Doing Disney and Universal With Grandparents, A Realistic Guide

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Multigenerational Orlando trips are some of the best vacations families take. Grandparents get to see their grandchildren experience Magic Kingdom for the first time, and that is worth a lot.

They are also the trips that go sideways most often, and almost always for the same reason. Three generations are trying to do one itinerary at three different paces, and nobody wants to be the person who says they need to stop.

Here is how to plan one that works.

Start with the mileage, not the itinerary

The number that matters is not how many rides you do. It is how far you walk.

A full day at Magic Kingdom or Epcot puts most families somewhere between eight and eleven miles. Epcot in particular is deceptively large, and Animal Kingdom involves real distance between areas. That is a lot for anyone, and it is a lot more than most people expect when they picture a theme park.

For a grandparent who walks a mile or two comfortably at home, eight miles in Florida heat is not a smaller version of that. It is a different thing entirely.

The families who do this well plan around distance from the start, rather than discovering the problem at two in the afternoon on day one.

The conversation nobody wants to have

Most grandparents will not tell you they are struggling. They came to watch their grandchildren have a good time and they do not want to be the reason anyone leaves early. So they push through, they get exhausted, and by day two they are staying at the hotel and missing the trip they came for.

The way to handle it is to take the decision out of their hands, gently, before the trip.

Do not ask "do you think you will need a scooter?" That question invites a no, because it sounds like admitting something. Instead make it a logistics decision about the group: "We are going to be doing eight or nine miles a day and I want everyone to still be standing on day four, so I am renting a scooter for the week. Use it when you want it, ignore it when you do not."

Framed that way it is not a judgement about their health, it is a piece of equipment for the trip, the same as renting a stroller for the four year old. Most people who resist the idea beforehand end up using it every day and saying it saved the vacation.

Renting inside the parks versus outside

If you decide on a scooter, the where matters more than most people realize.

Disney rents ECVs inside each park for $65 per day plus a $20 refundable deposit. Universal charges $75 per day, or $95 with a canopy. Those sound reasonable until you look at the restrictions.

Park rentals cannot leave the park. Not to your hotel, not to Disney Springs, not onto the bus or monorail. If you park hop, you return the scooter at the first park and try to get another at the second one, and if none are available you are out of luck.

They also cannot be reserved. Every unit is first come, first served, and on busy days they are gone by late morning. Arriving at eleven and finding none left is a common and very bad start to a day.

An outside rental delivered to your hotel avoids all of that. You have it at the resort, on the walk to the bus stop, at the parking lot, at dinner, and at every park without re-renting. Over four park days, a Disney in-park rental runs $260. Our scooter for those same four days is $110, and you keep it around the clock.

The pace problem, and how to solve it

The mistake most groups make is trying to keep everyone together every minute. It sounds nice and it works badly, because a nine year old who wants to ride Slinky Dog four times and a grandparent who wants to sit in the shade at Epcot are not going to be happy on the same schedule.

What works better:

• Split for the middle of the day. Everyone does mornings together when energy is high. After lunch, the parents take the kids to the thrill rides and the grandparents take a slower loop or head back to the hotel. Regroup for dinner and the evening.
• Pick a home base in each park. Somewhere air conditioned with seating that everyone knows, so nobody is wandering looking for the group.
• Build in a real afternoon break. Especially in September, when the heat and the storms both peak in the afternoon. Going back to the hotel from one to four is not losing a day, it is what makes day three and day four possible.
• Let people opt out without a discussion. Decide before the trip that anyone can skip anything without it being a thing.

Where to stay matters more than usual

On a multigenerational trip, lodging does more work than it does on other trips.

A vacation home or a two bedroom suite around Kissimmee or the I-Drive corridor generally beats two hotel rooms. You get a kitchen, which solves early breakfasts and late snacks, separate sleeping spaces for people on very different schedules, and a living room where grandparents can be part of the evening without being in a bedroom.

Ground floor units matter if anyone has stairs trouble. So does proximity to parking, since the walk from the car is part of the daily mileage too.

A few park specific notes

Disney is the most accommodating of the Orlando parks for mobility devices. Scooters ride all of the transportation and enter most queues directly.

At Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, most ride queues require transferring from a scooter to a wheelchair at the entrance. It works, but it is worth knowing in advance rather than being surprised at the first ride.

Epic Universe is the strictest of the three. Scooters are not permitted in the ride queues at all with one exception, so plan on transferring throughout that park.

The bottom line

Plan around walking distance, have the mobility conversation before the trip rather than during it, split up in the afternoons, and stay somewhere with room to spread out.

Do those four things and the trip is what everyone hoped it would be. Skip them and day one goes great, day two goes badly, and grandma spends day three in the hotel.