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One of the most frequent questions that new visitors to Disney World ask is: Should I buy park hopper tickets? Or, will my family be ok with the one-park-per-day tickets?
My family never buys park hopper tickets, and I recommend that most families skip them as well. Why?
Time Waster
Getting from one park to another park takes more time than you might think. Depending on where you are in the park, you have to walk all the way to the front gate and outside to the bus stops. Then, you could wait up to 20 minutes for a bus and be on the bus for another 15+ minutes. You still have to go through the bag check line at the new park. All in all, you could spend an hour going to the next park. That’s an hour you could easily spend on a ride instead! (Using Lyft might cut off some of that time, but it adds money).
Animal Kingdom is No Longer a Half-day Park
In the past, visitors considered Animal Kingdom a half-day park. It didn’t have many rides, and it closed early. So, folks liked to head to another park for the evening.
Now that the new Avatar section is open, the park has more rides and a nighttime show. The hours are longer than before, with current summer hours open until 8:30 p.m. The park is gorgeous at night!
Park Hoppers Have No FastPass+ Advantages
If you have park hoppers and plan to visit two theme parks in a day, you can still only reserve in advance three rides in one park that day. You can’t reserve three in each park. Once you use on your fast passes, you have to use the app to see what’s available in the second park.
Cost
Having the ability to hop from park-to-park in a single day comes at a price. If you have tickets for 4+ days, the cost is $85 per person. That’s an additional $425 for my family of five. I’d rather spend that on something else. If you’re planning on 5 or more days in the parks, the park hopper costs the same or more than an extra day at the parks.
You Can Always Add Them Later
If you get to Disney World and find that you really want to park hop on multiple days, you can always go to guest services and pay to have your tickets upgraded. You have to pay for the entire length of your ticket (i.e. even if you want to upgrade on your last day of a 4-day ticket, you still have to pay the $85).
On the other hand, if you buy park hopper tickets and find you’re too exhausted to park hop, you can’t get a refund on the extra cost of park hoppers.
Final Thoughts
Park hopper tickets just don’t fit my family’s touring style anymore. For our upcoming trip, we’re hitting each park once with a few break days. There is plenty to do and plenty of walking without trying to hit a second park the same day.
Do you skip park hopper tickets? Or, is park hopping an important part of your touring plan at Disney World?
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Author: Nancy
Nancy lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and three kids. Her favorite vacations include the beach, cruising and everything Disney.
We only buy Disneyland park hopper passes when we fly in in the morning and out that night…
Park hoppers are a great option for 4 kinds of trips/guests. Those with short stays, those who have been to Disney before and just want to hit their favorite rides at their own pace, adults who might have limited interest in rides in each park and finally families with large age gaped children.
With so much to do and lines so long you often need more than just a full day to do a park, especially if you are trying to catch the shows/parades. Adding in kids will of course make this even longer. You could easily spend 3-4 days just doing the magic kingdom, 2-3 for epcot (especially if there is a festival) and 2 days each for both hollywood and animal kingdom. That’s 11 days of just parks, not even including waterparks, resorts and disney springs. Of course that’s doing EVERYTHING. Most people plan 1 day per a park, sometimes adding an extra day for their favorite (often magic kingdom). So figure the average stay is 4-6 park days.
If you only have 3 or less days, then you absolutely want a hopper so you can go see the highlights of each park in your trip.
If you have been to Disney before or are older and not interested in many rides, then most likely you will also want a hopper so you can maximize your time for what you paid. Most Disney vets know that going early to an extra magic hour park is a great way to get on long lined rides but often those parks become the most crowded midday as the normal crowds add to the already present extra magic parks. Many vets will park hop or even go back to the room to relax midday then come back later, to avoid the extra crowds at the extra magic hour park.
Finally there is the age gap. There are many rides that have height restrictions. If your family has young children, say 2 & under and some older children then you may want a few hoppers. When the young children need a nap or have become too moody and need to call it a day. It’s possible one parent may want to take the older child(ren) to another park with rides the younger children may not be able to go on, while the other takes the young ones back to the hotel.
Park hoppers aren’t for everyone and they certainly aren’t for every trip. They defiantly provide some comfort in being able to change up plans depending on how the day unfolds. However with prebooked fastpasses & restaurant reservations, the days of simply playing the day by ear are more or less gone for those not willing to spend hours waiting in standby lines. Vets know how to park hop, most families don’t and as mentioned in the article – shouldn’t get it.
*one exception to this is new “must do” rides with boarding passes. Most recently it’s rise of the resistance, but as new rides/lands open i’m sure we will see these again. If this is a must do for someone in your party then getting a hopper might be required, but i wouldn’t ahead of time. Boarding passes for Rise have been gone within minutes of the park opening for weeks. Myself i was there and got a boarding pass 3 minutes after it opened and my group wasn’t called until almost 4 in the afternoon – on a weekday, 2 months after the ride opened…. had we not gotten a pass or your standby group isnt called then you will need a hopper to try again the next day but not have to commit to a second day at Hollywood if you weren’t planning on it.
If you want to ride Rise of the Resistance, you should probably get the Park Hopper. That way if you can go to a different park if you don’t get a boarding group and come back to DHS the next day. Even if you do get a boarding group, the boarding group process makes all of the lines CRAZY (like 1 hr+) in the mornings. You are better off swiping in to DHS and going immediately back out to EPCOT and trying to get a boarding group before you swipe in there. You can do all the big rides at EPCOT with little or no lines then go back for your Rise of the Resistance boarding group and all the DHS lines will be half what they were at 8 AM. Plus, with the Skyliner, you don’t really have to wait for transportation more than a few minutes.
I am going to respectfully disagree with you on the fastpass issue, but with the caveat that this only works if you have older kids/adults only.
You rope drop one park, hitting the big names(Epcot is good for this and HS used to be, but with Star Wars things have shifted). You make your FP reservations starting at 10 or 11 in another park, thereby maximizing their use.
This can work really well between epcot and HS because you can walk between them, or if you commit to an uber/mini van(I factored the cost for a few into my budget).
You end up leaving the park when more and more people crowd in(people seem to start pouring in starting at 10).
I also will look at other parks for their FP availability throughout the day so it gives me maximum flexibility to move between parks. The park hopper proved to be completely worth it to me last time I was there, and I had a 4 park day once! It was really exhausting, though.
I personally don’t have kids, but have tried to coral young nieces and this definitely doesn’t work with them, but it can help to maximize time if you have adults and older kids who are willing to spend time in transit. Large groups and small kids…well, I learned that one the hard way.
I would pay for a guide of WDW for aunts and uncles because I completely didn’t think about stuff like, when a kid says they have to go to the bathroom, you go to the bathroom NOW or you will eat at noon, there is no such thing as a “late lunch” only an unhappy child.
Hit the nail on the head. I’ve never understood the allure of hopper tickets. There’s more than enough to do in each park for a full day, and the hopper option is crazy expensive. If you were able to get more fast passes after you hop, then maybe I could understand.
Nancy, I agree with you 100%. We experimented with one park tickets a few years back and found that we actually enjoyed our experience more because we weren’t trying to rush so we could get to another park. In January, I did 1 park passes for 6 days for 7 persons. We went to 4 parks and used the other 2 days to return to the parks we wanted to revisit. It worked out great and we saved a bundle of money in the process.
Have a great trip!!
We are going on Monday!!! It’s our third time and the first time doing park hoppers. We are only doing 3 days and staying onsite. I couldn’t figure out which park not to visit this trip so decided to try it. I will utilize rope drop and EMH and see how it works. I don’t spend time eating in restaurants so I don’t think the time hopping will be significant. We will be at a skyliner resort so that will cut down on some of the travel with HS and Epcot and the bus rides will be a nice air conditioned rest 🙂