How to Avoid Lines at Disney

It's summer! And that means it's peak season at Walt Disney World. Everybody's going to Disney and the parks are getting crowded. It's not unusual for a wait time to be an hour or more for an attraction. Today, I'm going to share some tips to avoid lines as much as possible at the number one vacation destination in America.

First, accept that it will be crowded

The path to enlightenment is paved with knowledge, Padawan. If you expect that you will not deal with crowds or stand in lines at Walt Disney World, no matter what time of year, you are likely to have a bad time. So, go into it expecting that this is going to be a vacation with a few more people than you might be used to. That doesn't mean it has to be a bad time, but you need to go into it with a sense of humor.

Plan the time of year accordingly

Disney structures the calendar into several "seasons" that correspond to prices and, often, crowd levels. The peak season (typically when kids are out of school) is the busiest and most expensive time of year, whereas the value season is less busy and the least expensive time of year.

If you have no choice but to go during the peak season, then it's going to be crowded. One might say if you have any wiggle room, to try to go during the value season, but recent pricing changes have led to the value season becoming busier than anticipated because families are being driven out of visiting during peak season when the price point is so much higher.

So, what is a person to do? The answer - your research. I recommend signing up with a crowd tracking service, such as touringplans.com. Understand sometimes they, too, will get it wrong, especially when there is a price change like mentioned above. This year, we vacationed in early February thinking it was the least crowded time of year. The crowd tracker anticipated crowds of 1-4. In reality, crowd levels were 4-8.

Some historically slower times of year are:

-The first week of December

-January

-The first week of February (avoid President's day)

-Late October into November (avoid Thanksgiving)

Monitor the lines

This part is pretty easy and yet, I'm surprised at how many people I did not see using it. Your MyDisneyExperience comes with a mobile app you can download to your smart phone. This app includes maps, the ability to mobile order, the ability to make advanced dining reservations, and a real time line tracker. The line tracker is invaluable. Before you arrive at an attraction, you can know how long the wait is so you can choose shorter wait rides when your main touring is done.

Ride During Shows

See that empty looking picture above? That's Harambe Village in Africa at Disney's Animal Kingdom on a crowd level 7 day... during Rivers of Light, the nighttime show. This too can be yours if you choose to tour during nighttime shows. I would do this again during Rivers of Light in a heartbeat. However, I don't think I could ever bring myself to miss Happily Ever After on purpose, though some say that is the absolute best time to ride Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Another good time to ride, if you are in the park, is during the afternoon parade, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I do not like to be in the park during that time of afternoon.

Have a plan

The site I mentioned above, touringplans.com, specializes in creating touring plans that take into account historical data and crowd levels to help you save the most time in the park. If that's your thing, do it.

I'm pretty regimented with my Disney vacations, but consulting a plan every step of the way is not my thing, so I take the advice but practice is to a lesser extreme. One piece of advice you will see there and everywhere is to get to the parks before they open so you are inside the park and at the rope drop at official opening time. From rope drop, proceed to one or two of the E-ticket attractions first thing.

At Magic Kingdom, your best bets are:

-Peter Pan's Flight

-Seven Dwarfs Mine Train

-Space Mountain

-Or Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (If it's not insanely busy, it's very possible to follow this up with Splash Mountain with little wait)

At EPCOT, your best bets are:

-Soarin'

-Test Track

At Disney Hollywood Studios, your best bets are currently:

-Rock N Roller Coaster

-Tower of Terror

-Toy Story Mania

(The opening of Toy Story Land and later Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge will change all this)

At Animal Kingdom, your best bets are:

-Kilimanjaro Safari (I recommend this because the animals will be most active first thing in the morning too)

-Avatar Flight of Passage

Let me stress again, though, that you need to be there AT OPENING. If you are 20 minutes late, your wait time will increase quite a bit. Although morning is a preciously less busy time at the parks, so many people don't arrive to the parks until 10 or 11 am. I get it. You're on vacation and you want to sleep in. But trust me that it makes a difference. Get there at rope drop. See the opening ceremony and rush your favorite ride or two before lines even have a chance to form.

The exception to this advice is going to be Extra Magic Hours days. Extra Magic Hours are a thing Disney does to allow guests staying at Walt Disney World Resort hotels a little extra time in the park. The morning extra magic hours are rarely worth it. First of all, it's only one hour. That hour is great, but after that hour is up, the park having the morning Extra Magic Hour is now going to be the busiest park the rest of the day.

Similar can be argued for the evening extra magic hours, though they are typically more than one hour, and if you can time it so you show up just for the extra magic hours, and not earlier, you can enjoy the lower crowds. Show up earlier, and it will be crowded until extra magic hours begins.

Use FastPass Plus

If you are staying at a Walt Disney World resort, you can book up to three Fastpasses 60 days ahead of the beginning of your vacation. If you are not staying on property, including if you are an annual pass holder, you can book 30 days ahead. Do it.

Fastpasses allow you to skip the line by experiencing an attraction during a designated window of time (an hour, with some grace to either end) and they are free. Discussing the intricacies of Fastpass Plus is enough to fill another blog post. The important thing right now is that you plan to book them, and you do it at the earliest moment at the earliest date out. For me, this means setting my alarm for 4:45 am so that I can be online at 5 am booking through MyDisneyExperience (online booking begins at 6 am Eastern Time). Again, yes, you are getting up early. The reason for this is that choice times for certain rides (or even all slots for certain rides) will go immediately. If this seems impossible, consider that when you book, you can book for your whole vacation, up to 10 days at a time. So people whose vacation started up to 10 or fewer days earlier than yours have already had first dibs at your earlier days.

Plan to use your fastpasses after your first ride or two, assuming you are getting to the park early in the morning. You won't really start needing them until around 9:30 or 10 am.

Plan your quick service meals for non-peak times

Another place you will encounter lines is quick service food counters. When I say quick service, this is the Disney version of fast food or fast casual food. These can get crazy busy during the height of meal times. So, my first piece of advice around dining is to try to adjust your meal schedule so you aren't eating when everyone else wants to eat.

For me, this looks like grabbing a pastry and coffee at the resort as I head out into the parks before the parks open. I might get another light snack around 10 am. I don't plan to eat lunch until about 2 or 3 pm. Then, dinner around 7 or 8 pm.

Better still, use mobile ordering for quick service meals

Mobile ordering my be my very favorite innovation at Walt Disney World in the past year. Ok, no... Flight of Passage is. But after that, definitely mobile ordering.

You're going to need your smartphone with the MyDisneyExperience app on it. And that's it. When you're hungry, browse for restaurants that allow mobile ordering. Not all do, but Disney is adding restaurants to the list all the time, and most of my favorites are already on there, like Flame Tree Barbecue and Satuli Canteen. Select what everyone wants to eat, and then enter a credit card to pay for the food, then head to the quick service location. Once you are nearby (Disney says inside the location, but I'm going to say 2-5 minutes away), click "prepare my order". You will receive a notification when your order is ready and here's the awesome part - walk by all the people standing in line just to order and proceed to the mobile order pick up window where you can grab your tray, no hassle, no fuss.

If you've used Panera Bread's rapid pick up online ordering, it's sort of like that (except Disney also tells you when its ready and at what window via text notification). I am a huge fan. I like to arrive, scope out a table, and then when it's ready, we send our party to pick up the trays for the rest of the group and return to the table.

Bring a cooler

This final option to avoid quick service lines is not for everyone, but I would be leaving an important detail out if I didn't mention that Disney is completely OK with you bringing a cooler into the park as long as there are no alcoholic beverages in there. So if you are already packing a bunch of stuff, you could pack some sandwiches and snacks and drinks and plan to picnic whenever you feel like it.

Teach your kids the bathroom scale

No, not the scale that disappoints you when you stand on it after a vacation at Walt Disney World. No, the internal scale that tells you on a scale of 1-10 how full your bladder is. Bottom line is, your kids (and you) need to know how to recognize a "7" or so on that scale and seek a bathroom then. Do not wait until a 9 or 10 because guess where else you might encounter lines. Yes, that's right - the bathrooms. These are not long lines but can be a tad uncomfortable if you wait too long.

Ok. Enough of that.

If you do encounter lines...

... and you will... be prepared. Despite all the planning, you will encounter crowds and lines. This is part of Walt Disney World, just like heat is part of Florida.

First, as I said before, keep your sense of humor. The line is not going to go any faster if you are cranky.

Second, bring along a little in-line entertainment. Disney is great about setting up some pre-show and in-line entertainment on many of the newer and refurbished rides. I am a fan of Soarin's trivia in particular, and I hear the standby line for Avatar: Flight of Passage has a lot to look at even if it can be 2-3 hours long. But for rides that don't have that built in (and the biggest offender in my mind here is Kilimanjaro Safari), you need to bring your own. This could be as simple as bubbles for younger kids. My family really enjoys a pack of party-style conversation starters that get us talking on a certain topic, or we play a game of "would you rather". The more entertained you can be, the quicker the line will seem.

So, crowds and lines are part of Disney, but if you take every bit of my advice, you will avoid the worst of it.