Day trip to Plitvice Lakes from Split

My suggestion - go the night before and start fresh and early. Hike the entire park fresh.

Please, please listen to Emily. The park is a wonder, but it gets blitzed by day-trippers. When I visited in late August 2015, the walkways were absolutely packed. If one person had stumbled, 3 people would have fallen into the water. I also waited in line for about an hour just to buy my ticket (only one agent on duty, and it appeared that the physical set-up didn't allow for more than one ticket-seller).

Truly, unless you are visiting way off-season (and who knows what sort of weather you'd have?), I only recommend visiting Plitvice if you can spend the night before your visit very near the park and get an early start the next day. Alternatively, at least one person on the forum said the park wasn't bad late in the afternoon, but that would mean either a very short visit or a night spent in the area.

I love Plitvice; I've been there three times. Fortunately, the first two visits occurred before the big uptick in visitation. The third visit was seriously not good, because it was a day-trip from Zagreb.

Yeah, I vote for Emily's suggestion. We visited on Croatian National Day in 2011. We got there are 8 for the 8:30 opening. The park got crazy at about 11, but we had seen most of it by then. Arrive early, leave early. We found a charming house 1 KM from the park.

Thanks for your suggestions very helpful. We actually can't do a night stop over as we are catching a cruise and still want to see as much of Split as we can. Sounds like a day trip in September will just be too crowded. Will look into something else closer by. What would you rate as the second best thing to see out of Split.

Running up the coast, but not as far away as Plitvice, are Trogir (very close to Split), Sibenik and Zadar (the farthest). I've only been to Zadar but have read good things about the others. Zadar is very nice.

Perhaps if you list your Croatia ports, others who are more familiar than I am with that part of the Croatian coast can suggest where you might go to see something different from your cruise stops.

Krka national park is a lot closer to Split and a really nice park too. There's one huge cascading waterfall unlike the many little ones at Plitvice.

Great idea The ports are: Bol, Hvar, Mljet, Dubrovnik, Korcula and Makarska.
we do have 3 nights in Dbrovnik before the Cruise so open to suggestions there too. You are all so helpful. I love this website

Krka is obvious choice, you will not be disappointed.