Disney Florida in 2 days - is it worth it?

[sarahmoth99]

We have the opportunity to do a 2 or 3 night stopover in Miami or Tampa on the way back from visiting family in the carribean. I have DS8 and DD6 who would love to go to Disney - is it worth it / practical to try and do Disney in 2 days?

If so how? Should be book hotels in Tampa and then can i get a day trip, or should be stay closer? Where do we start?

Thanks x

I would totally go and stop off to do disney.

You can definitely do the best bits of Disney in two days.

Disney World in Florida consists of 4 theme parks and 2 water parks, plus a bunch of resorts/shopping/eating areas.
If you have only 2 days you MIGHT be able to see most of 2 parks - no way you'd do 2 whole parks, and that's if you got there for opening both days.
If you are going to go, I'd recommend seeing the Magic Kingdom (main park with the castle) and if you have time, possibly Hollywood Studios (has some good rides and lots of Star Wars stuff). Maybe Animal Kingdom instead of studios, AK is smaller and is a half theme park/half animal/safari park and is lovely.
Be aware that Disney World is HUGE. If you want to go from one park to another using the Disney transport (monorail/buses/boats) it can take up to an hour to go from one park to another.
If you only want to see some of it or stay in Magic Kingdom both days, you might get to see a fair bit. But you also want to remember the queues for most things are long and you may have to pick and choose which rides/character meets are most important.
I recently went for 6 days and managed to see maybe half of the parks? (Visited all parks but didn't see everything)

DH and I managed all the best rides in all 4 parks in 8 hours. We were chuffed with ourselves. (That was 8 rides plus lunch). :P

Get a guide with daily plans for kids your ages.

Definitely buy tickets in advance and book your rides asap X

Tampa is about a 1- 1.5 hr easy drive, pretty much one road.

I'd go for Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios and have one good day at each rather than park hop. In fact, Magic Kingdom alone will keep you going for two days.

Try to see the fireworks at Magic Kingdom if you can. Simply 'magical'. You WILL cry!

Thanks, am feeling quite inspired now! I think 1 maybe 2 parks sounds fine, so Magic Kingdom would be a definite and Hollywood studios sounds like a good option!

Am a Disney novice, so didnt know you could book the rides, so will will check out the guides and plans.

We would probably fly into tampa, should we stay there and then hire a car, or am wondering if would it make more sense to stay a bit closer to the park?

I would also do a day at the magic kingdom and a day at hollywood studios.

I'd chose Hollywood studios over the Animal Kingdom (even though the animal kingdom is my favourite park) simply because you're doing highlights and Hollywood studios gives you star wars (including jedi training if you can get there early enough and are prepared to literally run through the gates at opening time to get into the queue), toy story, the tower of terror, indiana jones stunt show, beauty and the beast and the frozen singalong show.

You can't really "book" the rides. You can do the fast track, which will allow you to book two rides at a time. But you can't book more until you've done those.

You book fast passes - 3 a day bookable in advance. It saves a lot of queuing and disappointment (but can make it all feel a bit over organised). The reality is though that to get in as much as you can you will need to be organised about it.

Disney is undoubtedly the best place to stay, especially as you're a bit pushed for time but you're looking at about £250-300 a night for the cheapest ones. There are some excellent and fairly cheap hotels right outside Disney. Hilton Bonnet Creek is probably the closest, roughly £150 a night. Drive to Disney in about 10 minutes.

I would seriously consider cutting short your time in the Caribbean or just extended your holiday by a bit so you can stay in Disney for 4 or 5 days - it would make all the difference, especially as your children are of an age where they will struggle with a really punishing schedule.

What time of year would it be? Some peak times are horrendously busy and trying to do too much in a tight time frame will be stressful and frustrating.

Definitely stay near the parks to get the most out of your time. I would suggest park hopping tickets as Hollywood studios isn't really a full day so you could go back to MK or try Epcot or Animal Kingdom. We've been lots of times and were there a couple of weeks ago, did Mk and Epcot in one day, just cherry picked what we wanted to do and had a fab day. You can prebook three fastpasses a day (all have to be at the same park) then you can get another at the fastpass kiosks in the park, then another when you have used that one etc. Get there when the park opens too "rope drop" as obviously it's quieter then. There's a Disney app called my Disney experience, you can buy tickets on there and book fast passes (30 days before unless you are staying at a Disney hotel then it's 60 days before), dining etc. You can also see queue times etc this may help with you deciding what to fastpass. Have a fabulous trip! (Sorry this is long, I love Disney!)