October Planning

[TooManyPets]

Hello all! We are headed to WDW from October 15-21. We will have a 1st timer in the group, which consists of myself, my 2 kids, kid's friend (the noob), my sister/BIL, and my mother - ages 84, 61, 60, 51, 12 (2 of these), and 9. We are staying at the Grand Floridian and have 5 day hopper passes. I've gone through threads here and it seems that crowd calendars are pretty useless from the chatter. I'm just trying to get the best bang for this trip. Normally, we do not rope drop, we hit parks with minimal stopping/breaks, and the adults enjoy the Food & Wine Festival in the evenings. This time, we want to make sure our young friend really has the Disney experience. I think overall the crowds will be middling, but trying to plan park reservations is making me question my strategy. Currently, I'm thinking 10/16 - AK (possible EPCOT hop), 10/17 - MK (since it's MNSSH that night) and hopping to HS due to earlier closing time, 10/18 - reversing that and hitting HS first with a hop to MK with expected evening magic hours, 10/19 - all day at EPCOT, and 10/20 - MK and hopping to EPCOT as a last hurrah for the foodies in the group.
Thinking of rope dropping MK, HS, EPCOT if we can keep that level of stamina up. We will be using Genie+ and purchasing ILL for anything we can. Also planning to use VQ to get multiple rides on TRON and Guardians. How does all this sound? What is the best time to leave the parks for a break? Any advice is appreciated!