How to Ride 6 or More Attractions in 90 Minutes or Less: With Only 1 Fastpass+!
For many Disney resort guests, making the most of every minute they have in the parks is of utmost priority. So, on one particular trip to the parks we set out on a mission (as we usually do) to ride as many attractions as we could at the Magic Kingdom. Of course this strategy isn’t for everyone, but if you want to ride as many attractions as possible during your vacation, this is certainly one tried and true method of doing so.
In our particular scenario, we had roughly 90 minutes to work with. The park opened it’s gates at 9:00am and we had a dining reservation at the Crystal Palace at 10:35am. We didn’t really have a lot of time to work with so our first goal was to get there when the park opened. Of course, that detail of this report may be a little obvious to seasoned Disney guests who also use this or similar methods, but it truly does make all the difference.
At nearly any Disney Park, the first 2 hours of the day are your best opportunity to really flow through attraction queues and ride many attractions without long waits. As always, there are a few exceptions to this rule, but generally this holds true.
Considering the park we were working with, we planned our day based on a simple examination of typical crowd levels. For the Magic Kingdom in particular, the park is typically quite busy on Mondays and Fridays as a result of guests beginning their stay at that park or ending their time at Walt Disney World. As a result, your best bet for touring Magic Kingdom is to arrive at the park on Wednesday or Thursday. It won’t make a drastic difference, but it will likely be a noticeable difference in wait times and the crowd building timeframes.
In our situation, we chose July 6th as our park day as a result of avoiding the park due to insane crowds on the Fourth of July and it was Caitlin’s birthday (our other occasional writer) on the 6th. All in all, the day worked out great, but here’s what we did to achieve 6 attractions in 90 minutes beyond simply picking the park day.
First and foremost, as a result of the new opening procedure, which allows guests entry into the Main Street area before the official opening of the lands, we headed all the way up to the castle then claimed a spot near the rope blocking off Liberty Square. Many of you may be wondering why Liberty Square? Well, the general consensus is that most guests head to one of three areas when the park officially opens: Tomorrowland for Space Mountain, Frontierland for the Mountains (Splash and Thunder), or straight back to Fantasyland for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Our thought process was essentially to avoid the big mobs of people and it worked out flawlessly.
When the ropes fell, we were standing in a group of roughly 15 people. We made our way through Liberty Square and around to Peter Pan’s Flight before a vast portion of the crowd had waited for the walkway through the castle to reopen after the welcome show. As a result, we walked right on the attraction with no wait (marked 5 minutes). After that, we headed over to The Many Adventurer’s of Winnie the Pooh and it was also a walk on, followed by a short journey over to the Barnstormer for another walk on (they were even letting some guests stay on the attraction and ride again – a practice which is becoming more and more rare). After that experience, we headed straight over to New Fantasyland, a few steps away, and rode Under The Sea – Journey of The Little Mermaid. It was also a walk on. At this point, these four attractions each had a virtually non-exist wait time on one of the busiest weeks of the year. Personally, I see the key to the success of riding multiple attractions quickly is to avoid the more popular attractions with slow queue lines. A great plan is to pick one “big ticket” attraction to do first thing and then move on to attractions that are less popular and have fast moving queue lines. Save your 3 fastpass+ selections for the more popular attractions (in parks that are not tiered in fastpass+ sections). Avoid crowd hotspots in quick succession, like Space Mountain or Mine Train, and just pick one favorite attractions and then bounce through many less popular attractions quickly. As many of you may know from experience these “less popular” attractions can also reach peak wait times of well over an hour at certain points throughout the day.
At this portion of our plan, we had previously scheduled a Seven Dwarfs Mine Train fastpass for 9:35 to 10:35 and decided to go ahead and use it early on in our fastpass+ window. At this point, it was only around 9:55 and we had completed 4 attractions and were in line for the 5th. After the attraction ended, (believe it or not our fastpass+ was our longest wait time of the morning) we had a few minutes to walk down the hill to the Haunted Mansion for a quick ride through before breakfast. As we left that final attraction we got the chance to see The Muppets Present… Great Moments in American History show before making our way to breakfast.
Honestly, if we passed on the show, we probably still could have rode it’s a small world (believe it or not the attraction title is not capitalized) and easily made it to our reservation with the suggested few minutes early arrival.
As you can see, you can follow as many crowd charts and special plans for touring the park all you want, but nothing really beats setting a plan of your own and doing a little bit of research before your day in the parks. Get there early, jump from ride to ride, and avoid any long queue that may have already built up a wait time. Keep moving for the first 2 hours the park is open, and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish!
As always, this is simply what has worked for us, and there are many “guides” across the internet that can help you create a plan for your day in the parks. Some guests may just want to go with the flow and relax through their park day and that’s completely okay! This is simply a plan we’ve used many times and we thought we’d share it here with you!
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