You are spending thousands of dollars on your vacation, you need to follow these 5 ways to avoid crowds at Walt Disney World. They can be applied to any time of the year that you travel, although I encourage you not to visit around any major holiday as everyone else has the same idea you do and it’ll be crowded.
1. Arrive to the parks at least 30 minutes before they open. We usually aim to get there about 45 minutes early and we stand in line and eat breakfast (bananas, granola or energy bars, pop-tarts, etc) and apply our sunscreen. When the parks open, we are able to ride up to 10 attractions in the first hour with no wait.
2. Stay until the park closes. If you just aren’t capable of getting to the parks before they open, plan on staying at the park until it closes. Or better yet, arrive to the park before it opens and stay until noon and then go back to the resort and take a nap before returning about 5 pm. This is only applicable for Magic Kingdom when it is open until 10 pm or later. Sometimes it is open as late as 2 am!
3. Avoid parks with Extra Magic Hours. Most resort guests will navigate to the park with Extra Magic Hours thinking that they will get more bang for their buck. We avoid parks that have morning Extra Magic Hours (because only a handful of things are open and it isn’t worth getting up that early for) and if we want to take advantage of evening Extra Magic Hours, we use our Park Hopper to arrive at that park later in the evening after spending the day at another park.
4. Know which attractions always have short lines. Each park has a selection of attractions that always have short waits. We visit these between lunch and dinner when everyone else is standing in long lines for major attractions. At Magic Kingdom, this includes The People Mover, Carousel of Progress, Monsters Inc Laugh Floor, Hall of Presidents, Mickey’s Philharmagic, Liberty Riverboat and Enchanted Tiki Room.
5. Visit Animal Kingdom on Saturdays. The locals come out to the parks on Saturday, but they usually don’t visit Animal Kingdom since it almost always has Early Magic Hours. We avoid Magic Kingdom and Epcot especially on Saturdays. We find the wait times are always pretty decent at Animal Kingdom and we have a great time with minimal crowds.
Learn more about planning your Walt Disney World vacation. Plus overwhelmed with all the planning? Destinations in Florida can help you plan your perfect trip.