As many of you know my family and I enjoy 10 wonderful days in Florida over spring break. While there we took the kids to Disney World for 3 days! Two of the days we spent at Magic Kingdom and one of the days we went to Animal Kingdom. And friends, I have to admit I have the Disney bug, bad!! I finally understand why so many people absolutely love Disney, because now my family and I do too!! If you missed it you can check out our experience here:
Falling In Love With Disney Part One: Our Experience
We were there on one of the busiest days of the year (spring break is their high peak time according to the crowd calendar, and let me tell you they were extremely accurate!) If you’re thinking about taking a trip in the coming year check out this crowd calendar from WDW prep school for planing your vacation:
But these 10 tips made it a trip of a life time, even with a huge crowd! If you plan right, the crowds is just a minor detail!
So here they are:
1) Rope drop: I cannot emphasize this enough. Rope drop, rope drop, rope drop! Especially if you’re going in a high peak time
like we did. So what is rope drop? This is when the “doors” essentially open at Disney. The first week we were there it opened at 8am (and this was without the magic hours. *Magic hours are extra hours on certain days for the people who are staying at a Disney resort, they basically get extra time without the general public there). But for the week we were there they opened earlier and closed later than they normally do, due to it being peak season. Because of this, we knew we had to get there super early, and that we did. We made sure we were in line to go in the minute they allowed us to (another tip: that’s usually about 15 mins before the actual opening time, so factor that in).
Why is rope drop important? It is important because you can literally run (yes I said run, or at least walk swiftly) to any ride in the park and have little to no wait. So for instance we didn’t get a fast pass for Jungle cruise but the kids really wanted to go on it, so we made our way there as quickly as we could with 3 kids in tow) and got on the cruise in less than 5 mins, and still made our way to another ride where we waited less than 10 mins. Both of which had wait times of 60+ mins by 9am, and neither of which we had fast passes for. (What’s fast passes? Don’t worry, I’ll touch on those below).
The other neat trick I’ll teach you about rope drop is: they do a whole performance on the main street in front of the castle when they first open, and while they are doing that, you can actually sneak over in front of the castle and get a picture with very few people around (because they are all being blocked by the street performers!!) and to make it even better, they have a professional photographer there waiting to take your picture!
Which leads me to my next tip
2) Memory Maker /Photo Pass: I was hesitant on buying the Memory Maker at first. I didn’t know if it would truly be worth the money, after all, we all have cameras on our phones now. Was it really necessary to pay a professional photographer? My personal answer is YES. It was so nice to not have to hunt people down to ask them to take a family picture. It was nice not having to pull out my phone a million times to capture a special moment. And it was even better when we saw how clear and beautiful the pictures turned out. The best part was, they just get download to you magic band with a tap of a button and you can print as many as you want! You own all the pictures. For someone who has hardly any family pictures, I was thrilled with the quality and amount of pictures we got from our Memory Maker photo pass. The special effects added to certain picture was an added bonus!
I mean how cute are these?
3) Fast passes: Fast passes are basically your saving grace when it’s super crowded. For those who don’t know what these are, to sum it up briefly, they basically are passes you pick either 60 days (if you’re staying at a Disney resort) or 30 days ahead of time (if staying offsite) to go on your most desired rides. So for instance splash mountain, thunder rail mountain and seven dwarfs mine train were our top three must go on rides while in Magic Kingdom. So 30 days ahead of time (because we rented a house in Florida instead of staying on a resort) I selected my Fast passes on the My Experience App and made sure to get those three rides. The fast pass allows you to bypass the standby line and get right on to the ride with little to no wait. Each person initially gets 3 fast pass selections.
After you use your three fast passes you can add on an additional fast pass (one at a time) and keep doing this, as long as the fast passes are available. We ended up using about 5 passes a day (during one of the busiest time of the year) so there is potential for more.
The best part is, you can book these extra fast passes the minute after you check into your last fast pass ride. For instance we were in the Mine train ride fast pass line (which was only about 5 mins along) but in those 5 minutes I was able to score a fast pass to meet Cinderella (which had a super long line alllll day). I just simply went on the My Disney Experience App and selected my next fast pass for the whole family 🙂
What’s this App?? Only the most amazing app ever (for Disney anyways!) On to the next tip! ⬇️
4) My Disney Experience App. The My Disney Experience is a MUST!! I don’t care how full your phone is, clear some space and get it immediately if you are planning a Disney Trip! You can literally do everything there, book dinners, fast passes, view your photo-pass pictures, check ride wait times, order food, look at Park maps! It’s amazing!!! 
5) Study a map/ plan out a route before you go: Speaking of maps, study the map, like a lot, before you go and it will feel MUCH less overwhelming when you get there. You can download a map pretty much anywhere online.
Or just look at your My Disney Experience App. What we decided to do was do the whole left side of the park one day and the whole right side the next time. And let me tell you, it literally took 2 full days to do this! We could have probably used a third day. There is just so much to do and see, and EAT! 😉 And trust me, you burn those calories off quick! Even with just sticking to one side of the park each day (for the most part) we still put in about 8-10 miles of walking a day (according to my Fitbit).
6) Take a picture of where you parked! This may seem like a silly tip, but there is SO much park and it is so easy to get wrapped up in trying to quick get out of the car and into the park. Especially when you see flood of people piling on to the trams. But pause! And take that picture!! By the end of the day it’s so easy to forget where you parked. You are tired, over stimulated, likely dealing with sleeping kids and it’s so nice to not have to worry about it. (We actually had a friend who didn’t do this and spent quite a bit of time searching for his car, but we will leave him unnamed 😉
7) Plan your meals ahead of time! You can book your meal reservations 180 days in advance and I highly recommend you doing so! Restaurants book up quick!
And for those non-reservation restaurants: Order ahead of time! You can use that amazing little app I discussed above and at certain “counter service” food places you can actually place your order and pay without ever standing in line! Which was a huge score because we could focus on finding a table instead!
8) Bring a stroller: even if you think your kids are too big, if they can fit in a stroller then bring one!! Trust me, they WILL use it. And really it’s nice to just have to carry around water bottles, snacks, souvenirs, and whatever else you may pick up along the way! And there’s stroller parking at pretty much every ride.
9) Penny Press: looking for a cheap way to bring home a souvenir for your kids? They have those penny makers (the one where you put 51 cents in and it flattens the penny with a design all around Disney. And you can make it a fun little challenge to find all the different characters!! With about $10 we got a ton of cool penny souvenirs and the kids absolutely love them! Plus they go nicely in a scrap book too 😉
10) Free water: I would definitely recommend brining a water bottle for each person in the family, and the best part is, you can get water at any restaurant for FREE. You do NOT have to buy the $4 waters!! Just ask them for a cup of Ice water and dump it into your own water bottle to transport easily!
I hope these all help you enjoy your Disney experience as much as they helped me and my family!!
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