

Usually for a trip of this length (12 days total!) we'd pack 2 large suitcases for the four of us. There's no way we could do this length of a trip with carry-on bags only. Plus my kids are useless when it comes to luggage and can't handle any bags larger than their own backpacks. But given the possible time pressure both at MCO and at LAX for this park hop day, I'm trying to decide if we could skip luggage and ship our stuff directly to the hotels. Something like:
  • Before we leave home, send boxes to Fort Wilderness with our FL clothes and trip necessities and to GCH with our CA clothes and necessities
  • Before we leave FL, ship all unneeded items (dirty clothes, etc.) back home
  • Only bring carry-ons on the flight from MCO to LAX
  • Ship stuff back home from CA before we leave
What I like about this:
  • Makes navigating both airports much easier

What I don't like about this:
  • Takes a TON of advance prep to make sure all the right items end up in the correct boxes
  • Won't be able to do all the trip laundry on Labor Day when we get home
Can you ship fully packed suitcases? Like without a box?

If that's possible, we could ship one packed suitcase to CA and just fly with the other down to FL, The we could bring both suitcases back home with us on the flight from LA. Hmmm. Need to investigate.
 
I think it's fairly well established that we are crazy people, so I will share this.

Our big August WDW/DL vacation doesn't start until 8/23. When we heard that Ellen's Energy Adventure and the Great Movie Ride were closing on 8/13 we were pretty bummed (me especially, since I tried to get the kids to ride GMR with me when we were there for a quick trip in May but they refused.) So as any crazy Disney person would do, I started looking for cheap flights. Amazingly, I found us flights for $68 round trip per person, flying down on 8/9 at 8:00 pm and back on 8/10 at 5:30 pm. I booked us a discounted room at Pop Century for the night. We have our APs so we didn't need tickets. So for under $400, all four of us got to fly down to WDW to say our goodbyes.

We rope dropped morning EMH at EPCOT. We rode Test Track, Soarin', and Frozen. We grabbed breakfast at Kringla before heading over to ride Ellen. After Ellen, we hit Mouse Gear for the Ellen merch (no ornaments left :(.) We made a quick pit stop at Club Cool and watched the Muppets Mobile Lab before heading to DHS.

At DHS, we used a prebooked FP+ for GMR and got the Chicago scene. We tried for GMR merch, but there wasn't any left (no rose gold Minnie ears either - believe me, I tried!) Then we walked over and did the Cars 3 Cruz Ramirez meet & greet. We decided to wait in a 30 minute stand-by line for GMR and got the western scene this time. While in line, we snagged an ADR for Hollywood Brown Derby. We had a delicious lunch and headed for MCO. Not bad for 6 hours in the parks!

And the best news, that's relevant for this Ultimate Park Hop, we didn't have any real trouble with the tram construction at MCO. It was a little slower than usual, with only one tram running, but nothing like the chaos we had feared. We were walking to our car in the DHS parking lot at 2:45 pm. We stopped for gas, returned the rental car, got through TSA (with precheck), caught the tram, and got to our gate by 3:48 pm. A little over an hour! And for Ultimate Park Hop, we will get gas the night before so we won't have to worry about that. We are definitely going to use the luggage shipping services so we won't have checked bags to deal with that day either. We budgeted 2 hours to get from EPCOT to our gate for the start of boarding. We should have plenty of cushion (1+ hours) to allow for traffic, construction, or other delays!
 
I think it's fairly well established that we are crazy people, so I will share this.

Our big August WDW/DL vacation doesn't start until 8/23. When we heard that Ellen's Energy Adventure and the Great Movie Ride were closing on 8/13 we were pretty bummed (me especially, since I tried to get the kids to ride GMR with me when we were there for a quick trip in May but they refused.) So as any crazy Disney person would do, I started looking for cheap flights. Amazingly, I found us flights for $68 round trip per person, flying down on 8/9 at 8:00 pm and back on 8/10 at 5:30 pm. I booked us a discounted room at Pop Century for the night. We have our APs so we didn't need tickets. So for under $400, all four of us got to fly down to WDW to say our goodbyes.

We rope dropped morning EMH at EPCOT. We rode Test Track, Soarin', and Frozen. We grabbed breakfast at Kringla before heading over to ride Ellen. After Ellen, we hit Mouse Gear for the Ellen merch (no ornaments left :(.) We made a quick pit stop at Club Cool and watched the Muppets Mobile Lab before heading to DHS.

At DHS, we used a prebooked FP+ for GMR and got the Chicago scene. We tried for GMR merch, but there wasn't any left (no rose gold Minnie ears either - believe me, I tried!) Then we walked over and did the Cars 3 Cruz Ramirez meet & greet. We decided to wait in a 30 minute stand-by line for GMR and got the western scene this time. While in line, we snagged an ADR for Hollywood Brown Derby. We had a delicious lunch and headed for MCO. Not bad for 6 hours in the parks!

And the best news, that's relevant for this Ultimate Park Hop, we didn't have any real trouble with the tram construction at MCO. It was a little slower than usual, with only one tram running, but nothing like the chaos we had feared. We were walking to our car in the DHS parking lot at 2:45 pm. We stopped for gas, returned the rental car, got through TSA (with precheck), caught the tram, and got to our gate by 3:48 pm. A little over an hour! And for Ultimate Park Hop, we will get gas the night before so we won't have to worry about that. We are definitely going to use the luggage shipping services so we won't have checked bags to deal with that day either. We budgeted 2 hours to get from EPCOT to our gate for the start of boarding. We should have plenty of cushion (1+ hours) to allow for traffic, construction, or other delays!
Not crazy-passionate! I love it! Unfortunately I will never get a chance to see either of those rides :(

But it sounds like I need to get started on the banner!
 
I love love all of this! So much fun just flying down this week like you did! Lots of luck in a few days with your Cross Country venture!
 
Not crazy-passionate! I love it! Unfortunately I will never get a chance to see either of those rides :(

But it sounds like I need to get started on the banner!

I will admit that yesterday was literally the first time I ever stayed awake the whole time on Ellen. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the preshow, and then usually take a 40 minute snooze for the dinosaurs and energy part. The Guardians replacement will surely be a better use of park real estate, but I will so miss my naps!

GMR is the one that hurts. I love it. Before our Christmas trip last year, we watched each one of the movies featured in the ride (in order, of course!) My kids adore Singin' in the Rain. Plus that ride was what DHS was all about. With that gone (and Backlot tour, Lights Motors Action, Animation building, etc.) the park has almost nothing left of its original theming. Toy Story Land and Star Wars Land will be great, but there's no cohension left.
 

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