Strategies

Here’s some of my strategies for doing the parks with little kids.

Reduce your expectations.

High expectations can stress everyone out and ruin a day. Expectations can be

• We’ll do X favorite attraction
• We’ll get to X by a certain time
• The kids will love it
• My spouse will love it

Let kids play with whatever

Your kids might like a water fountain more than the big attractions. I say just let’em like whatever they like.

Stay at a Disney Resort

For the purpose of fast transportation back to the room. Highly consider this, as it could be the success factor in your vacation with little kids. Fast transportation to the hotel

Some hotels are super-conveneient to parks, although they are the priciest.

• Monorail to Magic Kingdom: The Contemporary, Grand Floridian, and the Polynesian. These monorail hotels are also conventient to Epcot by monorail, you just have to change trains at the Transportation and Ticketing Center.
• Boatride to the Magic Kingdom: The Wilderness Lodge
• Walking or boat to Epcot and Disney Hollywood Studios: The Boardwalk, the Beach Club, the Yacht Club

All the other Disney hotels are still convenient to the parks because of the quality Disney

Minimize wait times

Learn about Fastpass

Using a Fastpass is a great way to get your kids into a popular attraction without waiting a long time.

“Legacy” Fastpasses

This the way Fastpass has worked for years, but is being phased out. It may already be gone by the time you read this. You take your park ticket up to a ticket machine, insert it, and out comes a return time window that if you come back to the attraction at that time you go in the shorter Fastpass line.

Fastpass Plus

This is the new Fastpass system based on reserving a return time window for a reservation just like you would reserve a restaurant at Disney.

Disney is phasing in Fastpass Plus as the only way to do Fastpasses so information about this is always changing.

How it works now

Disney resort guests can make online reservations for Fastpass Plus attractions online, over the phone, or at a concierge desk.

Anyone can make reservations for Fastpass Plus inside the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom at parks inside the park at Fastpass Plus kiosks.

I expect Fastpass Plus will eventually be rolled out to everyone and the “legacy” Fastpass will be phased out.

This touringplans.com article is good source for updated information on how Fastpass Plus is working and who can use it.

Arrive early

The parks really don’t fill up until after 10:30am. Touring a park from opening to 12pm might be a better day with little kids than showing up at 10am and staying until bedtime.

If you want to show up for opening at the Magic Kingdom, plan to get to the gate 20 minutes before the park opens. They open the turnstiles to the Magic Kingdom 15 minutes before opening and then have a countdown show before the park opens.

Use an app to track wait times

Unofficial: Lines app is a Disney World live wait times plus other info. It works as smartphone app OR just a website to use on your phone.

Official: My Disney Experience

Make a ‘touring plan’

A touring plan is a plan of what to do, and the order to do it again that seeks to maximize fun stuff, and minimize wait times.

There is a whole website that can help you with this, touringplans.com.

Some of their content is free, other requires a cheap subscription (~$15/year). They have touring plans, projected crowd levels and attraction wait times for each hour of the day for all Disney parks.

They have a tool for building touring plans where you enter the attractions you want to do, the day you are visiting that park, your planned arrival and leave times, your walking speed, and whether you want to minimize walking or wait times and they’ll assemble a plan for you.

Even easier is to use a prebuilt touring plan. You can find them in Disney World guidebooks, or you can use touringplans.com prebuilt plans

Practice ahead of time

How will your kids do in the parks? How will you do? Are you packing what you’ll need?

Find out in advance by ‘practicing’ going to Disney World by taking a trips to nearby theme parks, zoos, botanical gardens– anything with attractions and walking that will take up at least half a day.

Pack all the stuff into the park that you would pack into a Disney park

Plan to nap

You’ll be tempted to just ‘push through’ kids nap times and I think you’ll regret it.

Best option: return to your room Next best: nap in stroller or baby carrier Next best: a boring place like a monorail, resort lobby, or long, seated attraction.

Hire a babysitter to come with you into the parks

I have not personally tried this, but this is a real service. Here is a provider’s website: Sunshine Babysitting

Bring a family member, friend, nanny

Invite your parents, siblings, single friends, someone who can come and take on the childcare workload. Even planning a trip with another family with little kids can make the load lighter.

Prepare your 3-year olds

We showed our 3-year old guidebooks of attractions, and then watched videos of the rides she liked on Youtube ahead of time. This got her ready for attractions in advance that might have been frightening without any preparation.