Are we crazy to not do a rest day?

shan981

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 21, 2017
If we are planning to do mid-day breaks most days, likely even every day? It will be me, DH, DS10, DS(almost)2, DS(almost)2, staying at POP one night (late arrival) then CR for 7 nights. This is how I tentatively have our days planned:

Saturday (11/24) - arrive late afternoon/evening
Sunday - MK - Crystal Palace lunch 11:45
Monday - Epcot - Via Napoli lunch 11:50
Tuesday - MK morning, HS night (trying to get Slinky Dog FP) - no ADRs
Wednesday - AK - Rainforest Cafe 11:45
Thursday - Chef Mickey breakfast 9:50, T-Rex 3:30, MVMCP night
Friday - undecided but will do whatever park(s) we want more time at, have Garden Grill lunch at 11:55 and dinner at 4:15 (really want to eat here and not sure which will work)
Saturday - HS - Hollywood & Vine Fantasmic package 8:05am, Beaches & Cream 4:10pm
Sunday - MK - BOG breakfast 8:50am - leaving early afternoon

I tried to do mostly lunches and we would take our break at the resort after those, then just kind of wing the evenings. Figuring we can either all go back to a park, or one of us could take DS10 back and the other stay with the littles, or we could all stay in if we need more of a rest. But I don't have a full "rest day", unless you count the party day. What do you think? I'm open to suggestions, this is our first long Disney trip, and first time with toddlers.
 
I've never stayed for that length of trip but with small kids in tow your afternoons will need to provide some good chill out time, whether it's naps for the little ones or pool time. I think if you're not constantly running and have very loose evening plans, you will be fine. You know your family best and their breaking points. Our girls are older now (11 and 9) but when they were younger, we did very few solid plans, we might do one ADR/day and our FP+ but that was it. Especially stayed away from evening obligations since this is when they'd hit the wall.
 
Of course you're not crazy. We have 9 nights upcoming... 9 park days. :) Half-days are the way to go. I wouldn't want to spend a whole day milling around the hotel. But going for a few hours then taking the afternoon off is great!

I think you've got a pretty good mix. Looks like... 4-2-2-1... (MK-EC-HS-AK). If you're going to hop MK, I'd hop it with Epcot so you can monorail. Maybe MK on Friday morning, then hop down to Epcot for dinner. Tuesday maybe just HS, not MK-HS. Gives you a morning off. And then you have both Rainforest and T-Rex... These are pretty similar, and we have Landry's restaurants like this closer to home. I might swap one or the other out for something else.
 
Last edited:
We have never needed a rest day but we have also never done a full park day. 4 hours in a row max, then back to the hotel, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for the rest of the day/night.
 
Especially stayed away from evening obligations since this is when they'd hit the wall.

Thank you! That's what I tried to stick to, outside of the party night, and Fantasmic toward the end of the week. Obviously the party can't be changed, and it's something that DH really wanted to do. But I could cancel our Fantasmic package if I realize early in our trip that the toddlers aren't going to be able to handle it.
 


Of course you're not crazy. We have 9 nights upcoming... 9 park days. :) Half-days are the way to go. I wouldn't want to spend a whole day milling around the hotel. But going for a few hours then taking the afternoon off is great!

We have never needed a rest day but we have also never done a full park day. 4 hours in a row max, then back to the hotel, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for the rest of the day/night.

Thank you! This is kind of what I was going for in the planning. Short park days, and going back out in the evenings if we are up for it.
 
Every does things differently. We have twins also, plus an older one. Our summer trips are 17 days long, and we don't take "rest" days even for a trip that long. We're in the parks (or water parks) daily. However, we also don't do 8-10+ hour days in the parks. We usually go between 3-7 hours depending on how we're feeling.
 
In 2012 we did 5 park days in a row without any rest days, and we vowed to never do it again! We had 2 kids at that time, ages 5 and 2. It was utterly exhausting. But we did long days.... probably 9-11 hours straight every single day. Learned our lesson! If you are going to not have a rest day, then keeping your park time at under 6 hours everyday would probably be a very good idea.
 
I think you've got a pretty good mix. Looks like... 4-2-2-1... (MK-EC-HS-AK). If you're going to hop MK, I'd hop it with Epcot so you can monorail. Maybe MK on Friday morning, then hop down to Epcot for dinner. Tuesday maybe just HS, not MK-HS. Gives you a morning off. And then you have both Rainforest and T-Rex... These are pretty similar, and we have Landry's restaurants like this closer to home. I might swap one or the other out for something else.

Thank you! T-Rex is one ADR I'm not sure we'll keep. My twins love dinosaurs so I booked it, but it will be kind of out of the way to go to it, then back to MK for the party when we are staying right at CR. My husband loves Rainforest Cafe for some reason, so he wanted to do that even though they are everywhere.

I forgot to put in my plans that we are getting the twins' first haircuts at Harmony Barber Shop on Tuesday morning. We don't HAVE to hop to HS that night, I just had that in my plans to give ourselves our best shot at getting SDD. But once people start reporting back on how things play out in TSL, I could forget that plan and maybe rope drop it on our HS day and get a FP+ for one of the others. We want to do all three Toy Story rides, so that makes it difficult.
 
I think your plan looks good - on our last weeklong trip, we only took our departure day off as a non-park day, and followed a similar schedule to you. Rope drop till lunch-time at the parks, back to the pool for the afternoon, then back out for dinner and sometimes another park around 7:00. It was a great mix of fun and relaxation.

I think you're smart to keep the party day low-key, as we got pretty tired at MNSSHP last year. (btw not sure what time they start letting guests in for the Christmas party, but they actually let people in at 4:00 for the Halloween one, even though it was advertised as 6:00).
 
Every does things differently. We have twins also, plus an older one. Our summer trips are 17 days long, and we don't take "rest" days even for a trip that long. We're in the parks (or water parks) daily. However, we also don't do 8-10+ hour days in the parks. We usually go between 3-7 hours depending on how we're feeling.

Yes, definitely can't and won't do those long days! I don't like having my twins out ANYWHERE for more than 3-7 hours, haha. My oldest is easy going and he'll be fine with whatever we do, so I have that going for me. It's just the toddlers I'm worried about. I'm hoping a mix of some split days, some short days, and some (slightly) longer days will let us do the things we want to do, but keep it enjoyable. We'll see! It's good to hear what works for other families.
 
To each his own but here is what we do. We have been going every summer (July or August because DW is a teacher) with our daughter since she was two and she is now six so this will be our fifth year in a row with her. We do rope drop each morning and get as much done as possible before noon. At noon, we do a QS lunch and then go back to our hotel from 1-4 or so depending on our ADR time that night. We usually have an ADR around 5 either at a resort close to the park we will be at that night or at that park. It takes us until 6 or so to eat and then we go to the park until closing that night. We usually schedule FP at night so we have guaranteed rides at night. We never do a break day and our vacations are nine days minimum.
 
Yes, definitely can't and won't do those long days! I don't like having my twins out ANYWHERE for more than 3-7 hours, haha. My oldest is easy going and he'll be fine with whatever we do, so I have that going for me. It's just the toddlers I'm worried about. I'm hoping a mix of some split days, some short days, and some (slightly) longer days will let us do the things we want to do, but keep it enjoyable. We'll see! It's good to hear what works for other families.

Also, just use your common sense judgment...which we've failed to do on occasion. If you feel like you're tired, or your kids show signs of fatigue, stop. We've had trips where we pushed on for too many days in a row and wound up cranky. So the next day we just did a few quick things in a park, and spent the rest of the day relaxing.
 
Maybe not a complete day but take a couple or more days to just sleep in. FP+ makes that less painful. We did that back in 2016 on an 8 day trip and did every attraction we planned to do.
 
Crazy? No. We've never done one. ...but then again maybe WE are crazy!

You'll have a pretty good idea if you need a break by about day 4.

Dan
 
I have never done a full rest day. Our usual trips are 10 - 11 day and I do 10 park days. I would honestly start to get bored and antsy to get back into a park if I planned a full down day. I don't go open to close every day though. We tend to go until we're tired and then wing it from there, so some days that means in the pool by early afternoon and some days that means all day in the park. We also do a lot of ADRs (usually 2 - 3 a day) and I find those are really nice built in breaks. Our plan this time has a combination of late starts to our day and staying out late to early mornings with mid day breaks to full out morning to night. I tend to change things on the fly though.
 
If we are planning to do mid-day breaks most days, likely even every day? It will be me, DH, DS10, DS(almost)2, DS(almost)2, staying at POP one night (late arrival) then CR for 7 nights. This is how I tentatively have our days planned:

Saturday (11/24) - arrive late afternoon/evening
Sunday - MK - Crystal Palace lunch 11:45
Monday - Epcot - Via Napoli lunch 11:50
Tuesday - MK morning, HS night (trying to get Slinky Dog FP) - no ADRs
Wednesday - AK - Rainforest Cafe 11:45
Thursday - Chef Mickey breakfast 9:50, T-Rex 3:30, MVMCP night
Friday - undecided but will do whatever park(s) we want more time at, have Garden Grill lunch at 11:55 and dinner at 4:15 (really want to eat here and not sure which will work)
Saturday - HS - Hollywood & Vine Fantasmic package 8:05am, Beaches & Cream 4:10pm
Sunday - MK - BOG breakfast 8:50am - leaving early afternoon

I tried to do mostly lunches and we would take our break at the resort after those, then just kind of wing the evenings. Figuring we can either all go back to a park, or one of us could take DS10 back and the other stay with the littles, or we could all stay in if we need more of a rest. But I don't have a full "rest day", unless you count the party day. What do you think? I'm open to suggestions, this is our first long Disney trip, and first time with toddlers.

I think it, overall, looks good.

Some suggestions:

Are you on the dining plan? If not, I would consider getting a Landry's Select Card so you can show up at Rainforest and/or TRex whenever you want and get priority seating. IMHO, your 11:45 am Rainforest reservation is on the early side if you want to get some AK touring in before you break for the day. Personally, I would ditch TRex on the party, particularly at 3:30 pm. You can enter MK at 4:00 pm on your party ticket. If you eat at TRex and then go to MK, you are looking at entering MK really late in the afternoon thereby greatly reducing the value of those party tickets. Especially if your 2-year olds will hit a wall later in the day. I would stick with your CM reservation that morning and just hang out at CR (or the MK area) until it's time for the party. That's a lot of traveling back and forth to go to DS. My DS was terrified of TRex when he was that young. I would, perhaps, try to get your "dino" fix in the play area in AK.

I would re-think your DHS and last MK day as well. Again, my DS was terrified of Fantasmic when he was that young, plus you are really burning the candle on both ends that day. I would ditch the Fantasmic package.

I would re-think breakfast at BOG on your departure day, especially since you are leaving early afternoon. Again, that's a lot of traveling back and forth from Pop to get to MK that early to eat. At some point, you will need to pack, give your luggage to resort check-in or bell services and then get back to Pop.
 
Not crazy but...we always plan one then end up with massages at Senses. We then plan DS for that night. Not really a down day.
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!





Latest posts

Top