How to get the most out of your Disney trip

[Donald Schmuck]

How to get the most out of a Disney World Trip
Link to trip report: https://www.disboards.com/threads/polynesian-trip-report-in-progress.3747273/​

This post will be most helpful to people planing short trips but I think there will be a lot of things you can take out this post for any Disney trip. In this post I wll talk about planning, prioritizing, working the fastpass sytem to your advantage, and third party tools that are extremely helpful in planning your trip. This may seem contradictory, but I promise it will make sense later; you need to have a plan and at the same time be flexible. Finally, I will link you to my itinerary for my last trip vs. what actually happened.

* You should be completing these for each park.
Step 1: Make a list of your must do's. This list should contain rides/attractions/dining that you need to do, otherwise your trip will be ruined.
Step 2: Want to do's, your second tier. Your trip wouldn't be a total disaster, but you would be dissappointed if you couldn't find time for these.
Step 3: Would be nice to. If you have time to kill between your must do's and want to do's.
Step 4: Actively avoid.

Allocating time to each park
There are two caviates to allocating time for each park
1. I believe if you get a FP+ for Flight of Passage, then Animal Kingdom is a half day park. If you cannot secure a FP+ for Flight of Passage and it is one of your must do's, then Animal Kingdom becomes a full day park.
2. Extra Magic Hours - If you purchase EMM or After Hours, you can easily get two parks done in one day (if you have the energy). My biggest recommendation for extra magic is to do it for Toy Story Land. You can get all your Toy Story Land rides completed before park opening and then rope drop/FP+ TOT and Rock n Roller Coaster and be done with the park by 12:30-1pm.

Based on my requirements, for a 4 day trip I would schedule:
Day 1 (typically a half day or 2/3 day due to travel) - Animal Kingdom
Day 2 - Magic Kingdom
Day 3 - EMM Toy Story Land/HS, then EPCOT
Day 4 - Magic Kingdom
* I know there are a lot of people, probably most people who would dedicate a full day to EPCOT, but I made this based off my needs. You can totally replace MK day 2 with whatever your priority is.

Manipulating the fastpass+ system, but not really
Tip #1: Don't book fastpasses between 9am-10am. This is a great time to get in 2-4 rides before the park fills up. Ex: On my most recent trip we were able to get on Big Thunder 2x, Splash Mountain, and Pirates all before 10am.
Tip #2: This will sound contradictory to tip 1, but try to use all your fastpasses by 1pm. This will give you a better chance of snatching those 4th and 5th fastpasses later in the day.
Tip #3: After your third fastpass, get on MDE app right away to get your next fastpass. I get on while walking through the queue of the current ride.
Tip #4: Refresh, refresh, refresh. Most people check the MDE app once and then give up. I will refresh for 5-7 minutes, ride availability changes literally every second.
Tip #4: If the ride you want is only available later in the day, book it and refresh the search and move up your time. It makes it easier to refresh if you have an attraction already booked so you do not have to scroll through every other ride to get to the one you want. Ex: I had Space Mountain for 8:55pm. After two minutes of refreshing, I was able to get the time down to 6:30, then 4:00, then finally 1:30pm.
Tip #5: Last minute FP+ are in abundance. Be flexible and be willing to push other rides back to later in the day when last minute FP+ pop up. I got 14 last minute FP+ on my last trip.

Use third party apps and websites to plan

My ace in the hole is touring plans. I used them for room requests, crowd calendars, projected wait times, and most importantly planning my days in the parks. Projected wait times supplied by Disney are outrageously inaccurate(see my trip report for examples), while touring plans is consistantly within 10% of the actual wait times. Plan your days, but be flexible. I say flexible because of weather and ride closures.
I start planning by entering everything I want to ride, along with the FP+ I have already booked. When I enter this info I get valuable information back like, what the projected wait time will be, time to walk from one attraction to another, and a map showing each attraction location. The map is crucial because you can use this to layout your day in the most efficient way possible, resulting in more time to do the fun stuff.
Let's say you're at Magic Kingdom for the day. It is inefficient to go from Space Mountain to Splash Mountain to Seven Dwarfs to Pirates. The travel time is going to eat away at the day and also wear you out. Finally, utilize disboards and the dis unplugged podcast. There is a wealth of knowledge on these boards and just about everyone is willing to help out. The podcast is great because it's fun, while still giving you some helpful information for your trips. I like the dining reviews the best .
I have reported my last trip on the disboards and you can refer to that if you'd like to see some examples in practice in relation to this post. We would have gotten more done if my wife did not get sick the third day . I think the best stat that shows the effectiveness of my planning, is that the longest wait I had the entire trip was only 21 minutes! Here are some quick fun facts from my trip last week...

Busiest day I had
22,119 steps
10.6 miles
20 rides
9 Fastpasses
Predicted 5/10 crowd but actually ended up being 3/10

Stats for the whole trip
Rides: 61
Fastpasses: 29
Longest Wait: 21 minutes
Steps: 104,000
Time in parks: 33.5 hours

 

[Sanda Thorne]

Thank you so much! This is my first trip in 11 years. The whole prebooking fast passes is totally new to me.

 

[Donald Schmuck]

Thank you so much! This is my first trip in 11 years. The whole prebooking fast passes is totally new to me.

My pleasure

 

[jhoannam]

Thanks for the tips!

 

[Donald Schmuck]

Thanks for the tips!

NP

 

[Donald Schmuck]

Forgot to mention in the post that park crowds were estimated to be 5/10, but ended up being 4/10 .

 

[jessg]

OP can you give me some advice?
We will be arrivaing a sat afternoon and leaving following sat afternoon. Arrival Sat after Thanksgiving. First we were going to do 7 park days. But then decided its economically better to go ahead and do 8 park days and hit up each park twice. We want to see everyparks evening show/fireworks at least once. We are 4 aduls 4 kids 6+ what parks would you suggest for which days. More info...we arent doing park hoppers since we have so many days and we arent really doing any TS so this wouldn't affect where we are on what day/time. We want to do a park even if only 2 or 3 hrs on arrival and departure day. We are staying onsite. Will not be attending mvmcp nor paying for extra park hrs other than those possibky provided as a resort guest. What would your strategy be? Ps. No one on my group wants to do TOT nor RNR. These are most likely the only ones we will be skipping. And dont have to do rp to close either

 

[TheWheel]

There are great online tools to help with crowd calendars

 

[Napandnat]

OP can you give me some advice?
We will be arrivaing a sat afternoon and leaving following sat afternoon. Arrival Sat after Thanksgiving. First we were going to do 7 park days. But then decided its economically better to go ahead and do 8 park days and hit up each park twice. We want to see everyparks evening show/fireworks at least once. We are 4 aduls 4 kids 6+ what parks would you suggest for which days. More info...we arent doing park hoppers since we have so many days and we arent really doing any TS so this wouldn't affect where we are on what day/time. We want to do a park even if only 2 or 3 hrs on arrival and departure day. We are staying onsite. Will not be attending mvmcp nor paying for extra park hrs other than those possibky provided as a resort guest. What would your strategy be? Ps. No one on my group wants to do TOT nor RNR. These are most likely the only ones we will be skipping. And dont have to do rp to close either

Jess, I'm not the OP, but my situation is a little similar to yours (traveling with two 6 yr olds and a total group of six). We have six day park hoppers, though we probably won't be hopping much since we will focus on one park per day and then run over to World Showcase for evening dinners (we will be at the Dolphin, so super close).

Here are a few suggestions I've picked up from obsessive planning the past few months...

1. If the kids have never been to WDW, I recommend your first day at the Magic Kingdom, and do rope drop for full experience.
2. If you can, don't plan your single park day on a scheduled EMH day. Parks are more crowded those days, and you're not hopping.
3. Figure out the MOST important fast passes well in advance (more than 60 days out), and when your window opens, book those on the final days of your trip. Each park has 2-3 attractions that are VERY difficult to get once you are within your 60 day mark. Remember, you can book your fast passes for the final days of your trip, even if they are more than 60 days away, as long as the FIRST day of your trip is within the 60 day window. This was the only way we were able to secure FOP and SDD, by planning to visit Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom toward the end of the trip.
4. A couple of times per week, Magic Kingdom is open VERY late (like midnight). Those are good days to visit the park in the morning, then swim and nap at resort all afternoon and go back for the fireworks and stay late to ride attractions with smaller lines. MK is very different at night, and beautiful!
5. When booking Fast Passes, keep in mind the time of day and whether the attraction is outdoors. For example, Safari in AK is MUCH better early in the morning when animals are active, and indoor attractions may be more satisfying if they are in the heat of the day.
6. To avoid spending half of your time walking back and forth, try to coordinate your Fast Passes so that you are moving through the park in a fluid manner, from one end to the other. This will save you a ton of time, energy and stress. And since you are visiting each park twice, it takes the pressure off of trying to squeeze every part of each park into each day. We are spending our first day at MK just in Fantasyland and Adventureland, and our final day at Tomorrowland and Fantasyland.

 

[Donald Schmuck]

OP can you give me some advice?
We will be arrivaing a sat afternoon and leaving following sat afternoon. Arrival Sat after Thanksgiving. First we were going to do 7 park days. But then decided its economically better to go ahead and do 8 park days and hit up each park twice. We want to see everyparks evening show/fireworks at least once. We are 4 aduls 4 kids 6+ what parks would you suggest for which days. More info...we arent doing park hoppers since we have so many days and we arent really doing any TS so this wouldn't affect where we are on what day/time. We want to do a park even if only 2 or 3 hrs on arrival and departure day. We are staying onsite. Will not be attending mvmcp nor paying for extra park hrs other than those possibky provided as a resort guest. What would your strategy be? Ps. No one on my group wants to do TOT nor RNR. These are most likely the only ones we will be skipping. And dont have to do rp to close either

Not sure exactly.what your question is?

 

[jessg]

Jess, I'm not the OP, but my situation is a little similar to yours (traveling with two 6 yr olds and a total group of six). We have six day park hoppers, though we probably won't be hopping much since we will focus on one park per day and then run over to World Showcase for evening dinners (we will be at the Dolphin, so super close).

Here are a few suggestions I've picked up from obsessive planning the past few months...

1. If the kids have never been to WDW, I recommend your first day at the Magic Kingdom, and do rope drop for full experience.
2. If you can, don't plan your single park day on a scheduled EMH day. Parks are more crowded those days, and you're not hopping.
3. Figure out the MOST important fast passes well in advance (more than 60 days out), and when your window opens, book those on the final days of your trip. Each park has 2-3 attractions that are VERY difficult to get once you are within your 60 day mark. Remember, you can book your fast passes for the final days of your trip, even if they are more than 60 days away, as long as the FIRST day of your trip is within the 60 day window. This was the only way we were able to secure FOP and SDD, by planning to visit Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom toward the end of the trip.
4. A couple of times per week, Magic Kingdom is open VERY late (like midnight). Those are good days to visit the park in the morning, then swim and nap at resort all afternoon and go back for the fireworks and stay late to ride attractions with smaller lines. MK is very different at night, and beautiful!
5. When booking Fast Passes, keep in mind the time of day and whether the attraction is outdoors. For example, Safari in AK is MUCH better early in the morning when animals are active, and indoor attractions may be more satisfying if they are in the heat of the day.
6. To avoid spending half of your time walking back and forth, try to coordinate your Fast Passes so that you are moving through the park in a fluid manner, from one end to the other. This will save you a ton of time, energy and stress. And since you are visiting each park twice, it takes the pressure off of trying to squeeze every part of each park into each day. We are spending our first day at MK just in Fantasyland and Adventureland, and our final day at Tomorrowland and Fantasyland.

This is actually great advice! Thank yoi!

 

[Donald Schmuck]

This is actually great advice! Thank yoi!

Happy to hear that. Thank you.