[BuzzLightyear]

Just curious to see if anyone else plans their vacation this way, with 3 days that you have to stay out of the parks.

[mickey]

Although we never do that, we purchase annual passes, I know many people who do. The usually purchase a 5 day hopper plus, and spend full days at the water parks or at Universal/Sea World. There is enough to do outside of the parks that you can easily fill up the days.

[mattomouseman]

Not sure I understand the question! But then again I was up late, have had no coffee and am chasing my 4 year old around the house!:D

We split our next trip, it totals 9 days. The first two we are staying at that other park (Universal GASP I said it!) and then we are moving over to the Poly. We got a package that includes the PHP for the number of days we will be at the MK. It works for us because we always take an 8PM or later flight home so we have almost the whole day to enjoy one of the parks.:)

[mattomouseman]

WOW a momnet of clarity! I got the question after I read Mickey's post ! LOL:)

[Amneris]

We kinda do that because we (now) always get tickets for two days less than we are in Fla. for. With the screwy airport stuff taking half a day, our arrival and departure days are just hotel/downtown disney filled. I've also stayed and had non-Disney-park days, but that was to visit family or go to (which I can type only because I hate it there!) Universal.

[trishb]

Buzz...I would do it! There are so many non-theme park thing to enjoy in Disney World it would be a wonderful idea to have a few free days. For instance Downtown Disney, Ft Wilderness, and the BoardWalk area are all free of charge. What a great way to start your Disney vacation, or end it, or take a break. Plus, there are so many thing outside of the World to see and do, too!

Have fun planning!

[MickeyMac]

Buzz, we plan "down days" since my kids like to play in the pools, and go to Downtown disney and DisneyQuest. I heartily recommend it.

[wdwspider]

Yes, only we do 8 days with a five day hopper and only use four days. :D We spend one day at the resort. Then the other three go toward outside Disney stuff like Universal or Gatorland, or something like that. We save the extra day for our next trip each time.

[DisneyTeacher]

I think a down day (or two) is always a good idea.

We have used hoppers and taken days home for future trips and we have used Length of Stay passes (Unlimited Magic Passes I think now). Both have good and bad points. I think with the LoS passes we felt like we had to go to the parks each day because of the money spent--which was fine with me. I also felt like we had more freedom though. With the hopper passes I felt like if we were going to use a day on the pass we needed to spend most of the day in the park to get our money out of it. (I hope this comes out clear to everyone-I've had a long day.)

We are doing LoS passes this year for the freedom (unless we get the AP rate for POR).

[Goofy1]

Sure !
We had a 5 day hopper for our 7 day vacation over Christmas. Factor in the air travel etc we were down to 6 days. The extra day was spent visiting Kennedy Space Center. This was especially memorable as my 10 yr old son was able to see Columbia on the launch pad. Little did we know ....

Have fun

Goofy1

[BuzzLightyear]

Thanks for all the great replies!
Thats what we are doing this year. Staying 7 nights, but only purchased 5-day hoppers, so we really only need to stay out of the parks on our 2 travel days and one other day. It'll give us a chance to do all those "other" things for a change, or just relax. Thanks again!

[ilvminnie]

When we go in Oct our AP will run out a day and a half before we go on our cruise. So we're going to relax, go check out Celebration, FL (retirement IS only about 15 years away after all), relax, do a fishing excursion on Bay Lake, relax, check out the Fort Wilderness movie/marshmallow roast thing, and then maybe find some time to relax. Well, we are kind of talking about checking out the "new" Luau, so we might do that, too. Oooops, doesn't look like much time to relax!:laugh :dazed

[DisneyTeacher]

Originally posted by ilvminnie
Oooops, doesn't look like much time to relax!:laugh :dazed

I also never seem to find the time to relax while at WDW. There's just too much to do and so little time to do it in. We usually go for 7 to 8 days and go the whole time and never seem to get close to doing all that there is to do.

[ilvminnie]

And you know DisneyTeacher, I think it's the only place I've EVER been on vacation & felt that way. Guess that's just part of the magic!

[jbtoursejg]

We buy the 5 or 6 day hopper plus for 7 or 8 day trips. The 5 or 6 days are usually more than enough. We go to Sea World 1 day and 1 or 2 days to the water parks using our plus options. When often come home with a day or 2 left on each tich=ket.
About 2 years ago we went on a "free" trip as we needed only our accumulated left over days for our trip. We still have about 22 plus days left as when we go in the winter we don't go to the water parks as much. Maybe if air fare is cheap this summer we might do a "water park" trip!