Ask It: Do You Plan a No-Park Day in Your Disney Vacation?

29 thoughts on “Ask It: Do You Plan a No-Park Day in Your Disney Vacation?”

• I can’t imagine not having rest days. We would be miserable without them. We started with the rest every 3rd day plan (2 park days/1 rest day). That works okay, but now we usually do every other day in the parks. So, one day in the park, one rest day, one day in the park, one rest day, etc.

  We camp at Fort Wilderness, though. So, staying on property only costs us about $80 a night since we have a pop-up camper. We can cook/eat in our camper so don’t spend a lot of money on food. Sometimes our days at Fort Wilderness (with an occasional trip to another resort) are our favorite days. If we were paying to stay somewhere other than the Fort, then the every-other-day plan would be cost prohibitive.

  If you have never stayed at Fort Wilderness, give it a try!

• 2 travel days, 4 Park days, 2 rest days. I have a 2 year old, 10 month old and 14 year old so rest days are important. We do not leave the park on park days, we stay all day long. We also stay on disney property so rest days are not a waste of money, we can actually enjoy our resort or resort hop and check out what they have to offer and disney springs in fun as well.

• We have planned a no park day for both of our previous trips which were both one week. However we ended up either doing a water park or downtown Disney on those “no park” days (or on our last trip two full days in our room thanks to someone named Irma). On our park days it is rope drop to close for us sometimes + EMH. It’s tiring but we’re have only been able to visit twice so we want to do as much as possible.

• We scheduled a “non-park” day on our last trip, but wound up starting at Kona for breakfast, spend all day at Disney Springs, and then had dinner at California Grill. Absolutely wonderful day, but nowhere near the relaxing break we anticipated. Oh well, I can sleep at home, right?

• I think you need a category for “sometimes” 🙂
  Last trip we had a day at Disney Springs, but that was when DisneyQuest still existed. I’ve also purposely planned late start days.

• I have never planned a day off but I think I’m going to on our next Disney trip but it’s just so enticing to add an extra day to your ticket because the more days you add the more cost effective it becomes! I would have no problem with a day off from the parks but I am not sure I could convince my husband and kids that this is a good idea.

  • Add the extra day to the ticket. On your “off” day, head to a park after dinner for a few fastpassed rides and fireworks. I think you can still consider it an “off” day even if you technically use a day of your ticket.

• We always plan at least one “off” day per trip and it may be the day we arrive or leave. Throughout the trip I plan “light” days, sleep in and go to the parks late or maybe an early dinner and movie at the resort. In our family sleeping in and staying out late works better.

• We usually go to Orlando for two or three weeks – sometimes four weeks. We always have non WDW park days. We like to visit the Premium Outlets and shopping at the malls as we can get bargains we can’t get at home in the uk. We also visit other parks. Also we spend days at our rental villa or WDW resort. We even visit other WDW resorts and enjoy Disney’s attention to detail. It seems a shame to stay in a fantastically themed resort (and pay a lot of money to stay there) and not have time to take it all in and appreciate it. I think we would completely burn out without having a few days off from the parks! Of course each to his own – it would be a boring world if we all thought and did the same as each other – I respect everyone’s concept of their perfect holiday/vacation.

• We go to the parks every day, even if we arrive late in the evening. Once we arrived late enough that we got to the park like 30 minutes prior to close. We went anyway. If I’m in the Orlando area, I go to the park.

• I’m pretty crazy about our day off. It’s traditionally a day of touring the deluxe resorts. Walking through their lobbies, grabbing food at various restaurants from them – it’s nice to see all of THAT imagineering and to get a little bit of sensory relaxation after the overload the parks can occasionally induce.

• We usually split up our days like this – morning park, afternoon rest or swim, evening park. If we need extra rest time, we’ll skip either the morning or evening park time. Has worked well so far

• We go from rope drop to close every day in the park, so we do plan one day to sleep in, do some off site shopping and tour some other resorts.

• When my children were young, we took a scheduled day to sleep in, go to the pool and go to then Downtown Disney. It was a great day. Now we just plan a shorter day mid trip. Leave park at dinner time and go to a resort restaurant, go to the pool and earlier to bed. Also we need a day to not get up so early and maybe do evening magic hour. Going non stop for more than three days means we hit a wall that makes for a not as pleasant vacation no matter our age.

• We have two school-age kids so we make sure to schedule in a mandatory rest day after two days at the park. So, 2 days on, 1 day off, 2 days on, 1 day off etc. Because we stay on property, I don’t see this as a waste of money AT ALL. In fact, we can take advantage of what we pay for by sleeping in, swimming at the pool, doing the free activities and even hopping over to Disney Springs for some good food for dinner. The kids loved this and trust me, so did us parents. You need the break with kids!

• Always. We have even had no-park trips. There is so much to enjoy outside of the parks.

  • Some of my favorite Disney trips have been short ones, where I haven’t been able to justify the price for a 1 or 2 day ticket, and therefore just spend a day or 2 hanging by the pool and soaking up the atmosphere.

• GOD NO.
  Even though our trips to Disney have historically been a week or just a bit more, I cannot see spending the kind of money it costs to travel and stay there in order to do things we can do anywhere. This absolutely included our first trip when my kids were 4 and 7. Rope drop, midday break with a nap, back in action in the parks. BAM. Rest when you’re dead.

• Absolutely. I usually involves pool time, a relaxing TS dinner and a walk around the Boardwalk.

• It depends entirely on the length of the trip. If the trip is a full week or more, we plan a day off from the parks and usually fill it with pool time and a trip to Disney Springs. If the trip is 6 days or less, we don’t usually take a day off, especially if one of our travel days doesn’t give us enough time to enjoy a park.

• In a typical one week trip, I usually plan the first or last day (sometimes both) as a no-park day. The. Every other day between that will have a day where we go back to the room mid-day for at least 3 hours to rest.

  If the trip is longer, I’ll usually put no-park days in-between as well. Usually every 3rd day. But I usually travel alone or with one other adult in their 30’s. If there were children involved, I might have to add in more rest time.

• I voted no because our trips are usually 5 days and we park hop and rest/swim at the resort mid-day. I refuse to waste an entire day in Orlando, but I guess if I was there for over a week, I can easily understand a relaxation day away from the parks.

  • ^^ This… took the words out of my mouth!

  • Pretty much the same here. We may only go into the park for a meal or the fireworks, but we rarely don’t step foot in a park for a little bit each day.

• We just returned from our first WDW trip and two things are certain: we will go back and we will schedule a no-park day in the middle of our next trip.

• We always plan to do two days in the park followed by one resort day – and repeat as needed. It gives us all a day to hang out at the pool, play mini golf, explore Downtown Disney or just sit in the room and watch cartoons. Keeps everyone happy and cheerful for park days!

• This year I planned a day off at a water park, and just to pop-over to magic kingdom for fireworks and EMH. But then the weather got really cold and we didn’t really have much of a plan, so we headed over early in mid-afternoon.

• Plan? No. But we usually end up taking one.

  • I was going to say just the opposite. We plan one, but usually end up in the park anyway on that day!

Comments are closed.