Non park days / non park trip

CG - there are number of theories of how to approach time and activities in and out of FW/wdw. Major determining factors include distance travel to FW, family vacation time/kids in school, kids age and budget.

Our trips included a 1100 mile drive one way(with only me driving) this meant we had 4 days of travel, 1 long first day 700 miles , then somewhat shorter day 400 miles w/ camper setup and first night FW magic. Reverse on the trip home.

First trip we parked every day and boy that whooped us - left Friday or Saturday and got back home week later on Sunday. So 5 park days, 1 person driving, young kids. It was totally awesome, but I quickly realized, like day 2 or 3 at FW, this approach was not a sustainable yearly weekly trip.

We progressed this plan, once we broke travel down over 3 days, late afternoon departure 250-300 miles, then northern fl/ then sleep in and short drive to FW. The last 2 or 3 FW trips were at around 2+ full weeks with 13-17 days at FW. Working in national holidays and weekends is critical, IMO.

During these longer trips, we would only park 5 to 7 days and explore in and out a WDW other days. Gatorland is awesome. BYB hotdgs, we would also go to to coco beach, water park, golf, fish, resort hopping based on season.

If you can avoid prime time, do it. Our theory, when kids were young, < 6 grade, missing a few days, week or two of school was ok. June can be hit or miss on weather and school being in or out. We found our favorite times to be Halloween and preChristmas. Yes, dusk comes earlier, but the festival feeling all round makes up for that. One Christmas trip was 2 wks, we parked the week before with last day in park Christmas. Although busy, this was one of if not the best park day I or my family has ever had.

If you are looking for advice or help PM me. all my trips were planned using an excel sheet, there are number out there. This helped me with planning flow to trip and if I needed to pivot I could look at the sheet and know park hours, extra magic hours, events, sunrise/set, fast passes all on one sheet.
Thanks for your reply and offer of advice and help!

This is going to sound somewhat random, but you mentioned about dusk coming earlier and I hadn’t given it too mich thought until now....do the loops have any kind of lighting or do we need to plan to bring flashlights for walking back to our site in the evenings if we go off without a golf cart?
 
If you are curious about goings on at the fort, read through this thread. A bunch of people from here on the forum met at the Fort for a DISmeet. The reports are in there. Everyone just got back home within the last few days.

https://disboards.com/threads/rende...ess-dismeet-trip-report-october-2020.3812467/
Thanks! I will check it out! I also joined a FB group for the fort and was surprised to see how many people were doing treat bags, etc to pass out prior to Halloween night. Seems like a fun thing to do if you can’t be there on Halloween! Do people do this every year?
 
Definitely flash light or something. You dont know how many glow stick bands i passed out on halloween last year juat so i didnt run over the small kids with my golf cart! Yea, bring something.
 


Definitely flash light or something. You dont know how many glow stick bands i passed out on halloween last year juat so i didnt run over the small kids with my golf cart! Yea, bring something.
Thanks! It’s been so long since I’ve been camping I think I would have completely overlooked this important detail when packing!
 

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