Is the Park Hopper Worth It If

Je-Ree Olenik

Wish Upon A Star
Joined
May 30, 2017
is the park hopper worth it if you are at disney world for a week?

i feel like with proper planning i can book all the rides and restaurants we want without having to do a park hopper.

i don't want to pay for a park hopper in case i have a day at magic kingdom but want to have dinner at animal kingdom know what i mean. i should be able to book my restaurant at animal kingdom on my animal kingdom day.

thoughts?
 
The only time I get the park hopper is during Food & Wine. I am usually at Epcot everyday.
Otherwise, I rarely need to go into multiple parks on the same day.
 
thanks! i had it last family vacation and don't think we really took advantage of it. we didn't do the water parks.

but for the most part we stayed in one park per day.

is there a way to add water parks without the park hopper?
 
YMMV, some people prefer the flexibility of being able to visit multiple parks in a day.

When we went last year with our kids, we paid for the park hoppers and really only used them on the last day (we challenged ourselves to hit every park that day, but only because we hadn't really park hopped up to that point).

Went again this past September, with no park hoppers. I *personally* preferred just planning out a full day at each park we were going to visit. We won't buy PH again unless there's a REALLY compelling reason to do so.
 


I find park hopper much more useful to me on short trips. (Which is what my trips have been in the last few years.)
If I have at least 4 park days I tend to go with the base ticket.
I then plan dining reservations accordingly so I am not trying to go to MK for the day and then AK for dinner.
Instead I'd making my dining reservations for either inside MK or at a resort.
 


We like to plan parks for the morning than see what the app has available for fast passes after dinner. And go to that park for the night. Hopper just gives you freedom. But sure you don't need them.
 
I find park hopper much more useful to me on short trips. (Which is what my trips have been in the last few years.)
If I have at least 4 park days I tend to go with the base ticket.
I then plan dining reservations accordingly so I am not trying to go to MK for the day and then AK for dinner.
Instead I'd making my dining reservations for either inside MK or at a resort.
I would agree with this. Most of my trips are a max of 5 days
 
This really depends on you.

For my family, park hoppers have never been optional. We consider it to be a necessary part of the expense because that’s how we like to vacation at Disney. If cost was a factor, they would rather wait longer to save up or honestly I think my teenagers would offer to pay for the hoppers themselves because they think it’s important.

I am very regimented and plan a lot in daily life, but for us a Disney trip is about spontaneity and enjoying the moment. I purposely do as little planning as possible to allow for this. We usually loosely plan one small part of each day (like morning EMH at MK on Tuesday or dinner at Ohana on Wednesday), but leave the rest of the day open to do whatever we are in the mood for.

The trip length is irrelevant for our decision. All of our early years the trips were 10-12 nights (10 park days). People always say PHs are “not necessary” for a longer trip, but I always found the value better when you divided the price out by 10 days rather than 3 or 4.

People also often say “no hopping with young children”, but we felt the opposite. When ours were babies/toddlers, we knew we were leaving for a nap anyway so the hoppers gave us the flexibility to go somewhere else that evening and didn’t really add any extra travel time.

Now that everyone is older, the hoppers give us the ability to split up and to ensure we get to do whatever we want. If the kids decide to sleep in one morning, my husband and I have the freedom to walk over to France and grab breakfast even though we are planning to go to Animal Kingdom later that day. Or if my son and I aren’t tired when everyone else is, we can hop over to a late EMH at MK.
 
We have gone with both types of tickets before and honestly like the Hopper a lot more than we thought we would. My son loves to do Sorcers and there were times that we were done at one of the other parks and he wanted to go and get another pack of cards and do a couple portals. We also used it to ride some of the rides when the others are watching the fireworks that we watched on our planned MK day.
 
thanks for replying everyone! i see a couple agree and disagree. gave me a lot to think about!
 
We have gone with both types of tickets before and honestly like the Hopper a lot more than we thought we would. My son loves to do Sorcers and there were times that we were done at one of the other parks and he wanted to go and get another pack of cards and do a couple portals. We also used it to ride some of the rides when the others are watching the fireworks that we watched on our planned MK day.

This is probably the only reason my husband would argue in favor of hoppers LOL. We do love the Sorcerers game!
 
We don't buy park hoppers because 1 park a day is plenty for us! We can definitely find enough to keep us entertained in one park per day. Also, we find hopping to be sort of tiring and stressful, but that's just us. Enjoy your trip whatever you decide!
 
We don't buy park hoppers because 1 park a day is plenty for us! We can definitely find enough to keep us entertained in one park per day. Also, we find hopping to be sort of tiring and stressful, but that's just us. Enjoy your trip whatever you decide!

This is why it’s so subjective and I always say it depends on the family. There’s no right or wrong here. My family feels the complete opposite about your two points, but many others feel the same way you do.

1. Stay entertained in one park all day—
We have absolutely no desire to stay in a park from rope drop to close. Especially when the kids were little— that sounds like one of my versions of hell. So, even without hoppers we would still leave at some point during the day.

2. Hopping is tiring and stressful—
We use hopping as a break and a stress reliever. We are a bunch of introverts, so as much as we live Disney the crowds, noise, and heat can be very over stimulating, stressful, and exhausting. Hopping on a completely empty, quiet, air conditioned bus or monorail my whole family breathes a sigh of relief and the few minutes of silence allow us to relax and prepare for whatever we want to do next.
 
Park hoppers are about the only add on I'm totally down for paying for.

I loved being able to go to one park in the morning and hop to another park for the evening though that was specifically my touring plan.

I had 5 days (same as 2011 and I also had hoppers and used them a ton back then).

We spent 1 day total at each of the parks with MK being 2 days so for us it wasn't about proper planning it's just our days were broken up.

I loved the flexibility.

BUT only you know your family's traveling style. Some people don't want to logistic aspect of moving from one park to another. For us I maximized our park hopping as much as I could (keeping in mind park hours, MNSSHP nights that close MK early, EMH, etc). For example we'd park at the TTC and go to MK via the monorail or ferry then park hop over to Epcot using the monorail. We'd go to DHS and park hop over to Epcot (though we drove to each place it's just they are right next to each other and so it was quick). Some people don't want to leave the park they are in, etc.

What is nice though is that you can add park hoppers when you are there.
 
We had it on our first trip, and only used it once, so we backed off for a long time, and stuck to one park per day. It worked fine for us, but we're trying it again on this trip. - We're going at a really busy time, so we're using it to start in the EMH park, but then go somewhere else.
 
we're using it to start in the EMH park, but then go somewhere else.

When we first started doing annual trips, they had BOTH an AM and PM EMH at different parks each day.

So we would do early rope drop every morning, take a break around 11, and then head to whatever park was open later that night.

We still try to make use of the park hoppers as much as possible, but they have majorly cut back on the EMHs offered in recent years.
 
To add a plus to park hoppers. Let say you couldn't get the fp you wanted when planning 60 days out. But once you use your first 3 that day you can look for a fast pass at any park. We used this so much my last trip we did all our Epcot fast passes than went to hollywood for a tower of terror fp I found and literally did every ride at hw the day before our hw day was planned. So we all got to go on them twice. We also did the same at animal kingdom we found fp for Everest and headed over that night and got on a bunch of rides. (Fp only) just kept looking and booking.! Was super fun for me was like a mini game of what I could find . Without hoppers I would be lost.
 
With planning yes you can get by without hoppers but we prefer with them. For us we get them every trip for the flexibility. Our moods change during our stay. We also love several restaurants at Epcot but do not want to spend that many days there. We often avoid MK on nights when its open late due to crowds all day. However, we may spend the day at AK until dark, head to a monorail resort for dinner then finish the night at MK to watch parade, fireworks etc. We've also changed our itinerary due to rain forecasts.

On our last trip we were at MK most of the day. But the girls wanted to shop for a bit at Epcot as it was our last night. So they took the monorail to EP while my wife and I stayed at MK then met up for dinner at Contemporary. Love the flexibility of hoppers. Don't like rigid schedules!
 

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