Planning a Disney day takes strategy. I’m sharing my top time-saving secrets for how to beat the crowds at Disney World so you can spend less time waiting and more time making memories.
Rope Drop
This is the secret weapon for your Disney day. Why? Well, while everyone else is sleeping, you can get a jump on the rides that you care most about. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean only heading to the mountains like Space Mountain or Expedition Everest. It can mean tackling the ones that your four-year-old considers the most dear: Dumbo, Aladdin’s Magic Carpets, or even Peter Pan. Cause heaven knows that is gonna be somewhere between a 40- to 75-minute wait the rest of the day—curse you, Peter Pan standby line!
But what it means to go to rope drop is you have to get up early. Now, for some people, that’s very, very easy. For others, like me, getting up early is tough. The only motivation I ever have is Disney—I can get behind this! I’m usually a person who likes to sleep in, but when it comes to getting into shorter lines for Disney, I will do a rope drop.
When to Arrive
Now, here’s a trick: you need to be at the park at least 30 minutes prior to the opening time. If you’re staying on property, you actually get an advantage here and have 30 minutes extra before everyone else gets the opportunity to go through the front doors. So be sure to get there at least 30 minutes before you personally are allowed through the gate. The reason why you need to be there 30 minutes before your opening time is because you have to go through security, and there’s a huge line for security. You know we want to be towards the beginning of that line!
If you do this, you can get a jump to get on the rides that are most important to you. Now, the trick is maximizing that first hour. You will be able to get on each ride with maybe a 10-minute, maximum 20-minute wait to get on the ride—except for the big mountains. Those are gonna grow quickly! So if you have Lightning Lane passes for later in the day for the mountains—we’re gonna talk about that in a second—you can target all of the other rides during the rope drop golden hour and make sure that you are making the most out of that magical morning that you worked so hard to achieve.
Lightning Lanes
Lightning Lanes are worth the money. Especially if you have someone in your group who cannot stand for long periods of time—maybe a grandparent, toddlers, or someone who is autistic or has ADHD. Every family has someone who often has challenges. Using these options ensures that everyone gets to experience the magic together without the physical or mental toll of a massive line, keeping the focus entirely on fun instead of exhaustion. Lightening Lanes are not cheap, but they are magical. Be sure to take advantage of them all day with long.
Special Events
By buying special event tickets, you actually reduce the entire population of a park. Now, each park does not necessarily have special event tickets during your visit—you have to plan around them. So things like Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party or Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party are perfect opportunities for you to maximize your ride-loving heart and get on those rides with much reduced wait times.
If you are a person who can skip the fireworks and the parade, your ride wait times will reduce even further during these special events. I’ve had moments where we walked right onto Space Mountain and only waited 20 minutes for TRON Lightcycle / Run! So you want to be able to use these party events to go and maximize your ride opportunities.
If you do love the parades and fireworks, that’s cool—you do you. But you will still get reduced wait times. For example, during Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, we were able to walk right onto the Jungle Cruise ride at Magic Kingdom. For those of you that are in the know, that’s almost a miracle!
Night Owls
For those of you that are night owls, you too have an opportunity to maximize your ride time. Now, the mountain rides or the more popular rides are still going to have longer lines when it gets closer to the closing of a park. It’s true, there’s just some holdover from the rest of the day. But it’s those peripheral rides—the ones you might’ve missed or the ones you wanna go back and visit again just because you love them so much—these are the ones to tackle at the end of the day.
Take Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway—hands-down, you can ride it over and over and over again at the end of the day. Or if you want to go and ride Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, that’s another great one that you’ll be able to do at the end of the day with very minimal lines.
Use Your My Disney Experience App
This tool is everyone’s best friend. By watching the ride times in the official My Disney Experience app, you can actually get a feel for what the wait times typically look like.
I like to put one person in charge in our family to watch the ride times and keep an eye on them. That way, when we’re starting to target a particular area of the park, we know what to expect and we can plan for how long we’re going to be in line. By watching your wait times inside the My Disney Experience app, you can start to see where crowd flow is going, and then you can target those places that have lower ride times.
If you see a line is a little longer, I have a coping strategy for you. Grab the snack and then get in line, especially if the queue is outside. You’ll have time to eat the snack before you actually have to throw it away! If it’s an indoor line, don’t do that, cause sometimes you have Cast Members that are more particular than others and won’t let you eat inside. You have to judge accordingly.
Have a good ride my friends!
If you decide after all these tips that maybe a Walt Disney World vacation is too much, I would recommend the more relaxing experience of a Disney Cruise Line trip for you.
