How Do You Do the Two Week Trip?

[Noemie]

I'm planning a two-week trip in Oct-Nov with my brother, his wife, their 7-year old ADHD and high functioning autistic son and their then 6-months old baby boy.
We'll arrive at MCO on wednesday late afternoon, rent a car and spend 2 Nights at the Coco Key hotel on I. drive before heading to Disney. Our reasoning behind this is that my nephew will be extremely hyper and tense after the long flight from Europe and would be overwhelmed going straight to Disney. He absolutely adores Water Park and we think the one at the Coco Key hotel is big enough that he can play there all day on Thursday and burn his energy but small enough that we can keep him on relatively loose reins and still have an eye on him at all times. We will also make use of the rental car to buy some groceries and essentials for the baby and maybe go to the Disney outlet store.

On Friday morning we'll check into OKW and return the rental car before heading to MK. As we benefitted from an UK offer with 14-day park tickets for the price of six we will do half-days at the parks nearly every day and keep a lot of down time in our schedule. It will be much easier to do more if we feel up to it, then remove some plans we were looking forward to, especially if my nephew knows about them. We're also making good use of the free dining plan with 6 Character meals and two F&W meals with snack credits.

 

[AydensMom]

We have done numerous 12-14 day trips in the past. Will you have a car?

We have some rest days but will also do things like:
- hit up the outlet malls (Especially Character Warehouse)
- drive out to the ocean for an afternoon
- depending on the time of year we have also visited Showcase of Citrus and picked our own oranges/ grapefruit...

I LOVE the Disney magic of staying onsite but sometimes it is nice to see more of Florida as well.

 

[KenHutch]

We do 9 to 12 days every trip and use the same basic formula. We do 2 days per park for a total of 8 days and I schedule 1 shopping day. The girls go into town and shop and I go resort hopping. If we do more days I first add a 3rd day to Magic Kingdom and beyond that a water park and/or free days. Everyone goes and does what they want. The only add on to the free day is I pay for everything on these trips so if you want breakfast and/or dinner you better be where I am at that time.

 

[CHEMISTSP]

We are taking a 2 week trip in August. We are a family of 5 with my wife and 3 sons (ages 11, 15 & 17). We are driving from Buffalo NY to Orlando and are spending our 14 day trip with the following Itinerary:

Day 1 - Drive from Buffalo - arrive at Floridays Resort
Day 2 - Relax at resort during day - City Walk & Blue Man Group in the evening
Day 3 - Universal Studios (Focusing on Harry Potter in both parks) - staying at Hard Rock Orlando
Day 4 - Universal Islands of Adventure
Day 5 - Universal Studios
Day 6 - Volcano Bay (Transfer from Hard Rock to Cabin @ Fort Wilderness)
Day 7 - Animal Kingdom
Day 8 - Resort Day (Hoop Dee Doo for Dinner)
Day 9 - Magic Kingdom
Day 10 - Epcot
Day 11 - Disney Spring / MNSSHP @ Magic Kingdom
Day 12 - Hollywood Studios
Day 13 - Animal Kingdom / Blizzard Beach
Day 14 - Drive Home

At Universal we plan on going to Voodoo Doughnut, Margaritaville (Blue Man dinner package), Mythos, Bob Marley's, NBC Grill & Toothsome. We were able to score the free dining with our Disney package and upgraded so we are doing California Grill, Ohana, Homecomin', Kona, Be Our Guest and Cape May. We have never been to any of these restaurants and are very excited. We are also considering a dessert party if our budget allows.

I planned reasonable itineraries at all of the parks (through Travel Plans) with the acceptance that the hot weather will dictate changes for rest. The first half of our trip will be really thrilling for us at Universal and having Express Passes there will allow us to really get a lot of bang out of those parks. The second half of our trip will be Disney and our approach is going to be more casual. We are really focused more on the restaurants & shows while hitting the major rides but not stressing about doing everything. We are especially excited about Pandora (I love Animal Kingdom!).

dakotix - Good luck planning your vacation and I hope you have an amazing time!

 

[Monykalyn]

When we do 2 weeks it isn't strictly Disney, and it is not all onsite.
This past June was 2 weeks. Our last 2 week June trip (2015) did almost same itinerary with more Disney on weekends as it was Star Wars Weekends.
Day 1-5 -->cabins at Fort Wilderness. Mostly 1/2 days in parks - either mornings or afternoons. One day I don't think we made it to a park until after 6 for FP (MK late EMH night)
Day 5-7-packed up day on day 5, late morning in AK then drove to Cocoa beach and checked into beach condo.
Day 7-late afternoon checkout (DH and kid wanted to go parasailing) drove back to Orlando checked into our Timeshare resort. No parks this day
Day 8-13-combo Disney and Universal but mostly Universal-did take a full resort day in middle of this week, and saw Incredibles 2 at DS on opening night. Universal was mostly in afternoon as DH upgraded our tickets to AP with EP after 4 (he hates waiting in lines LOL).
Day 13-spend in DS then started drive home.
We had an extremely lax touring style this trip-plus it was pretty hot, with some pretty good afternoon thunderstorms (good nap time!)

 

[YesterDark]

I always weave in Resort/Disney spring days with park days. I won't do parks three days in a row since we typically do rope drop. So it'll vary depending on time of year or length of stay.

However, if money wasn't an issue or I had an annual pass going twice in a year, I'd probably do more resort days with going into a park after 5 or 6pm instead of full "resort/disney spring" days.

 

[dtaylor98]

My daughter and I have done 3 trips of 14 nights. We get a 10 day park hoppers and spend the rest of the time relaxing at the resort, visiting other resorts, and spending time at DS. She hates the thought of doing less than two weeks any more. In November I am going with my husband. We are doing 11 nights, 7 day park hoppers. He definitely wants to get some golf in there.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

We always go for 12-14 days, arriving the Saturday after TG. It’s always me and DH, our 5 kids and my parents. This last trip was our first (and only for a while) trip without my parents. We always stay DVC, except again, for our most recent trip. We drive down, and don’t do much on arrival day except Chef Mickeys and exploring the resort. We typically do 4 MK days, 2 Epcot (one full WS day which is a sleep in day, and one full FW day), 2 AK days and 1 DHS day. Since we’re always there during holidays, we take one rest day to check out the monorail resorts decorations and do dinner at Ohana, usually followed by fireworks on the Poly beach. Every other year we add on 2 US days as well. We never do water parks. We usually only have one rest day, though my parents go back to the resort daily for naps. Writing this is making me so excited for our next trip!

 

[jaggies]

14-night trips are the only way to do Disney, IMO! That sounds spoiled but honestly we find the math just favors it — the way we see it, the costs for airfare are fixed no matter how long you stay, and the additional ticket days after 5 or so cost virtually nothing (it’s like $10/day), so you’re really only paying for food and lodging, and we always go during free dining, so it’s just lodging. I’m always preaching the gospel of “maxing out” your stay. If you stay at a value resort (we do!) the cost difference between a one-week trip and a two-week trip is a lot less than most people seem to think.

On a trip of that length you absolutely can not go “park commando” the whole time, and especially if you have kids it might be nice to have a few days where you do not have admission so you “can’t” go to the parks. But we find it’s nice to have the option, to at least pop into a park to see the fireworks or do dinner or something, and since those days are so cheap we don’t feel pressured to “get our moneys worth.” But even if you stick with a 10-day or less ticket, you can still find more than enough to do on the “down” days, like mini-golf or Disney Springs or whatever.

That’s actually what I love most about taking a trip of that length, it’s such a more relaxed pace. It has to be, or you’ll exhaust yourself! I still like to rope drop or get PPO ressies for at least the first few days but we pretty much always go back to our hotel for an afternoon siesta and it’s totally great. There isn’t nearly as much pressure to do everything “optimally” when you have, like, four days planned at the Magic Kingdom. So if we feel like (gasp!) blowing off our Fastpasses and sleeping in and then going to the resort cafeteria for a late brunch, we do that. Don’t get me wrong though…we get a looot of park time in, too.

I get that not everybody has a job where they can just jet off for two weeks, but if you at all can, it’s SO worth it. The best feeling in the world is reaching the end of your first week and then realizing, you have a whole ‘nother week! We live in the Pacific Northwest so it’s quite a flight over to Orlando, so we wouldn’t really want to go that far for a short trip. With a two week stay you really do get to feel like you’re “moving in” to your resort for a little while. Maybe that doesn’t make sense, but I think other people who’ve taken long stays know what I’m talking about. It starts to feel like home, which is a really magical feeling.

Tips? Bring lots of sunscreen. Like, a comically large amount of it. And be diligent about re-applying it every few hours, even if you feel like you’re the only people bothering to do so in the parks. Your skin will thank you.

We always go Saturday to Saturday so we can have a lazy Sunday back home to recover from the flight and such. People get tempted to try to do the nine-day, two-weekends-and-a-week trip, and honestly even on a shorter trip I wouldn’t. That “empty” Sunday is a feature, not a bug. And there’s always some things to get caught up on at home, like groceries and such. (Dump your milk before you go!)

 

[Corwin]

...One thing a lot of people don’t know is that, while Disney only sells up to 10-day tickets in advance, once you’re there you can go to guest services and bump it up to a 12- or 14-day ticket for, again, $10/day, which is just an unbeatable value for park time.

I've never heard this before. Good to know! I always assumed you either have to buy another MYW ticket, or upgrade to an annual pass.

I'm curious how others spend those amazing 10-day to two week trips to Disney? Last time we did this we opted to take our parents for part of the trip. It was fun but for our next long trip we are not planning to include extended family. I'm curious how both couples and families plan these types of trips.

We do a two-week trip by scheduling a Disney cruise in the middle.

Last trip we had a group of nine. We stayed 12 nights; others in the group stayed 9-11 nights, depending on their schedule.

Our next trip will be 13 nights. Currently it's just our family and my mom (who lives in Texas and who will fly in separately).

 

[ajksmom]

Waaayyyy back in 1993 our trip involved 5 days only. About day 4 DH and I were finally feeling vacation mode setting in and it was time to go home....

Since then our stays have been typically 10-14 nights. 14 nights was actually too long and didn’t leave time once home to “catch up” lol.

Favorite trip of all was with 5 park days with a rest day in between each. Rest days involved mini golf, water parks, DS or hanging out at the resorts (BWV and OKW).

Arrival days rarely involve parks. Departure days we never go to a park. Always hit Chef Mickeys up for breakfast/brunch then back to resort for pool time until ME picks us up.

This year we are doing 11 nights starting on a Tuesday, hit DS until room ready. Then EP day, off, AK day, HS day, off, HS day, MK day, off, MK day, AK day, departure day. We have 7 day tickets and this allows us additional time in AK and HS as we haven’t experienced Pandora or TSL yet.

Each park has has us visiting it once followed by a rest day so we can do the nighttime “shows” without worry to wake up the next am for rope drop. Our park days are mainly rope drop, rides until TS lunch, perhaps ride or two after then back to the resort. IF we are inclined to head back out we go back to the same park. No PH for us in years.

It works for us what can I say.

 

[may1787]

I did a solo 2 week trip. It was fabulous! I did two days in each park (except one at Animal Kingdom because there was less to do there in 2014), so thats 7 Days and I had a day in between each to explore the resorts, go to the spa, do off park restaurants, etc. and I COULD have used even more time.

 

[eeyoreali]

I'm planning a 2 week trip for Nov 30 - Dec 14 for 2019. Right now, the thinking is spending 2 days at AK, HS, EP and 3 at MK. Arrival and departure days will be down days used to explore and we will also have rest days as well. Since we're going while all the Christmas decorations are up, part of the down days/rest days will be to check out all the resorts with the decorations. I'd love to also resort hop to check out things to do there, such as the campfire & movies at FW, walking the boardwalk, seeing the animals at AK. There'll be 4 adults & 2 children (10 & 6), depending on how the park days go, we may or may not go back to the hotel for a break.

 

[Padstack]

We did a 16 day trip at the beginning of this summer. We had 2 adults, DD13, DS 8, & DS4. We live in California, so we were going to make this trip count and do just about everything we could think of to do. This is how we did it:

Day 1 - Fly into Destin, FL
Day 2 - Spend time with friends at Panama City Beach, then drive to Orlando
Day 3 - Kennedy Space Center
Day 4 - check into Portofino Bay Resort, go to Universal
Day 5 - Universal
Day 6 - Universal, check out of PBR, check into hotel for rest of the trip
Day 7 - Rest
Day 8 - Epcot
Day 9 - Magic Kingdom
Day 10 - Hollywood Studios
Day 11 - Swamp Tour
Day 12 - Epcot again
Day 13 - Animal Kingdom (looking back we should have done 2 days at AK and 1 at Epcot)
Day 14 - Rest
Day 15 - Magic Kingdom
Day 16 - Fly home in the evening

We went back to the hotel mid-day for rest and pool time and naps. On two days we decided to not go back to the park (HS day and 2nd Epcot day). We stayed for the fireworks on the last MK day to send us off in style.
On rest days, we went to Disney Springs for shopping and lunch. Our hotels (except for PBR) served free breakfast and drinks and snacks in the pm, so that saved a ton of money. It was a great trip and well worth the time and effort to plan.

 

[YesterDark]

Hell of a trip. Must of been great.

 

[dakotix]

The itinerary is done! This will be our son's second trip but first trip of this length. He'll be 4.5 yo at the time we go. He's a fire cracker so we're pretty confident he'll power through this like a trooper! Most days we are planning to arrive at the parks at rope drop and be out of the parks between 1 pm and 3 pm to fit in a "nap" for our little guy.


Day 1 - Arrive at AKL then to Magic Kingdom

*MK: Dinner at Liberty Tree Tavern

*MK: Happily Ever After


Day 2 - Epcot and Hollywood Studios

*EP: Explore Flower and Garden Festival then Lunch

*HS: Explore Toy Story Land

*HS: Dinner at 50's Prime Time Café

*HS: Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular


Day 3 - Animal Kingdom and Epcot

*AK: Festival of the Lion King

*EP: Dinner at Coral Reef

*EP: Illuminations


Day 4 - Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom

*MK: Disney Festival of Fantasy Parade

*AK: Finding Nemo The Musical

*AK: Dinner at Yak and Yeti

*AK: Rivers of Light


Day 5 - Down Day: Relax at Animal Kingdom Lodge then Hollywood Studios (Show Only)

*AKL: Pool time and explore resort

*AKL: Dinner at Boma (AKL)

*HS: Fantasmic


Day 6 - Magic Kingdom and Epcot

*EP: Dinner at San Angel (Mexico)


Day 7 - Hollywood Studios and Epcot

*EP: Dinner at Akershus (Norway)


Day 8 - Magic Kingdom and Epcot

*EP: Dinner at Chefs de France (France)

*EP: Illuminiations


Day 9 - Epcot and Magic Kingdom

*MK: Dinner at Be Our Guest, or Ohana, or Cinderella's Table

*MK: Happily Ever After


Day 10 - Magic Kingdom and then to MCO for late flight home.

 

[RedSox68]

The first time we took our daughter, who was 9 at the time, we stayed two weeks. It started out as a 7-day trip and we kept expanding it and then it was two weeks LOL. This was in 1995 and we stayed at then Dixie Landings. We had our car, so went to Sea World for two days and Universal, but stayed at Disney the whole time. During the two weeks, we took each Wednesday "off" -- meaning we slept in, ate at the food court, rented bikes, explored the resorts and spent lots of time in the pool. I will say that since then, with the crowds and fast pass and all the anxiety getting restaurant reservations, I don't think we'd enjoy as much today. I'd do it again, but I think it would take longer to do some of the things we did. When we went, it wasn't crowded at either the parks nor the resort.

 

[MidgeD79]

We did a 14 day WDW last summer with 11 people. We had 9 day park hopper with water parks and more. Breakfast was always in our room (Pop Century) we had refillable resort mugs and we did a grocery run to Targets 2x. Half of us drove down with all of the luggage and the other half flew. We switched going home so no one ever paid luggage fees or a full price ticket. For us the biggest way to save money is food. Having snacks and bread for pbj sandwiches is a money saver. Often we bring non-perishables like cereal, pbj, and crackers in the car. The refrigerators only hold a half gallon of mile so even with 3 rooms we had to buy milk more often(we had 5 boys between 14 and 24).

 

[RedSox68]

We did a 14 day WDW last summer with 11 people. We had 9 day park hopper with water parks and more. Breakfast was always in our room (Pop Century) we had refillable resort mugs and we did a grocery run to Targets 2x. Half of us drove down with all of the luggage and the other half flew. We switched going home so no one ever paid luggage fees or a full price ticket. For us the biggest way to save money is food. Having snacks and bread for pbj sandwiches is a money saver. Often we bring non-perishables like cereal, pbj, and crackers in the car. The refrigerators only hold a half gallon of mile so even with 3 rooms we had to buy milk more often(we had 5 boys between 14 and 24).

Good planning!