Keeping Toddlers Occupied In Line for Rides

[Jessirip]

For our 3 and 5 year old, I had a bag of just silly little things in our park bag. Slime and some plastic lizards were a big hit, but the biggest hit was this silly thing: https://www.amazon.com/Schylling-FO-Flexi-Sphere/dp/B000ELORXQ
They honestly played with it non-stop (got them each one). I think I found it at Target or maybe even a dollar store, highly recommend! I also had emergency lollipops for the near meltdowns. Not ashamed.

They are also entertained by looking at videos of themselves... if you get desperate, record them on your phone and you may get some good memories out of it too.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

When mine get antsy waiting, we have a few go-tos that don't require packing anything. Make-up-a-story kills a good chunk of time. Each kid gets to say a sentence or two, then it passes to the next. They'll go around for a while, it fizzles out, and we start a new one. We also do a lot of counting (how many people are wearing hats? jeans? a Disney shirt?) which will go on as long as I keep coming up with things for them to count. If there are lots of posters, written signs around that they can see, we try to find every letter of the alphabet. Who-am-I where I start describing a character or family member and they guess who I'm talking about (I'm very tall, yellow, and have feathers: Big Bird, etc). I prefer not to have to bring extra stuff to have to collect and pack away when it is time for us to actually do whatever it is we are waiting for.

 

[sullyfam]

In general, we don't do long lines with little ones. We also try to keep the little one happy before even trying to get in a line. So for instance, if they are hungry or tired and prone to crankiness, getting in a long line will surely lead to a meltdown. You see so many little ones crying and unhappy in lines and I always feel bad for them. Disney does have some nice ride cue areas now with some entertainment while you wait. I find your mileage will vary with these. Most of the time, you are continuously moving and have new things to look at it. We do phones/tablets and toys in line if needed. You can play games like "I spy" or other sorts of trivia about Disney movies/rides/characters.

For rider swap. Everyone in the party approaches the CM at the beginning of the line. The CM will ask which adults are riding first/ which kids will ride twice, and which adult is staying behind with the child that is not riding. They scan your bands accordingly and you're all set. The first group rides, gets off and the adult that didn't ride the first time goes back with the kids. My older 2 loved rider swap because their sister was too little for many things and they got to ride a ton of the big rides twice in a row!

 

[KrazeeK120]

Our son was a few days shy of 3 on our trip last month. If the wait was more than 15 minutes, we didn’t get in line. We were still able to ride everything we wanted to.