Arrival/Departure times in Orlando--what do you prefer?

I've gone back and forth on this one for years.

As far as arrival, most of the time we leave so that we have an early afternoon arrival. It kind of adds an extra day with the same number of hotel nights. Having said that, we also have arrived a few times in the evening when the only thing we'd have time to do is go to dinner. That has also worked out well.

When we cruise, I'd much rather get there the night before. At least you don't have to worry about having a late flight the morning of the cruise. (Last time we tried this, we were three hours late getting into Orlando the morning of the cruise) If thats the case, I don't mind getting in to Orlando at whatever time the night before. Next morning, a nice breakfast and catch the bus to Canaveral.

As for leaving, I prefer leaving around mid-day. If you have an early morning flight you have to leave the resort WAY too early. If you leave in the evening, at least from my perspective I spend most of the day looking at my watch and then I end up going back to the airport way too early.

Normally, a 1 or 2PM return flight works perfectly. Same thing with the breakfast and head to the airport.

This is a great point. As a result, we like to have our "last day" be the whole day, then leave rather early the next morning. On the trips where we've left later in the day for the airport, the whole day just feels "weird" like we're not really still on vacation, but we're not NOT on vacation. Hard to explain, but strange!

I agree with both points. I prefer to leave kind of mid-day, but leave the hotel in the morning - 9ish so we don't have get up at the crack of dawn. Otherwise, I do spend the day looking at my watch and worrying about getting to the airport too late.

On our recent trip, the night we came back to the resort from our MK Marathon...it was about 3:30 AM...we encountered people who were LEAVING for the airport...talk about depressing!!!

MT's point is really counter intuitive but probably correct. Just leave in the afternoon, since you won't really enjoy that day anyway.

i like to come early and leave late to get the most out of my hotel payment.

We find that since tickets/dining plans/etc. are still good for our last day there, we like to stay longer and make use of everything. But it really stinks to lose access to our hotel room in the morning. It always seems to happen that we need to change clothes, want to use a pool, etc. on that last day!