What Park? What Day?

[mgmnut]

I have seen many different answers to this question so I am looking for personal experiences. What days do you avoid certain parks and what days are the best?

I have always tried to follow the recommendations from this site which are to avoid:

Magic Kingdom: Monday, Saturday & Sunday
Epcot: Wednesday & Friday
Disney-MGM Studios: Tuesday, Wednesday & Saturday
Animal Kingdom: Monday, Tuesday & Friday

We normally go around May and do not have to deal with heavy crowds or extream heat, so planning was not as critical. This year we are going in July. As the kids get older we can no longer take them out of school, and due to other obligations this is the only time that is going to work for us. We figured Disney in July is better than no Disney at all. Now, more than ever, due to crowds and heat, careful planning is going to be key.

Our current plan is as followed:

Sat July 16 - Arrival Day, Enjoy the Resort (VWL), pool, mouse boats, etc. HDDMR for dinner

Sun July 17 - AK, Artist Point dinner, MK for evening EMH.

Mon July 18 - Epcot, Teppen Edo lunch, Coral Reef Dinner

Tues July 19 - MK, Grand Floridian Cafe lunch, Ohana dinner

Wed July 20 - off site

Thurs July 21 - offsite

Fri July 22 - DHS, Mama Melrose for dinner, MK evening EMH

Sat July 23 - open, nothing planned yet, 6:45pm departure flight

For an expample 1 site has AK the park not to go to on Sun the 17th but I find nothing anywhere else to back this up.

Looing for any point of view on the subject.

[MississippiDisneyFreak]

Your ADRs look great...as far as what days to avoid certain parks we do not pay any attention to that at all....the only exception is we do avoid MK on holidays....

[Disney-4-Me]

We always go to the Magic Kingdom on our first day, no matter what.

Other than that, since EMHs started I think it's been much more important to look at which parks are having EMH in the morning and avoid going to that park in the morning and into the early afternoon-unless of course you are participating in the early entry. The same thing holds true for the evening EMH.

We really make use of park hopping to try to avoid huge crowds. Of course your hopping will be somewhat dictated by where your meal reservations are too.

A day at the parks is still better than not being there no matter what the crowds!

[Ms. Mode]

We also hit MK on the first day, however after that it's all up in the air. I try to tell my family the days particular parks open early, but really we just have certain things we do; like we always make MK one morning for the opening ceremony show and we always go to AK in the morning and leave by noon and hop to another park (usually EPCOT) in the afternoon.

I don't worry about the crowd level.. as long as we can get in it's a good day.

[Dragongirlx]

We always go to MK on our first full day which is generally a Monday (we tend to go in Septembe)
Epcot on Tuesday, HS on Wednesday and AK on thursday then we just decide what we want to do.
Always found Saturdays to be quite busy for Epcot (especially in the evening) but not enough to bother me.

[kemps@wdw]

we don't usually go to parks w/early EMHs. We find them unecessary as we're always first at the gate anyway and can cover what we want by noon. Our park of choice will depend on our ADRs. As these are made well in advance, we plan on that park on the day of our ressies. We have done the occasional late night EMHs, but find them sometimes overcrowded as well.