Four Parks in One Day – Crazy?

Posted by Scott Sevener on September 1, 2007 under My Time with the Mouse... - the column | Be the First to Comment

In a single word – yes!

But then again, when faced with the question of which single park to enjoy last month with my sister who had but one day to spend at Disney World with us before heading home, the idea of filling that day with our favorites from each theme park didn’t seem so bad. By staying on-site, we had the advantages both of not having to worry about commuting over from Tampa once we got up so we could get started at a decent hour and also by having the use of Disney transportation at our disposal so that we wouldn’t have to worry about sitting in traffic or shuttling back and forth through the parking lots. Really, what could possibly go wrong?!

Well, maybe wrong is a slightly harsh choice of words, but needless to say we certainly encountered some challenges along the way. For example, as you may have guessed from last months column regarding my perspective of “touring plans,” we opted for a fairly carefree schedule, meaning that we didn’t really do much planning to take crowd levels and whatnot into consideration, so we probably spent a little more time waiting in lines than we liked when we could’ve been enjoying other attractions. But we’ll get to all of the afterthoughts in a moment – let’s walk through our day first so you can get a rough idea of what four parks in one day might have to offer you…

Getting Started…

We were up and about around the nine o’clock hour, which probably seems like a late start by about a couple of hours, but I’m of the ilk that a vacation isn’t truly a vacation if I have to get up before 8:00am, and besides, it was my birthday, so I certainly used that little fact to my advantage as well! Also, we’d been out pretty late the night before for dinner and mini-golf after we arrived, so the extra sleep was probably well needed.

After heading over to the Riverside Mill (at Disney’s Port Orleans – Riverside Resort) for a quick breakfast of Mickey Mouse waffles, we took a few pictures around the resort and were on the bus headed over to the Animal Kingdom for the first of many stops on our journey!

Our plan was fairly straight-forward – hit up the headlining attractions at each of the theme parks, plus a few of our lesser favorites along the way as time permitted. Unfortunately, the only Extra Magic Hours being offered that day were in the morning, which simply wasn’t going to happen, but we planned to make the best of it anyways and just see where the day took us.

Park #1: Disney’s Animal Kingdom

We arrived at the Animal Kingdom shortly after 10:30am, so after purchasing Lori’s extremely-overpriced 1-day park-hopping ticket (something like $120 – for one day!) and also carrying on a brief conversation with the talking plant that had been wandering around the main entrance, we started wandering towards Expedition Everest so that Lori could meet the ever-popular yeti for herself! The queue for Everest actually wasn’t too bad – we were on the ride just about 30 minutes after stepping into line, and the time went by fairly quickly as we entertained ourselves by taking pictures throughout the queue.

Our second (and final) attraction in the Animal Kingdom was It’s Tough to Be a Bug, because after scaring your sister senseless by means of yeti, it seemed only fair to help bring her spirits up by seeing other people much, much younger than her scared senseless by a kids show that isn’t entirely all that appropriate for kids! Of course, Flick never fails to deliver, the air was filled with both laughs and screams, and luckily, not too many small children left crying. At this point, it was right around 12:30pm, though, so we had another part to get to…

Park #2: Disney-MGM Studios

After taking a bus from the Animal Kingdom over to the Studios, we knew that there were basically two attractions that we wanted to see here – fortunately they were both in the same vicinity, so it should’ve been a fairly easy excursion! Well, we nearly walked right on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror – the time was about 1:45pm, however we weren’t so lucky with the Rockin’ Rollercoaster starring Aerosmith. Even though we had gotten fast passes prior to going on Tower, we only made it about 15 minutes into the queue line before the attraction was abruptly shut down due to an issue of some sort, so rather than stick around to see how long it would take to come back online, we headed back to the main entrance to hop a Friendship boat over to Epcot.

Park #3: Epcot

By the time our boat landed at the International Gateway and we’d worked our way to Future World, the time was about 3:30pm and we were definitely ready for something to eat … but not before catching a glimpse at the debut for a new feature in the park – the Muppet Mobile Lab! We watched this hilarious audio-animatron put on its show in front of the Fountain of Nations for a good ten minutes before heading onward, although we did ultimately decide that we’d be making at least one more side trip before finally finding something to snack on…

…and if you were getting on Mission: Space, you’d have done the same thing! There’s just something about losing your lunch while confined in close corners in a centrifuge that lacks certain appeal! Luckily we walked right onto this one, and even managed to catch Ellen’s Energy Adventure just as it was letting out as well, so that was two major attractions in Epcot that we hit with virtually no wait time whatsoever – not bad. By that time, it was going on nearly 5:00pm and we decided that we might just as well wait until we made it over to the Magic Kingdom so that we could dine for lunch / dinner at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café.

A near-death encounter with a rogue chipmunk as we passed by the Electric Umbrella was our only delay out of the park, aside from a quick stop by Leave a Legacy to find the plaque that Sara and I had made earlier that spring when we had gotten engaged. We had also really wanted to show Lori Soarin’, but when we passed the electronic tip board, the wait time was reported to be nearing an hour and a half at that point and we knew that we’d end up passing on even more of the Magic Kingdom if we tried to wait the line out, so we let that one go and headed out to the monorail to make the trip over…

Park #4: Magic Kingdom

Needless to say, we were just about starving by the time we hit Main Street USA, so we pretty much made a bee-line over to Tomorrowland for dinner, stopping only briefly in front of Cinderella Castle for a few photos. Unfortunately, as we finished dinner (and my free birthday carrot cake!), it started to rain and we found ourselves ill-equipped for the situation, but luckily the nearest poncho-selling gift shop was only a stone’s throw away and my fiancée Sara had managed to pick-up rain gear for all three of us by the time I had returned from the restroom! What a gal, eh?!

Although a bit soggy even with our raingear, we proceeded to hit our Tomorrowland favorite, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, followed by the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor pretty much solely because we could get there spending only a minimal amount of time out in the rain. As Monsters finished, we were looking at about 7:45pm and with Wishes (possibly) at 10:00pm, time was running short, so we ran our way over to Fantasyland as best we could for Mickey’s PhilharMagic, followed by It’s a Small World, again mainly for the close proximity to help avoid the torrential downpour that was now taking place outside.

As we left Small World and headed back to Main Street USA, we had a decision to make, though. The rain wasn’t showing any signs of letting up and we were doubtful that they’d even shoot off fireworks in that weather, so rather than sit around waiting for it, we decided to cut our losses and head over to Downtown Disney at that point for the much desired, custom-made treats from Goofy’s Candy Company that we’d missed out on the night before. One slight snag in the situation – the buses that run to Downtown Disney don’t run to the parks (why???), only to the resorts, so we took the nearest bus over to Wilderness Lodge with the intent of then connecting back to Downtown Disney. Which don’t get me wrong, worked great … but what did we hear and see over the horizon just shortly after stepping off the first bus? Yep – they’d gone ahead with Wishes anyways, so at Wilderness Lodge we were just close enough to hear the show, but too surrounded by trees to actually see the show.

Extra Stop: Downtown Disney

By the time our bus pulled into the Marketplace station at Downtown Disney, it was about quarter to 11pm and we were all pretty much beat. We were tired, we were getting a little cold from walking around wet (even with the ponchos), so we were pretty much there to grab a quick snack and call it a night. Of course, once we got our goodies and treats, the rain let up enough to where we could actually stand to roam around a bit, so we ended up wandering through a variety of the unique shops along the way anyways, stopping for pictures in the toy store, some pins for Sara at the pin station, more pictures at the LEGO store – of course, and then we topped it all off with a midnight visit to the McDonald’s to get Lori her Fillet ‘o Fish that she’d been craving her entire trip. Don’t ask…

To Bed, and Beyond!

The final bus ride back to Port Orleans – Riverside was pretty empty, so we made it on with no problems and ended up back at our resort around 12:30am … see why not getting up until 9:00am wasn’t such a horrible idea?! Of course, at that point we all snacked on our treats from Goofy’s and got a little wired, so instead of heading straight to bed to prepare for Lori’s flight the following morning, we spent the next hour or so roaming around the hotel to see what we’d missed earlier, eventually ending up down by the pool where we’d also get a bit of much-needed time in the hot tub.

Final bedtime was well after 2:00am, which explains why we struggled to get up the next day even by 10:00am, but fortunately Lori had at least booked her return flight late enough so we weren’t required to be up completely at the crack of dawn. I’m really not sure how we would’ve managed that one!

Wow – I don’t know about you, but I’m tired just recalling all of that and it didn’t even happen all that long ago! But of course, the big question is … was it worth it?

Well … yes and no.

It was nice to be able to show my sister a little bit of each park when we had such a tough time choosing, however ultimately I don’t think that we got to see and enjoy as much as we’d normally have been able to had we just picked one park and stuck with it. We also missed out on some secondary favorites in each park to hurry on to the next – Kali River Rapids and Kilimanjaro Safari at Animal Kingdom, Muppet-Vision 3D at the Studios, Soarin’ (a big one), Test Track, and even Spaceship Earth at Epcot, and the most at the Magic Kingdom – Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain (the others may have been closed for the rain, depending on what time we hit them), and even the Haunted Mansion. Also, in jumping from park to park as much as we did, we missed out on most opportunities to really make use of fast pass simply because by the time the return times came around, we’d have already moved on to another park! Was the trip less enjoyable because we didn’t hit some of these other attractions? Maybe not, but I think it’s safe to say that a trip through the Haunted Mansion would’ve been more fun than that ride on the Friendship boat between the Studios and Epcot!

And sure, we probably could’ve saved a little bit of time by driving my car from park to park instead of relying on Disney transportation, but honestly, we didn’t really experience any waits for the transportation itself, whether it be boat or bus or monorail. By the time you factor in tram service throughout the parking lots at each park vs. simply walking from the boat / bus / monorail stops to the front gate, the timing would actually probably be pretty close – at the end of the day, the travel itself has an impact on your time no matter what your means. Also as a side note, I’m definitely one of those people that relishes being able to relinquish my keys as soon as I set foot on Disney property – there’s just something about sitting at traffic lights and having to drive myself that takes away from the magic for me a little – so personally I’m just about always one to opt for Disney transportation simply because it adds something to the vacation for me.

Ultimately I think the idea of hitting four parks in one day works for a couple of different scenarios, but not necessarily ours for this particular trip. It’s definitely doable for a group of adult annual passholders who comes to the parks wanting to see a little bit of everything, who won’t mind missing out on some of the secondary attractions, and also who won’t mind running around as much as we did (hence I said adult passholders!). I can also see it working for other resort guests who are staying for multiple days and just want to spend one day getting a little taste of everything, even though they’ll be visiting all of the other parks in greater depth at another point in their vacation.

For our own scenario though, if I had to do it again – and I probably will because living in Florida, we end up taking guests over to Disney for a single day a lot – I think we’d have to try just a little harder to narrow it down to only one park and see everything we can see from there. Four parks in a day works ok for those of us who can afford to miss something and catch it next time, but for someone who might not be back for another year (or more), there’s plenty to do in each park independently to eliminate the need to hop around. Besides, adding the park hopper onto a 1-day ticket almost brings the price up to that of a 2-day ticket anyways, so why try to pack a little of everything into one day and shortchange yourself if you don’t have to?!

Needless to say, will I do it again?

Yes, I’m sure a day will come when my fiancée and I are in the mood or we feel like doing some running with friends.

Will I do it again with friends or family from out of town who don’t get to experience Walt Disney World nearly as much as we do?

Nope.