Disney: The Most Overwhelming Place on Earth
/We have now taken our girls to Disney World twice - once in 2018 as youngins’ and once this past April 2022 as older, school aged kids.
It truly is magical to take your family to Disney. It’s also truly stressful. You will set alarms. You will wait on lines. You will push through crowds to get places. You will battle your cranky, overtired kids. You will probably also cry yourself. And yet there are many reasons why millions of guests come back year after year.
No matter what type of Disney guest you are, there is a lot to know before you head to Disney. I would NOT advise anyone, even the largest of procrastinators, to just “wing it” at Disney. There are many Disney oriented blogs and I am not one of those. But hopefully the below tips and personal favorites will help folks parse through the Black Hole that is Disney trip planning.
Some Disney Planning Tips
How To Pick a Hotel
An important thing to note is that there are certain perks given to folks who stay onsite at a Disney property, and so in many ways, that itself makes it worth staying "on property". Your hotel choice will be based on your budget, and second to that, convenience and proximity to your parks of choice should be given priority. Certain Disney property perks do “convey” (as they say in Disney speak) to non-Disney hotels. If considering a non-Disney property, be sure to understand which onsite perks, if any, you’ll get and which you’ll give up.
Unfortunately, the Disney hotels are pretty overpriced for what you get. Their themes can be super cool, but the actual accommodations are somewhat no frills, even in the "Deluxe" hotels, which is frustrating given the high nightly price tags. On a very positive note, Disney does offer hotels for a wide range of budgets.
This last visit we stayed at the Disney Swan Reserve, which is a Marriott hotel, but still enjoys some of the Disney hotel perks, just like its sister hotel the Disney Swan, and the semi-related Disney Dolphin. The Swan Reserve is brand new, manageable and clean. And we LOVED that these three hotels, like the Disney owned hotels around the Disney Boardwalk, are VERY accessible to both Epcot and Hollywood Studios - on both of these park visits, we came home mid-day for a swim and then went back to the park for the evening.
In 2018, we stayed at Animal Kingdom Lodge and it was far from everything except the Animal Kingdom park. If you don’t want to pay the ultra premium of staying at one of the Disney “Monorail Hotels” (Grand Floridian, Contemporary or Polynesian), which give guests easy access to MK and Epcot via Monorail, these Boardwalk hotels are great options.
How to Choose Dining Reservations
I am NOT one of those folks that’s going to gush about Disney dining. Everything we’ve eaten on both trips was at best “decent” and at worst very “not good”. As I said many times to my husband, you’re in Disney for the attractions, not the eats.
That said, unless you plan to only dine at Quick Service spots while in Disney, ALLLL Table Service meals require advance reservations. And a lot of ‘em, especially at prime dining hours, are near impossible to snag.
Disney dining reservations can be made 60 days before your arrival - and the most popular spots sell out quite fast. Disney hotel guests, on that 60th day out, can make ALL their dining reservations for the entire length of their trip (up to 10 days) at once - rather than having to instead wake up each morning super early to snag the reservation for a different day of your trip. Sadly, this perk does not convey at the Dolphin and Swan, which caused me some missed sleep and failure in getting a reservation at Space 220, the newest and seemingly coolest dining at Disney.
The best eats we had on both our Disney visits were at the Boathouse in Disney Springs. This is a legit restaurant. We also had enjoyable meals at Saana in the Animal Kingdom Lodge, Spice Road Table in the Epcot Morocco Pavilion, 50s Prime Time Café at Hollywood Studios and Trattoria Al Forno on the Boardwalk. On our first visit, we did character dining at Chef Mickey and Cinderella’s Castle - neither of which one should do for the eats.
How to Skip Lines (Lightning Lanes Replace FastPass at WDW in 2022!)
EVERYTHING about this next part changed completely since our 2018 trip! By the end of our 2022 trip, I vibed well with the new Lightning Lane System.
First of all, to even access Lightning Lanes (LL), guests must add what’s called “Genie+” to their day at the park. It costs $15pp for the day or it can be added to your park ticket package up front such that you’d have Genie+ for all your park days. We did the latter option so that we’d be all set in advance, and we found that, even at Epcot where waits are generally shorter, we liked having access to LLs in all parks.
Just like your dining reservations, you make your LL selections through the Disney mobile app. At Disney World, you'll use that mobile app A TON to monitor wait times for attractions and to view and change your Lightning Lane and dining selections.
Unlike FastPass, LL selections are NOT made in advance. There’s nothing to do regarding LLs before you arrive at Disney. Rather, your LL selections are made day of, beginning at 7am via the “Tip Board” section of the Disney app. For example, we decided to do Magic Kingdom on a Wednesday, so that Wednesday morning, mommy was up at 6:50am GUNNING for a good first LL selection at MK.
Once you book your first LL, the system will allow you to pick your next LL after you’ve used the first one, OR 120 minutes after your selection (or park open in the case of any LL booked at 7am).
There is a LOT of strategy involved in LL selections. The most popular LL reservations go QUICKLY. You need to be READY to pounce at 7am. Two great tips I learned:
(1) Before 7am - either right before or the night before - use the “My Day” tab in the Genie Service section of the Disney app to select as your “top experiences” the 1-2 rides you are gunning for as your first LL selections. This will put those 1-2 rides first on your Lightning Lane list, thereby saving you valuable scrolling seconds at 7am.
(2) You have to refresh the Tip Board page at 7am for the LLs to populate. So hold the page down at 6:59am and release it exactly when the clock changes to 7am. Sigh - Disney is a TRIP.
Also, don’t waste your LL first selections on a less popular ride with shorter waits. The most popular rides will “sell out” of LL passes for the day VERY quickly and early. You always want to focus your LL on the most popular rides on your list. It’s much better for example, to snag a 3:30pm LL for Tower of Terror - one of the most popular rides at Disney - than to waste your first LL on something like Toy Story Mania, which, while still well liked, will be much more likely to have availability for LLs later into the day.
Oh and Then There Are Individual Lightning Lane Rides. Just to confuse things further / drain more money from you, Disney World now also has something called Individual Lightning Lanes (ILL). These work exactly the same as the regular LLs except to book an ILL, you have to pay an additional fee (from about $10-15pp)!! The ILL is reserved for the single most popular ride at each park (and to be clear this is the ONLY way to access these rides without a wait, unpaid LLs does not apply to these rides). We used ILL at 2/3 of our parks this visit and IMHO, it was well worth the extra money to avoid 2 hour waits on these rides. If interested in the ILL at your park of choice, at 7am REALLY try to book your first LL AND your ILL.
A Few Other Tips
Each park is at its quietest FIRST THING in the morning. It’s in your best interest to be at the park at open (parks usually open even earlier for Disney hotel guests) and tear through a bunch of rides with minimal waits. Late in the evening at the parks is another better time to visit. Mid-day, the waits and crowds are terrible. An ideal Disney day is to spend from about 8:30am to 11am and 5pm to 9pm at a park, with the time in between spent resting at your hotel’s pool.
We made the mistake of not including a full pool day in our first trip and I left Orlando with a nasty cold brought about by all our running around. This last visit, we had one full pool day in between park visits, plus, as mentioned, due to our hotel’s location, it was super easy this time on two of the three park days, to leave mid-day to hit the pool, and then return to the park in the evening.
Disney Springs is an AWESOME part of Disney that fits well with a pool day away from the parks. There are tons of shops and restaurants and lots of excitement over at Disney Springs. It makes for a really great evening. And I think the food options are generally best at Disney Springs, too. A visit to Gideon’s Bakehouse at the Springs is also Must Do.
In summary, Disney is CRAZY crowded and each day there are tons of people gunning for the same rides, attractions and reservations that you are. Leaving things to chance or sleeping in and strolling into a park mid-day will mean long waits and potentially missing out on popular stuff that either sells out or becomes too mobbed to bother. And we all know how much kids LOVE lines and being told “No”.
Now, onto the fun stuff! My random musings on Disney World!
Magic Kingdom!
Magic Kingdom is truly magical. I dare you to hate it there. It’s larger than the other parks, it’s iconic and it has the most attractions, many of which are geared for younger kids. Consider spending more than one full day at Magic Kingdom if it’s your kids’ first time.
Fantasyland in particular will very much bring out the child in anyone. This is where anyone visiting with younger, first time Disney fans will want to focus. The most popular rides in this area are Seven Dwarf Mine Train (the IRR at MK) and Peter Pan’s Flight.
Other rides that our crew LOVES at Magic Kingdom are Splash Mountain - an absolutely perfect mix of story and thrill - and Pirates of the Caribbean - a perfectly executed classic attraction. We still haven’t made it on Space Mountain. One day! These three rides are also very popular rides generally, so consider using your first LL on one of them.
Hollywood Studios!
In 2018 we mostly skipped in Hollywood Studios. In 2022, it was our most successful park visit. There is a LOT do here and this is the park where you most need LLs as it has several rides with very long waits.
We started our day at Hollywood Studios with an IRR at Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Despite us knowing zero about Star Wars, this 17 minute attraction is really cool and a must for any Disney visitor. The entirety of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will be incredible for Star Wars fans, and fun for anyone who appreciates cool theming. We sadly did not make it onto Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, but we heard awesome things. We did manage to get a reservation at Oga’s Cantina, where the theming and fun drinks made for some really great vibes.
Toy Story Land is our jam. My big kid LOVED the Slinky Dog Dash coaster, and we all had fun on the arcade themed Toy Story Mania ride.
Also, at Hollywood Studios, we enjoyed brand new Minnie and Mickey’s Runaway Railway, much older Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular and Muppet 3D Vision. Hollywood Studios has some great shows to fill in time between rides.
As far as waits, the two Star Wars rides AND Slinky Dog Dash AND Tower of Tower each typically have very long waits. So buy the IRR for Rise of the Resistance at 7am and choose one of the others mentioned as your first LL.
Epcot!
Guardians of the Galaxy, a very high profile ride, is soon opening in Epcot and the park certainly also got a boost from the recent opening of Space 220. Yet on a whole, Epcot is by far the least magical park. With one major exception, I would be more than happy to limit my Epcot visit to a half day spent solely at the World Showcase. As a travel obsessive, I think the World Showcase is a lot of fun to walk, shop and eat your way through. Plus the three rides over there are adorable: we LOVED the brand new Ratatouille attraction (Epcot’s IRR) that opened in the France Pavilion, and it was fun redoing Frozen Ever After in the Norway Pavilion and Gran Fiesta Tour in the Mexico Pavilion.
The one caveat to my general anti-Epcot feeling is Test Track. This is SUCH a cool ride. I’m sad we skipped it in 2018. Ahh Epcot = my least favorite park that also has two of my most favorite rides. Go figure.
Animal Kingdom!
Back in 2018, Animal Kingdom most impressed me. We sadly did not revisit this park in 2022 given no new rides or attractions had opened.
The park is themed around animal conservation and nature preservation, so real life animals and animal themed attractions are everywhere. It’s a newer park (opened in 1998), and while it’s smaller and narrower than the others, the attention paid to its details and the immersive lands of Asia and Africa were really quite beautiful.
Then there’s Pandora - The World of Avatar. I feel silly gushing over anything Disney as an adult (and I know zero about the movie Avatar), but this area truly is gorgeous. You feel transported to some far away land. Having never seen Avatar either, I much preferred this to the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge area at Hollywood Studios. Avatar Flight of Passage is probably THE best ride at Disney World and VERY MUCH worth the IRR price. Na’vi River Journey, while more tame and perhaps boring, is visually gorgeous and Must Do for the crazy impressive animatronics displayed via the Shaman of Song.
Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, Fireworks, etc!
If your family includes a Prince or Princess or two, then a visit to Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique might also be a good idea. On our first visit, we opted for the Disney Springs location, not wanting to give up any of our Magic Kingdom time at the Cinderella’s Castle location. It’s a very sweet little salon and the cheapest option they offer was plenty good. We brought along princess gowns from home, the girls changed into them there, then had their hair and makeup done and professional pictures taken. Note the salons are still not currently open due to COVID.
This past visit, we managed to see both the stunning new nighttime spectacular at Epcot, Harmonious, and the less impressive but still fun, Wonderful World of Animation show, at Hollywood Studios. Being at the parks after dark adds to the magic. I’m glad we got to experience this on our recent trip.
Have a magical time planning! Any specific questions, feel free to hit me up at donutsatthedisco@gmail.com!
This post updates a prior post dated September 12, 2018
