Ask It Results: Do You Plan a No-Park Day in Your Disney Vacation?
Vacations can be exhausting. Getting up at the crack of dawn for the perfect rope drop of a park. Miles upon miles of walking. And then keep it going late into the night to squeeze in every moment of relaxation. It’s no surprise that many people need a vacation to recover from their vacation. For some people, a solution is to take a day off every now and then during their vacation to enjoy resort amenities, visit Disney Springs, or do some other type of activity. Not everyone plans for this in advance, and not everyone takes one of those days off even if they plan for it. Last week, we asked you:
Do you plan a day (or more) in your Disney vacation when you skip going to the parks?
Here’s your results.
Yes (1,171 votes, 58%)
One theme in common with the yes votes on this–it was almost always for people who were looking at vacations around a week or so. For shorter vacations, it’s easy to justify pushing through the long days and nights, but like an endurance vacation experience, pacing is important. Some favorite off-day activities included relaxing around the resort pool, shopping at Disney Springs or off site, a round of golf (miniature or otherwise), or resort hopping (especially in the holiday season to see the decorations). Taking some down time every few days helps keep the relaxation in the vacation.
No (849 votes, 42%)
Disney vacations are expensive, but especially when it comes to theme park tickets, the price per day goes lower the more days you buy. As a result, it’s tough not to buy a ticket for the entire length of your stay, and if you’ve spent the money on the tickets, it seems a shame not to use them, right? For some people, they may take a little time away from the parks, but not a whole day. It may be a case where you head to the parks early and relax for the rest of the day at the resort. Or you may lounge around for the day and then head to a park for an evening show. There’s also the very wise suggestion, especially in summer, of the best of both worlds–going to the parks early, taking a midday break and pool time or a nap, and then back to the parks for the evening.
There you have it–this week’s results are in. Next week’s question is live on Twitter and on the blog here. In the meantime, what’s your favorite non-park activity to do on a Disney vacation? Let us know in the comments. We’ll see you next week!
You May Also Like...
-
When I first saw the Disney Park Pals, I was so confused. What do they do? I thought to myself. I asked…
-
Being a Disney Vacation Club Member means feeling like Walt Disney World, or any Disney destination, is your second home. I've…
-
Disney fans love learning all about the ins and outs of their beloved Disney Parks, and the Walt Disney Company at…
-
The parks are reopening soon (July 11 for the Magic Kingdom and Disney's Animal Kingdom and July 15 for Disney's Hollywood…
I like to have a free day more as an insurance policy than it being about being away from the parks. Our first trip we got park hopper with waterpark and more. On our first full day was suppose to be a waterpark day but because it was too cold the waterpark was closed and we missed out on going because the rest of the trip was so planned we didn’t have the flexibility to change our plans. So now I make sure to have the free day to create flexibility to move our waterpark if need to because of weather.
When you consider the relatively low cost of additional park days, I think it makes far more sense to plan a light day with three FastPasses for hard to ride standby attractions instead of spending an entire day away from the parks. You can still sleep in, rest and go to bed early, and hit it hard the next day.
That’s what we do. We just got back from 10-days and had 10-day tickets. But on a couple days all we did was hit our three fastpasses and then went back to the resort to swim, relax. We then went back to a park later in the day for dinner and more rides. But we were in the parks all 10 days.
That’s where we landed on our last trip. At $10-$15 per extra day, mad sense to have a few short day vs. 1 full day off. On short days we basically slept in just used our fpp, saw a show or did something with no wait, and grabbed a meal.