One of the biggest complaints I hear about Walt Disney World is that there are too many people.
"It's crowded and the lines are long!"
I'm here to let you in on a secret: there's a way to beat the crowds and it has nothing to do with the time of year you travel.
Both of my Disney world trips have been during Holiday Weeks (Independence Day & Christmas)
and the average time I spent in lines waiting for a ride has been 30 minutes or less.
Are you surprised?
The secret is actually two-fold: Rope Drop and Fast-Pass+. Unless you're a Disney World veteran you probably don't know what I'm talking about. "Rope Drop" means be at the park when it opens. Fast-Pass+ is Disney's system for helping you get on rides. Every guest gets 3 Fastpass+ a day that they can book ahead of time. After you use those 3 you can book one at a time throughout the rest of that day. These two things work together to create a magical Disney experience with little to no wait times for rides.
How to Rope Drop
Let's say the park opens at 9:00 am, to rope drop you will want to be at the park AT LEAST 30 minutes before they let you in. So for a 9:00 am opening you would want to be outside the park at 8:30 am. This means you want to be parking you car between 8:00 - 8:15 am. While 30 minutes is the minimum I suggest I actually plan to be waiting outside the park an hour before opening. In this case that would mean parking my car no later than 7:45 am and making my way to the entrance of the park. Why so early? Even though the park isn't open you can still go through security. The earlier you are there the quicker you can go through security and be waiting for the park to open. You may be thinking: "But I thought the whole point was to AVOID waiting?" Well it is, you may have to wait an hour for the park to open but in most cases once you get in the park you will be able to walk-on multiple rides with no wait! Or at least nothing over 10-15 minutes. After that first hour you may run into 20-30 minute waits. So in the first two hours of opening you've been able to get a lot of rides in! This is when Fastpass+ comes into play.
How to use Fastpass+
I try not to schedule a Fastpass+ in the first hour or two of the park opening. When you schedule a Fastpass+ you are not scheduling a specific time but rather a time frame. So if my Fastpass+ is scheduled for 10:50 am I can use it any-time between 10:50 am - 11:50 am. If the park fills up early I'll use it right at 10:50 am but if there are still low wait times (under 30 minutes) I'll wait until later in my Fastpass+ time frame. I tend to have my three pre-scheduled Fastpass+ at back to back intervals (for example: 10:50-11:50, 12:00-1:00, 1:10-2:10). Once I have used my last Fastpass+ I will login to the My Disney Experience app and add another Fastpass+ based on the available selections. We park-hop, which means we go to more than one park each day, so I usually make that fourth Fastpass+ for the park we are planning on going to that evening. But since Magic Kingdom has more rides and more Fastpass+ availability I will continue to make rolling Fastpass+ until we are ready to leave the park. I'll have another post coming soon to fully describe the Fastpass+ system.
How to use Rope Drop and Fastpass+ together
As I mentioned we arrive at the park an hour early and wait for the ropes to be dropped. There are more than 20 rides in Magic Kingdom, that doesn't include other attractions like shows, and you only have 3 Fastpass+ scheduled. So when the park opens I will go directly to a ride that I don't have a Fastpass+ for that I know I want to ride. When choosing your Fastpass+ you'll want to look at average wait times of rides to help make your decision on which to schedule ahead of time. This is because once you're in the park on the day-of you won't know what "extra" or "rolling" Fastpass+ will be available. If there's a ride you absolutely can't miss then try to schedule a Fastpass+, if you're unable to get one just plan to arrive at rope drop and head straight to that ride. The other three parks (EPCOT, Animal Kingdom & Hollywood Studios) don't have as many rides as Magic Kingdom so it's a little easier to choose which Fastpass+ to pre-schedule. We used this strategy in every park and it works!
When Plans Change
Things don't always go as planned though. When we arrived at Magic Kingdom I knew we were heading directly to Pirates of the Caribbean but on our way there they had that section of the park blocked off. Pirates wasn't open! So instead of turning left we kept to the right and headed to the 7 Dwarves Mine Train instead. We already had a Fastpass+ scheduled for it but didn't have one for Pirates so once we were in line for 7 Dwarves I opened the My Disney Experience app and modified our Fastpass+ schedule. I was able to change the 7 Dwarves Fastpass+ to a different ride. Now if you want to ride something more than once then there's no need to modify but we wanted to do our best to get everything in at Magic Kingdom which means you can't always ride them more than once. Never fear, later in the day we were able to ride Pirates with only a 30 minute wait, it was the longest we waited for any ride that day and definitely worth it.
This plan has worked for me in every park, even the week before Christmas. We did arrive a little more than an hour before park opening to get in line for Pandora-World of Avatar at Animal Kingdom. There were some technical difficulties so we had to wait 45 minutes instead of just walking on (since we were literally some of the first 20 people in line). Even so, waiting 45 minutes is much better than the 4 hour average that the Pandora rides have currently. The best part of this strategy is that when the parks really start to get full and feel crowded you've already accomplished everything you came for! You can grab some lunch and head back to your hotel for a break getting out of the heat and resting your feet before going back that night.
The strategy and plans I have talked about in this post are specific to Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. The Fastpass+ system is unique to Walt Disney World. Other Disney Parks may over a different version of Fastpasses but it is different than what is described here.
