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It’s actually possible to visit a Disney park and not have to wait in extremely long lines. Depending on the time of year you make your trip, the park isn’t that crowded. However, if you want to take your kids to Disney World and don’t want to pull them out of school in order to do so, you’re looking at visiting during one of the busy seasons: the summer, or around a big holiday.
Even if you have to travel to Disney during a crowded time you still have some options for reducing time spent in lines. There is an old-fashioned method: get into the park first thing in the morning and hit up the most popular rides right away. Or Disney has the slightly newer Fastpass option, where you can pay to go on a ride or even meet Mickey Mouse at a scheduled time, thus skipping the queue.
Fastpass isn’t ideal for many, given that it means yet another cost for an already expensive trip. However, you still have a few other options available, and I’m able to bring them to you thanks to my mom, who read about them in the Philadelphia Inquirer and passed them along to me. Thanks, Mom!
If you want to make it through Disneyland or Disney World waiting in as few or the shortest lines possible, your new best friend is touringplans.com. One day I will do a full profile of the site, but for now I’ll just give an overview of why any person planning a Disney trip, especially during a busy season, needs to visit this website. There is a $12 yearly subscription fee to get the most information, but some details can be seen by free users and anyway $12 is much cheaper than Fastpass for the whole family.
Touring Plans offers a Disney crowd calendar, a Lines App, and the Dumbo-or-Die-In-a-Day plan. The crowd calendar is a neatly organized chart informing viewers of the busiest times at Disney. It’s even broken down by day; April, for example, might get busy around Easter but less crowded at other times in the month, so the calendar reflects that. It offers “Crowd Level” ratings on a scale from 1 to 10, and mentions the busiest and least busiest parks for each day, and gives any relevant notes (for example, if there’s a special event or holiday).
The Lines App is perhaps the coolest feature. Downloadable onto just about any smartphone or viewable in a web browser, the lines app lists the wait time for Disney attractions. That’s right: want to know how long it’ll take you to reach Space Mountain or meet Mickey? There’s an app for that. Viewing it in a web browser is free; it’s unclear if there’s a fee for the smartphone version but if so it’s nominal.
Dumbo-Or-Die is a guide to the attractions at the Disney parks; there’s one for Disneyland and one for Disney World. It describes each attraction (including what the attraction is and any restrictions), the average amount of time a person would spend at it, lists the current wait time, provides a chart of the average wait times throughout the day, and gives recommendations (for example: good for kids, not worth the wait for adults).
If you want to get through a Disney vacation as seamlessly and efficiently as possible, wasting as little time as possible in a queue, then Touring Plans is the site for you. If you take the time to use it to plan your trip, you can actually spend your trip on rides rather than in line.
Related Articles:
Summer Flight Insight: Disney’s a Good Deal
Why Use Disney’s Magical Express Service?
Amusement Parks Go High Tech and You Pay the Price
Honoring Alice Davis: Legendary Disney Costume Designer
*(This image by Daimen.Richards is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
