park on arrival day or departure day?

[YawningDodo]

Given your departure flight time and that's its an international flight - I'd say arrival day if I had to pick.

HOWEVER - for a $10 difference - I would have bought a 9 day PH and gone both days.

It's not too late to upgrade and go both days!

I only need to spend 2 hours in a park to feel like $10 is worth it.

Glad you pointed it out, because I was going to -- by the time you've got an 8-day ticket, it's so cheap to add on days that if I had any inkling I'd want to do a park on both arrival and departure I'd just upgrade the ticket and do it. From my experience this year I think they'd have to do it at Guest Services after arriving, but it's not difficult or expensive to do.

Buuut I don't know if I'd do a departure day park on this schedule. I did in 2015 with a similar departure time, and while it was nice to get a few last rides in, it was a little weird going into the park for such a short period of time and we had to watch the time pretty closely. We did get a respectable number of rides packed into the 3 hours or so we had available to us, though. Part of what made it less stressful that time was that we were staying at the Dolphin, so we selected DHS as our departure morning park specifically because we knew exactly how long it would take us to walk back to the resort and we didn't have to worry about whether Disney transportation would get us there on time for our shuttle pick-up.

 

[PamNC]

I would go arrival day to kick off your vacation. On departure day I'm a bit sad so I'd rather just get up and go home....

 

[Sorahana]

Arrival day for me as well; if you wait until the departure day you have the added stress of making sure you leave the park in enough time to catch a flight, etc .

 

[twixieshores]

I'm also voting arrival day. I don't know about the others here, but I couldn't enjoy myself in the parks knowing I have a flight to catch in a couple hours. I can just see myself in line for the Haunted Mansion staring at my watch thinking that I'm going to have to sprint out of the park in 40 minutes to get back to the resort so I can grab my bags and make it to the airport in time for my flight.

 

[Professor_Cookie]

Arrival day always. If I went on my departure day I would probably stay too long, miss my flight, quit my job, and stay in FL.