Why do you like to park hop?

[JETSDAD]

We hop most days. We generally start at one park, take an early afternoon break to nap/swim/relax and then head out to wherever we feel like that evening. It also allows us to just go to Epcot in the evening for dinner and to hang out there.

 

[disneyseniors]

For us, it's called being spontaneous! When we are on vacation, we like to change our minds and do what WE want to do, not what disney wants us to do. It seems like that option is no more. You have to wait til 2pm to park hop. I guess disney wants to keep tabs on how many people are in each park and at what time.
We always park hopped each afternoon. We would rest at noon, and then make our minds up where we wanted to go then. Nothing was ever set up before then. That's one of the reasons we won't be back along with the rest of the money grabbing changes that have been happening. There is no more spontaneity for us, and that has been a big part of our vacations.

 

[J-Dog]

I apologize for hijacking the thread - we have never park hopped before and are trying it for the first time on our next trip.

Question about the new rules: Do you have to STAY at the reserved park until 2pm to qualify to hop to another park, or can I leave the first park at, say, 10am and go back to the resort, and then just wait until 2pm to go to another park?

Thanks.

 

[Pooh12863]

I apologize for hijacking the thread - we have never park hopped before and are trying it for the first time on our next trip.

Question about the new rules: Do you have to STAY at the reserved park until 2pm to qualify to hop to another park, or can I leave the first park at, say, 10am and go back to the resort, and then just wait until 2pm to go to another park?

Thanks.

You just need to tap into your reserved park, sometimes I walk in and walk right back out.

 

[J-Dog]

You just need to tap into your reserved park, sometimes I walk in and walk right back out.

LOL! Awesome. Thanks so much!

 

[WilsonFlyer]

I like having the ability to move around if crowds are not what we want. We also have parks we enjoy going to a lot and park hopping made sense,

When our kids were little, we could do a different park each morning, rest during the afternoon and go to MK most nights.

Now, Epcot ends up being the one we visit more at night, but still add in MK. We were never open to close park goers either.

There have been times where we did 3 parks in a day… morning in one, a second one for dinner, and then ended the day at a 3rd.

#ThisIsIUS

We literally played the "Which way at the light?" game every day. We basically had no agenda at all. I sincerely miss the spontaneity of that and feel that it has degraded our vacation experience immensely.

 

[DisneyStarWisher]

We like our resort days as much as our park days, so we buy fewer days (next trip is 2 park days out of 5 total days) but add the park hopper so we get to do all the parks.

 

[Yensid67]

Drinking. My wife and I have older children, so it's often just the two of us. We'll plan an entire day around where we want to drink. Maybe start out at HS for a drink at Baseline and then head to Epcot for a Grey Goose Slushy.

 

[gregskellington]

For us, it's called being spontaneous! When we are on vacation, we like to change our minds and do what WE want to do, not what disney wants us to do. It seems like that option is no more. You have to wait til 2pm to park hop. I guess disney wants to keep tabs on how many people are in each park and at what time.
We always park hopped each afternoon. We would rest at noon, and then make our minds up where we wanted to go then. Nothing was ever set up before then. That's one of the reasons we won't be back along with the rest of the money grabbing changes that have been happening. There is no more spontaneity for us, and that has been a big part of our vacations.

How has the 2pm restriction changed this? If you like to go vack at noon to rest, 2pm seems like the spot on time?

 

[trivan]

A few reasons....
Prior to the 2pm rule, HS didn't have rides for the entire family, so my oldest DD and I would rope drop HS, do ToT and RR and we'd be leaving the park when most are still waiting on line at security. We would then spend the rest of the day at another park. This worked out great when HH was the early morning hour.

Second is some days we build our plans on the food/restaurants we want to eat at so we've had days were we're in 3 parks. Crazy, but it makes us happy.

 

[Sandisw]

How has the 2pm restriction changed this? If you like to go vack at noon to rest, 2pm seems like the spot on time?

It has worked fine for us because we very rarely hopped before then anyway.

We go with the flow though and simply take that into consideration when planning!

 

[deedubb]

Fireworks. Every. Night.

 

[skittles67]

The joys of being a passholder! We go in the park, do the one or two things we want to do, then hop to another park.
Going so often we don't feel the need to have to do everything and squeeze as much as we can into one day. We tend to sleep in and get to the parks whenever. We don't follow a schedule and just enjoy the day going with the flow. We took our whole family (17 of us!!) down for the 50th and rope dropped MK and stayed till fireworks. That was the LONGEST day! My husband kept wanting to go to another park, lol.

 

[disneyseniors]

How has the 2pm restriction changed this? If you like to go vack at noon to rest, 2pm seems like the spot on time?

It won't matter to us, as we are not going back. This was how it was before covid and the restrictions. Now? I don't know how that would work.

 

[WilsonFlyer]

How has the 2pm restriction changed this? If you like to go vack at noon to rest, 2pm seems like the spot on time?

Because you HAVE to punch a park you're reserved REGARDLESS where you may want to go at 2:00. You cannot hop until you've bumped that turnstile. What if you never went to the morning park? We do that a LOT. HUGE PITA.

 

[Her Dotness]

What really stinks for us is that we like to start the day in one park and hop to another for lunch.

We particularly liked hitting MK or HS first thing and then hopping to Epcot for a WS lunch. You can forget that with the 2 pm thing as we get far too hungry to put off lunch until then. We need to eat meals at fairly consistent times for health reasons.

Yes, you can eat at a resort instead which we did lots of on our fall trip. It really was aggravating, though, to be forced to do that some days.

We also loved the freedom to hop whenever and wherever. Too many in MK? Away we'd hop. Decided to go back to buy something? PH encouraged doing that.

If 2 pm restriction on PH remains for crowd control as is rumored, I doubt we'll buy the PH in future. And we'll hate how constrained we feel.

 

[jdkdorn]

I like to be able to leave if another park may be slower. I also like to eat in one park and maybe play in another.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

We've mainly parked hopped in the past because of an ADR or just wanted to go some place different than we were during the day. Our last trip to WDW was October 2021 and the Genie wasn't in use yet. With all the negative reviews of Genie, having to be on your phone all the time, price increases, etc...I can see us not park hopping any longer. We have eat dinner at a hotel or go to DS or even venture off property all together and have more down time as resort.

 

[Vulnox]

For us it's generally an options available thing. It has paid off too. When we went in 2019, we really wanted to do Smuggler's Run, but at the time they didn't have fast passes or anything, it was all standby and every time our group looked at the times, there were nearly two hours. Well the last park day we were over at Animal Kingdom and it got pretty cold, for Florida anyway, around low 50s if I recall. People started clearing out at Animal Kingdom so it got me interested to check the MDE wait time for smugglers run, it said 20 minutes... We had about an hour I think until park close, so we rushed to the bus, got to HS, and got in line. Sure enough it took about 20 minutes and we were on. Came off the ride as everyone was funneling out of the park still and all in all it was great.

We like it in general, as we have so far only gone with our friends, so all adults. We are usually there at rope drop so we get our fill of most things we care about by lunch. Maybe it helps that we refuse to wait in a standby line for longer than maybe 30 minutes. We head back to the resort and relax for an hour, then head out to the next park.

I think it also helps keep the park visits "Fresh". Again on our 2019 trip, we would go to Epcot in the morning, go back and relax, then do Animal Kingdom at night. Then a couple days later we may start our day at Animal Kingdom. As most know, the parks have a very different look and feel during the day than night, and by jumping around parks instead of going back to the same one, I feel we enjoy the parks more than if we tried to do just one park all day, even if we still took a break in the afternoon.

It's tough to explain I guess, and to each their own. But the key thing is even if we end up spending the same amount of time at each park over the entire vacation, it feels less like a chore than when we have tried to just get everything we can out of a single park for an entire day, and I don't believe WDW should feel like a chore if it can be avoided.

 

[Skywalker3]

wasn't always a PH, in the early travel days in the 2000s, but since kids are a little older,and we are DVC now, PH is a must
We are rope droppers, and almost always at some park well before opening. Then we ride, rush, do whatever, and usually done/leaving by 2 or 3 at the latest. Rest in room for a bit, freshen up, then often back out in the evening. Evening park often totally different from morning park Kinda depends on where we are staying. A LOT of times we end up at Epcot for eating, we're often there during a festival. We also stay at BWV often, nd so easy to just walk back to HS or Epcot for a few rides, food, no matter where we start the day.