How We Did 13 Rides in 3 Hours at Magic Kingdom via Standby Lines
Magic Kingdom can be busy in the mornings. Due to its later opening time and being the most popular park at Walt Disney World, Early Entry is often crowded to the point that it’s almost useless. Because of this, we usually recommend splurging on Genie+, as Lightning Lanes usually offer the biggest advantage at Magic Kingdom.
Emphasis on usually. As the title suggests, it’s possible to beat the crowds at Magic Kingdom and knock out every major attraction with minimal waits without paying extra for line-skipping. As discussed in our recent Back to School Crowds Report for Walt Disney World, it largely comes down to choosing the right day of the week to do Magic Kingdom.
This recap of my morning in Magic Kingdom offers a step-by-step look at what I accomplished, actual wait times throughout the first few hours of the day, and how you can achieve similar results during Party Season at Magic Kingdom, which runs now through December 22, 2023 during Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party (MNSSHP) and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party (MVMCP)…
As quick background for those who are unfamiliar with Party Season park hours dynamics, Magic Kingdom opens at 8 am on days when the park closes early for special events. This means that Early Entry begins at 7:30 am instead of 8:30 am, as is the case with a normal 9 am park opening.
We’ve recently received a lot of questions from concerned readers about Magic Kingdom Park Hours operating hours still being 9 am until 6 pm even on MNSSHP days. For those who are new to Walt Disney World vacation planning (or needing a reminder), park hours are released in advance on a rolling basis, but the first ’round’ of hours are usually boilerplate or placeholder hours. Once dates draw nearer, hours are extended and finalized.
This exact same thing happened last year, and every single date that Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party was held ended up extended, with an 8 am opening time. It didn’t matter whether crowd levels were 1/10–even several of the slowest days of the entire year were extended. For whatever reason, Walt Disney World has been incredibly slow to extend hours during this year’s Party Season. Despite that, we’re still expecting 8 am openings for September through December 2023.
Although moving from a 9 am opening time to 8 am might seem significant, it’s actually huge. For those of you haven’t followed our posts about park hours and Early Entry at the other parks, each extra hour in the morning is a big deal because it shrinks the pool of potential guests who are willing and able to get up early on vacation.
When park opening is at 9 am, there are a ton of people taking advantage of 8:30 am Early Entry because it’s relatively easy to be out the door and to Magic Kingdom by that time. It’s a different story entirely when moving that forward by an hour–especially for the families with small children to whom Magic Kingdom and its Fantasyland headliners most appeal.
This isn’t just conjecture or speculation. We’ve seen exactly this scenario play out at the other 3 parks, where Early Entry everywhere else is so much more productive because fewer guests can and will take advantage of it. Once EPCOT and Disney’s Hollywood Studios moved their opening times up to 8:30 am, that was a game-changer for Early Entry. Over at Animal Kingdom, the perk has always been great thanks to that almost absurd start time.
Our normal recommendation is to arrive at least 30 minutes before the start of Early Entry, which is typically good enough for Magic Kingdom. On this particular morning, I got to the BoardWalk bus stop at 6:20 am, which I assumed would be plenty of time for a 7 am arrival to Magic Kingdom. I was mistaken.
As it turns out, I had angered the bus gods by all the celebrating of how smoothly Walt Disney World transportation has been operating. And it felt like I was truly being teased as the wait times board kept pushing back the Magic Kingdom bus arrival time in few-minute increments. For the longest time, it was only me and one other family waiting at the stop, as several Animal Kingdom buses came and went. That family finally bailed, calling an Uber at around 6:45 am (they were there when I arrived–so they were waiting even longer).
Finally, the bus arrived at 6:53 am. Success! Much to my consternation, the bus driver stepped outside, looked at the wait times board, and concluded that he was “early” because the arrival time read 7:00 am. And so we waited until 7 am until departing for Magic Kingdom, which was mildly excruciating.
Upon arriving and undergoing secondary security screening due to my overstuffed camera bag, I was inside Magic Kingdom by around 7:20 am. I still had photos to take, which I did as quickly as possible before heading over to the Fantasyland Bridge.
As is the case every morning, there’s a row of Cast Members stationed by the East Plaza Gardens to scan MagicBands, MagicMobile, resort room keys, or whatever identification you might have if staying at one of the participating third party hotels. Once you’ve done that, you’re good to go for the morning–and proceed on to either the Tomorrowland Bridge or Fantasyland Bridge.
The crowd is always smaller for Tomorrowland. This is “less true” with the 7:30 am start time for Early Entry–there’s a difference, but it’s not nearly as pronounced. We usually “joke” that Fantasyland guests are revving up their double-wide strollers, preparing to do some serious damage to the ankles of anyone walking too gingerly. The sprint to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is a high stakes, eat-or-be-eaten game.
We did Early Entry at Magic Kingdom prior to this party day on a normal weekend day. I should’ve played “count the strollers” on the two days. Regardless, I can say with utmost certainty that there were far fewer (even as a proportionate measure of the smaller crowd) on the 7:30 am day. Again, this is likely a matter of families with small children having a tougher time getting to Magic Kingdom at this hour.
I managed to make it to the Fantasyland Bridge by 7:25 am, by which time the rope had already dropped and guests had proceeded to their first attraction of the day. (I cannot overstate how overjoyed I was to arrive and find this bridge empty. I’ve spent many hot and miserable mornings waiting here. This is an infinitely better way to start the day!)
In our Ride Guide for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, our conventional advice is to skip the SDMT Shuffle, which is typically uncomfortable and unpleasant during Early Entry. However, the 7:30 am Early Entry is not typical or conventional. For this, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train can be a good starting option, and there was no better way to put this to the test than being (literally) at the back of the pack.
My total time commitment for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was just under 30 minutes. That’s from the time I got in line until exiting the attraction.
Had I arrived even 5 minutes earlier and actually been a part of the SDMT Shuffle, that wait would’ve been more like 15-20 minutes. But it’s probably good to have these illustrative examples that have me doing worse than everyone else, so you can see that even if you have a stroller or don’t arrive at the crack of dawn, you can still have a favorable outcome.
The really interesting wrinkle here is that Seven Dwarfs Mine Train had a shorter line when I exited the attraction at 7:54 am.
This is a result of fewer new guests arriving than were there for the start of Early Entry at 7:30 am. That’s actually not a huge surprise; the turnstiles probably opened at 6:45 am or so, and a crowd had been building for 30-45 minutes at the Fantasyland Bridge. For the next half-hour or so, the attraction was ‘processing’ people–more than new guests were getting into line.
As such, it probably would’ve made more sense for me to start at Peter Pan’s Flight and then double back to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train to hit each when their lines were shortest. That normally is not the case, and I’m not recommending that approach to you–just making an observation.
Even with the 7:30 am Early Entry, usually the crowd continues growing over the course of the morning, and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is the “correct” starting point. (Plus, you have to content with the Lightning Lane once the park officially opens–so length of the line becomes less relevant.)
Anyway, Peter Pan’s Flight was next up.
The posted wait time here was 30 minutes; my total time commitment ended up being 17 minutes. At this point, I was actually behind my average pace from 7:30 am Early Entry trial runs during last year’s Party Season.
I continued to the Haunted Mansion, with this being my attraction for both strategic and convenience purposes. On a slow day like this, the cost of backtracking is often higher than simply doing attractions in order–and Haunted Mansion is near Peter Pan’s Flight.
Additionally, Haunted Mansion always sees a bump in its popularity during the Halloween season. Even after MNSSHP is over, Haunted Mansion is going to see a sustained spike for another year or so once Hatbox Ghost is installed. That means Haunted Mansion is probably a top 5 wait time for the first half of 2024.
I was done with Haunted Mansion by 8:32 am, for a total time cost of 17 minutes. (That’s pretty much the bare minimum for this–I breezed into the Stretching Room and walked onto a Doom Buggy thereafter.)
Rather than continuing on that side of the park, I bounced over to Adventureland to do Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean.
The posted wait time for Jungle Cruise was 15 minutes, and my actual wait time was however long it took me to walk through the mostly-empty queue. I was off by 8:50 am.
Following that, Pirates of the Caribbean was down. A wall of Cast Members outside the attraction has become an increasingly common sight, and one I encountered close to half the time during my August 2023 testing–including every single rope drop day.
I wouldn’t be surprised if PotC has experienced more downtime this month than Slinky Dog Dash, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, and Test Track combined.
From there, it was time to trek into the Wild West, which was fittingly still a ghost town.
With Splash Mountain closed to be transformed into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, crowds often don’t arrive to this corner of the park until later in the morning. Despite a posted wait time of 30 minutes for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, my actual wait was only a few minutes–I was off by 9:05 am.
Here’s where I got lucky. Wanting to make this plan more practical for families or people who don’t like bouncing all around, I opted for the Walt Disney World Railroad next. The train arrived right as I was walking up to the entrance, and my total wait here was only a couple of minutes.
If strategy existed in a vaccuum without the reality of things like “walking” and “weather,” the smarter approach would’ve been to backtrack through Fantasyland and knock out “it’s a small world” and the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. But I was already beat from the heat and weight of my camera bag; the WDWRR was a welcome relief!
Upon arriving in Storybook Circus, it was time to pad my stats.
First up was Barnstormer, which I did at 9:16 am. (That’s entrance to exit!) There was only one other person on the attraction, who was also an adult.
Dumbo took a little bit longer–6 minutes in total.
I probably captured around 100 pachyderm photos while in flight and ended up using the very first one I took for the illustrative image above. Once again, I was one of two parties on the attraction.
Next up was the Little Mermaid dark ride, which was another walk-on.
If I were concerned with characters, it would’ve made more sense to arrive in this corner of the park a little later. Ariel’s Grotto has a higher average wait during Party Season, but it’s not open until 10 am. I had no intentions of doing this, though. I’ll do Barnstormer and take tons of photos on Dumbo, but I draw the line at meeting Ariel by myself.
Mad Tea Party was another easy one to knock out, with a total time commitment of 4 minutes.
Also took photos the entire time on this, 98% of which don’t really look like anything.
Nope.
As the writing here demonstrates, I already have a sufficient amount of cognitive impairment. No need to add further fuel to the fire via vehicular exhaust.
Back in Tomorrowland, it was time for a relaxing spin on the PeopleMover.
No wait whatsoever for this, and I was done in about 13 minutes.
Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin was next on the agenda, with a posted wait time of 15 minutes that was actually a walk-on.
One thing that’s probably worth emphasizing here is that Lightning Lanes would have saved, at most, 5 minutes up until this point of the morning. On most attractions, they would’ve saved no time whatsoever, as there was no standby line up to the merge point. In some instances, they’d save negative time–I passed a few parties via standby who were struggling to scan into the Lightning Lane.
At this point it was after 10 am and wait times were starting to climb throughout Magic Kingdom. Despite this, Space Mountain only had a 25 minute posted wait, so I decided to give it a shot. (The alternative would’ve been Astro Orbiter, which had a short line…in the sun.)
I should’ve known better. A headliner posting a shorter wait than everything else induces demand, and my actual wait time ended up being 28 minutes. Obviously, that’s not bad by any objective measure…but I was hoping for another near walk-on. I’ve waited less than that for Space Mountain on busier mornings and would encounter a shorter line later this same day.
All told, here’s what I accomplished between 7:30 am and ~10:30 am via Early Entry and rope drop at Magic Kingdom:
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
- Peter Pan’s Flight
- Haunted Mansion
- Jungle Cruise
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
- Walt Disney World Railroad
- Barnstormer
- Dumbo
- Under the Sea ~ Journey of the Little Mermaid
- Mad Tea Party
- TTA PeopleMover
- Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin
- Space Mountain
In the end, I’m pretty pleased with what I managed to accomplish in 3 hours. This is, without question, the most efficient Early Entry and morning in Magic Kingdom that I’ve had this year. I haven’t gotten this much done since early December of last year, which not at all coincidentally was also a 7:30 am start during Party Season.
Still, I always think about what could’ve gone better. (I just can’t help myself!) With the benefit of hindsight, swapping Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Peter Pan’s Flight would’ve been more efficient. Again, that’s not necessarily my recommendation to you, as 7:30 am Early Entry will get busier over the course of Party Season, so that may not work.
Additionally, doing the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and “it’s a small world” after the Little Mermaid dark ride would’ve made sense. Both of those still would’ve had low waits at that hour, and the delay wouldn’t have materially impacted wait times for subsequent Tomorrowland attractions. Doing Astro Orbiter after the PeopleMover or Buzz and saving Space Mountain for mid-afternoon would’ve been the final improvement.
During these Party Season days, we typically do not recommend buying the Genie+ service. The only major exception to that is if you’re Park Hopping to Disney’s Hollywood Studios; in which case, stacking Lightning Lanes for the afternoon there–while also potentially using them sparingly in Magic Kingdom–can make sense.
Otherwise, Genie+ is not necessary at Magic Kingdom during the daytime hours prior to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. This same day in Magic Kingdom, I managed to repeat several of these same attractions. Jungle Cruise and Peter Pan’s Flight were only ones where Genie+ would’ve really been useful. Even Space Mountain and Big Thunder were fine via standby during the middle of the day before ‘mix-in’ hours began.
Honestly, if “forced” to choose between Genie+ at Magic Kingdom and Individual Lightning Lanes for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and/or TRON Lightcycle Run, I’d pick the latter–and I’m am ardently anti-ILL.
Ultimately, we highly recommend taking advantage of Early Entry at Magic Kingdom on days when Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, or other events are being held.
Walking down an empty Main Street plus “private park” photos with Cinderella Castle in the background is a fun way to start the day. Same goes for the cooler weather. It was hot and humid even at 7 am, but it wasn’t quite as bad as the rest of the day…and that counts for something!
There’s also the comparative lack of crowds at the Fantasyland Bridge for the start of the 7:30 am Early Entry. I mentioned this at the start of the post, but it bears reiterating for those who have never experienced the SDMT Shuffle. That’s a “great” way to start your day off on the wrong foot and risk meltdowns, whereas this is actually an enjoyable way to start the morning at Magic Kingdom.
Moreover, the 7:30 am start time coupled with the lower crowd levels at Magic Kingdom during the daytime hours of party nights makes Early Entry and rope drop much more advantageous than normal. If you use savvy strategy for Fantasyland during Early Entry and pair that with traditional rope drop for Frontierland and Adventureland, you can have a solid start to your morning at Magic Kingdom.
Even with the early closing, it is possible to accomplish a full day’s worth of Magic Kingdom attractions without buying Genie+ or Individual Lightning Lane access. Speaking of which, aside from paying extra for line-skipping, this is also the only way to efficiently experience Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Peter Pan’s Flight, since jumping in line at the end of the night isn’t a possibility on party dates.
Seriously, you can accomplish more during fewer hours and enjoy a more pleasant park experience at Magic Kingdom on these days versus the ‘normal’ days. We’ve been emphasizing this for the last year-plus, but there’s a night-and-day difference in Magic Kingdom crowds during Party Season. You really should consider taking advantage of the significantly lower attendance at Magic Kingdom on these 8 am to 6 pm days. Consider it a different form of zigging when they zag strategy for Walt Disney World.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on Early Entry at Magic Kingdom with the 7:30 am start time? Have you experienced this 30 minute jumpstart to the day prior to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party? What’s your preferred approach to Early Entry and traditional park opening/rope drop at Magic Kingdom? How would you have done things differently? Any other feedback on arriving early to the Walt Disney World theme parks? Agree or disagree with our advice or approach? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
We’ve been here for 3 1/2 weeks. I booked every Tuesd and Friday at MK. The park has been wonderfully empty AND most of these days we don’t arrive till 11:45 for lunch. Today we took the boat from Wilderness Lodge, arrived WDW 11:30 for Liberty Tavern 11:45. We watched the Dapper Dan’s show on Main Streets before sittting down for Lunch. We watched the 12 o’clock parade from our table in the Paul Revere Room. We finished lunch around 1. We then did Haunted Mansion, the steamboat, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain, Philharmagic, Carousel, Winnie the Pooh, Mad Hatter tea cups, 7 Dwarfs Mine train all in a little over 2 hours. Everything was a walk on except 7 dwarfs (30 minutes that was 20). We could have easily walked onto people mover, Carousel of Progress and space Mountain but we were done for the day. Instead Carolyn had 2 scoops of Pumpkin ice cream with butterscotch n the way back to the boat.
BUT the heat and the sun has been awful this year and after 5 years of August trips this is probably our last. It’s also been rough as I was sick, then my wife caught what I had and meantime I never really shook off what I had and it became worse after she became better.
Tom is so right about booking MK on MNSSHP days BUT we have annual park hopping passes so for us we can go back any night for the fireworks.
TIPS from this: Best way to MK is boat from the best resort on 7 seas lagoon. Really helps on nights after fireworks.
At the very least get Park Hopping tickets.
My wife and I fly down on Tuesday, September 5, for a week. As of today, September 1, the hours still reflect the MK being open from 9-6 on MNSSHP days while we are there. Can we assume at this late a time that they will not have the earlier opening?
This is a great post. Now, I’m hoping you’ll do the same stand by strategy for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party this year. We have tickets for a Tuesday night and haven’t been there in such a long time. I’m hoping to get on my favorite rides that night by getting in early (4pm entry) using stand by lines. We’re not interested in Tron or Seven Dwarfs but the rest is still on our list. Looking forward to that report.
Thank you Tom!
Any idea/insight why Disney has not modified the park hours for the parties on the week of Labor Day? They have modified a couple of AK days, but no other park has been modified. MK party days still showing 9am – 6pm.
Yep — less than a week out now!
We are in the parks November 13-18 and ya the only non party days are the Wednesday and Saturday that week… we will do 2 days in MK and I was going to do the Wednesday and then Friday hoping we would get more done that day then the busy Saturday. But we aren’t hopping so our day would be done at 6. Would you still do that or change to the Saturday to have both full days? My TA says we should have the 2 full days but I do trust in what you are saying about getting a lot done in that extra early morning. We get a lot done in the mornings (in Disneyland at least… this is our first and only trip to DW) thanks for your help!
We followed Tom’s advice last December during party season and didn’t regret it. The other parks felt crowded, and going to MK on party days felt really comfortable. I believe we accomplished more on the party days before leaving around 4:00 when the party crowds were coming in than we would have accomplished staying all day until fireworks on the non-party days (based on seeing MK wait times in the app while we were at other parks on non-party days). I can see how you might want to stay for nighttime entertainment at MK one day, but I would definitely recommend going on at least one party day to enjoy the low crowds. Have a fun trip!
We followed Tom’s advice to do MK on party days last November (the week before Thanksgiving week) and it worked really well with two small children. It’s great for small kids that aren’t going to be staying late in the parks anyway. Between getting out the door on time and losing the bus lottery we made it to the park in the last ten minutes or so of early entry and were still able to do Peter Pan twice in a row with minimal wait. We didn’t do any mountains or SDMT because the kids were too young but we hit pretty much everything in the park that we wanted to without much waiting that day. Highly recommend!
We were then able to spend the evening in the hotel pool and relaxing. On the Wednesday non-party day we had a resort day and resort hopped around the monorail loop. We ended up having a Dole Whip at the Poly during the fireworks!
Tom raises an excellent point that should be considered; plans need to be adjusted to fit the needs of your group. If you’ve done WDW before (and repeatedly!), then you and your travelling companions have opinions on most of these attractions. You can and should adjust itineraries based on efficiency and desire.
Also, this is NOT an itinerary. It’s a photo report–a snapshot in time of how one morning went for one person. That might seem like a distinction without a difference, and I think posts like this, but I would not present this as a step-by-step plan for a family to follow.
Rather, it’s good for getting a feel for how things are during 7:30 am Early Entry and subsequent rope drop during Party Season. My intent with this type of post is ‘teaching you to fish’ rather than giving you fish. (And also, to convince you to do MK on these days, since many of you are still not sold on the idea and I think that’s a mistake.)
Hopefully that makes some degree of sense.
We visited on Tuesday and were there for rope drop. Everything apart from the mine train was walk on. We also managed to ride Tron through the virtual queue. At night we went to Epcot my goodness that was packed to the hills but again we managed to get in the virtual queue for Cosmic. Wednesday back to MK for fire works, big mistake and we couldn’t get in the virtual at 6.00 (staying at a delux) so didn’t get to ride Tron in the dark. We had Genueplus too and did don’t manage to get on much we arrived at MK around 7.00 for extended hours after being in HS during the day.
Friday we are going to EP again and again tonight (Thursday).
Personally having used Genie one day out of three I don’t recommend it. I seemed to spend far too much time on my phone trying to book stuff and too much time sat around waiting for stuff.
According to touring plans MK was a 2 Tuesday, HS was a 6 Wednesday and MK was a 2 Wednesday. AK was a 2 Monday. I would say all correct apart from MK Wednesday. I would put that at a 8. Never seen it so rammed.
Were you there all day on Wednesday? Speaking from experience, Magic Kingdom has been *really* busy on recent ExEH nights this month–much worse than crowd calendars suggest. But those crowd levels are determined by wait times data from earlier in the day, so they’re not really wrong, either.
Great insight! Gearing up to bring our granddaughter to MK and this has been so helpful! Curious- why the line up of cast members outside PotC?
To tell guests that it’s closed. (There’s not much else for them to do when it’s down.)
This is so useful as we go on the 5th September for three weeks. We will certainly be going on a party day like you said. Always find your information useful. Thanks again.
This is so insightful! It gives me hope and a possible strategy for maximizing the number of rides my husband and I can hit at MK for our first ever visit (20th anniversary celebration) in mid-Sept. Thank you for keeping this blog up to date and I hope the pregnancy continues to go well! Congratulations on your soon to be Mouseketeer!
Absolutely love your blog posts. I have a Touring Plans membership and I feel like your recommendation differ from theirs. Have you ever tried one of their plans to see how it compares? I’m inclined to follow a live “human” as my 5 year old would say but am intrigued by the “computers”.
Nice post, Tom! For the next few weeks, would you recommend that someone arriving at about 7:30 A.M. on a MNSSHP day do Seven Dwarfs Mine Train first and Peter Pan’s Flight second, or vice versa? I know your advice would be to hit Seven Dwarfs first if there were bigger crowds, but what about during the “early fall” (late-August and September) season?
Let’s call that a “dealer’s choice” scenario.
If you’re at the front of the pack and SDMT doesn’t seem bad (assuming you have a frame of reference), go with that. If you’re at the back of the pack, do PPF first.
If don’t have a frame of reference, don’t assume SDMT is bad just because the line looks a bit long. It’s never actually as bad as it appears. The line moves fast first thing.
Definitely hoping they will update hours to include a 7:30 early hours start in September. We’ve got park reservations on the 17th and 21st, and the early entry time still stands at 8:30. Your morning was hugely productive, and I’d love to do the very same thing! As always, thank you for your excellent posts. You are simply known as “Bricker” in our family, and you are often cited in park planning conversations!
Hi Tom. How would your strategy change if you didn’t have early entry (and couldn’t enter until 8am)? We are coming to MK on a party day and we’ll also be in the park on a different night during a party. Wondering when we should try to do SDMT…should we try at 8am on a Tuesday, or would it be better to try to do it during the MNSSHP?
If it were me, I’d do SDMT on a normal day. MNSSHP time is too valuable, and SDMT can still have surprisingly long lines during that.
I would probably do SDMT at 8 am and doing the steps more or less as they’re arranged here (with the modification for the other Fantasyland rides), but that risks putting you behind the wave of the crowd. So there’s that risk. The alternative would be starting at PPF and saving SDMT until like 2-3 pm. I don’t think either approach is going to put you in a materially different position over the course of the day.
We are doing a party day on a Sunday in October. Based on your posts I’ve been able to convince my family that it’s worth the lower crowds even if we have to watch the fireworks from outside the park. We are also going to MNNSHP another night. My question is, is it easier to get in the Virtual Queue for Tron on these days?
This strategy worked great for us last week on a Tuesday and Friday in Magic Kingdom. Tuesday had noticeably lighter crowds, and I completely forgot to enter the virtual queue that morning. I had no problem getting a spot at 7am on Friday. I think I was group 9!
As always I am intrigued with all the fact finding and analysis. I’m only doing MK this trip, but I’m doing the MNSSHP. If I wasn’t, I’d so try this strategy. I hope PoC is more reliable next Tuesday night.
Great report as always! I am curious if you think this is even more pronounced this year through September due to the 4 day 4 park ticket deal, where guests with those tickets are even less likely to visit MK on a shortened park day?
In theory, I certainly think that would have an impact, but it’s hard to say if it has. Wait times are pretty consistent with last year thus far, despite worse weather.
Great recap!!!!!!
Given “wonky weekends”, do you still feel non party Saturday/Sundays are better than party Monday? I’m going Nov 11-19th and there are 4 weekday parties that week! Thank you so much!!!!!
It’s probably too early to draw conclusions about non-party weekends vs. party Mondays in October through December.
My preliminary expectation is that Monday will be the better of those options, but still not as good as a different party weekday (if that’s an option).
I’m legitimately interested in how your strategy/perspective of all this changes once you’re bringing along baby Megatron. I’ve followed your blog for a long time because a. it’s awesome and b. it’s usually just my husband and I going but I have to admit that when I bring my extended family which includes small children, things never go according to plan and we only manage to do 1/2 to 3/4 at best of what I thought we’d be able to. Also, what’s up with POTC?! It was down for hours when we were there the other day but thankfully nearly walk-on when we went back Tuesday.
“I’m legitimately interested in how your strategy/perspective of all this changes once you’re bringing along baby Megatron.”
Don’t worry, I’ve already gamed this all out in my head, and absolutely nothing will change. I’ll race around just as quickly as always…except with a stroller!
That seems like a completely and totally realistic expectation, right? What could possibly go wrong! 😉
I read elsewhere that bats have been hanging out in roofs in Adventureland, often causing delays with the potc ride. When their maternity season is over, the protected bats can be moved. There could also be other reasons the ride shuts down quite often these days.