Croatia for self-planned - looking for sanity check (mid-September 2026)

It is very active—and I admire it! We all travel differently and you should do what you enjoy, Dubrovnik is small and you don’t need much time to see it, so if you want to cut one thing, I would make it one of the Zagreb days (the Slovenia day trip), but if that would throw everything off, then I’d keep it as is.
I can’t really tell how many days you have on Hvar—the ebike day is a totally separate day, right?

Well, you asked about sanity, so......

For some or many people, this schedule might be a bit insane. The good news is that
you are relying on guided tours; the bad news (in my opinion) is that you have left no
time for improvisation or chill. Perhaps this is because the amount of time you have in
total is somewhat limited, but still.

If you like to be busy on your vacations and don't mind being on someone else's (e.g.,
the guide) schedule, then this is probably just fine.

You don't say when your trip is, but, if you have second thoughts about total time, it
does not hurt to call the airline (or your travel agent) and see what the cost, if any,
would be to extend your trip (I guess this is a question of whether finances or schedule
is the constraint). Yes, it might be costly, but, you never know.

I think the e-bike is a separate day - my friend is the one who suggested all these and yes, we like to go-go-go! I'm the one with a FT job and less time to research (and also the one who has to use limited PTO)... I was worried we might want more time in Dubrovnik and maybe steal from Split time? but maybe one day is sufficient?

Do you have multiple nights in Hvar or Dubrovnik? How many nights is this in total? It reads like it’s six nights. If this were me, I would not survive. I get people have different travel styles and all, but if you want an honest sanity-check it looks cray-cray to me. At least 1/4 of every day is spent in transit. But also, I don’t know how you make it not so crazy if your airfare is locked in so… yolo I guess?

right now it is 2 nights in Zagreb, 2 nights in Split, 3 nights in Hvar, 1 night in Dubrovnik... one of the tours my friend researched had the tagline "cray cray in cro cro" so maybe that's still rattling around our heads - lol!

It is really helpful to write it out day by day.
Day 1 Arrive Zagreb, walking tour
Day 2 Slovenia tour, sleep Zagreb
Day 3 Plitvice, sleep Split
Day 4 food tour, sleep Split
Day 5 Solit/Trogir tour, sleep Hvar
Day 6 Vis/Pakleni tour, sleep Hvar
Day 7 e-bike tour, sleep Hvar
Day 8 arrive Dubrovnik, late afternoon tour
Depart DBV

This is “doable,” as they say, but I would then need a vacation from my vacation. When will you do laundry? All those tours and transfers add up in costs, some could be done for free or minimal costs.