I am a park hopper. I love to park hop. Whenever we book our Walt Disney World vacation, we always get the park hopper passes. Do I park hop every day? No. Can I park hope every day? Absolutely? Park hopping really depends on who you are traveling with and what exactly you want from your Disney vacation.
When I go to Disney, I want to get the most bang for my buck. I want to be in the parks from opening to closing. I want to run like a wild woman and ride as many rides as possible, take a ton of pictures and go home exhausted and happy. Apparently, not everyone shares this desire!
I have friends who love “the World” just as much as I do, but do not spend the extra money for the park hopper option. They are content with the one park per day option and even take the time to spend a day simply at the hotel by the pool. This is a perfect option with younger children. You don’t want to have them on sensory overload nor do you want to be dragging them from park to park all the live-long day. Once your kids are older, however, and have a little more stamina, park hopping is a great idea.
One of the main reasons that we get the park hopper passes is because there are times that we get done with a park early and don’t want to simply go back to our hotel. This is particularly helpful on the days that we go to the Animal Kingdom Park because it does close normally at five p.m. Even if we went to dinner at one of the resorts after the park closed, there was still time to catch “Fantasmic” over at Hollywood Studios or “Illuminations” at Epcot. Plus, if we chose to go to Animal Kingdom at opening time, we were usually done way earlier than closing time.
Being able to go and see different night time shows in different parks is one reason, dining options is another. For example, we enjoy the Magic Kingdom but I’m not overly thrilled with the dining options. I love the restaurants in World Showcase over in Epcot. With the park hopper pass, we can leave the Magic Kingdom and hop the monorail to Epcot for dinner.
On our last day of our trip, we like to park hop so that we can hit all of our favorite rides one last time. Actually, our family usually splits up so that we can all get a chance to ride what we want one last time. My husband and younger son love the Animal Kingdom and the walking trails and the safari while my older son and I love everything in the Magic Kingdom. So we split up after breakfast and do what we want and then meet up at a mutually agreed upon third park to wrap up our day.
Some people consider park hopping to exhausting to consider and that’s fine. There is an extra cost to your vacation package to do it so budget-wise, it is an option that can be eliminated. But if you’re like me and don’t get to go on a vacation to Disney as often as you’d like and want to make the most of every minute there, then park hopping is definitely a fun and enjoyable way to go!
We prefer not to spend the money on park hopper and instead extend our vacation by a day. However, being able to hop over to a different park, especially Epcot, for a meal makes it more enticing. I also like the idea of being able to meet back up at a park if your party decides to split up. Of course, with or without park hopper, you just can’t lose – you’re at Disney!! 🙂
Park hopper is a great value for our vaca! The option to be where you want,when you want is necessary to us becoz we try never to decide what to do until the mood strikes us (ADRs excepted). sometimes you get to the one park & find it too crowded, too hot/cold, too loud park-hopper lets you go somewhere else, no hassle. And, like you say: EPCOT’s rest. are best anywhere and lunch/dinner there is mostly where we are for mealtimes. Nice to visit one park, go eat, visit another, etc.
This whole article could have come right out of my mouth too! We encourage all our friends to get park hoppers. One additional plus we have found with hoppers, especially if you are visiting over the holidays or other high seasons, if you get to a park and it is extremely crowded, you can just jump over to a different park. We’ve done this on several occasions. We have also found it helpful on rainy days for much the same reason. We have had evening parades and fireworks rain out one night, and we could hop back to catch it on another without having to choose the show or spending the entire day again.
Love the article. We loved having our Park Hoppers even with our younger kids. I’d read a lot before our first trip about not getting them for a first trip, but went ahead with it anyway. We were soooo glad we did. We like you don’t get to Disney as often as we’d like, so needed to take full advantage of our time. Our midday rest was often the ride from one park to the next. A 20 to 30 minute air conditioned bus ride was all we needed to recharge. As to the sensory over load, I think it helped prevent this with our kids who were 2, 4, 6 and 8 at the time. The way our schedule worked, we were able to check out a park for a little the night before we spent the full day there. Checking it out a bit at night, meant the kids – and parents – knew better what to expect come morning. Finally, it was the only way we could fit in all the shows we really wanted to see. Really saved the day when we got to the Indiana Jones show and it was closed for the day. My 4 year old Indy was devastated, but it didn’t ruin his vacation because we were able to fit it in later in the week.
I, too, could have penned this article. Next trip, though, we have decided to go without park hoppers. Since the kids will be a little older (5) and not as susceptible to napping in a stroller we thought we would save a little $$ (first time we’ve had to buy them tickets!!) and go without the park hopper. Then I guess we’ll know both sides.