Tackling Disney with a Toddler

We just got back from our second Disney trip with small kids (2 and 5). I have additional thoughts now so instead of a new post, I’m just going to update this one.

I’m going to start this post off with a disclaimer: I am from a theme park family. Since I’ve married into a non-theme park family I have learned that not everyone does theme parks the way that my family does: ALL IN, FULL TILT. I share the photo below for context.

Disney World consists of 4 theme parks (Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios), 2 water parks, a shopping area called Disney Springs (FKA Downtown Disney), a sports complex, golf course, and 25+ hotels.

I’ve been to Disney World more than a dozen times. I’ve marched in a parade there and been backstage. I’ve now gone as a parent with a toddler twice, and have lots of thoughts on what worked well and what I’d do differently.

First, a few of my general thoughts on Disney:

• I firmly believe there is no bad time to go. That said, there are definitely busier times and hotter times. School holidays, particularly in April and December, are the busiest times to visit and are priced the highest. I will say, Disney with young kids is ROUGH when it’s above 90 degrees. Still fun though.
• Staying in the Disney bubble is worth it (aka stay at a Disney hotel). Disney includes transportation, extra hours in the parks, priority dining reservations, and other perks for resort guests
• Photo pass / Memory maker is worth it. You get all your photos from the rides and character meetings, plus all the family photos you want to take from the photographers scattered around the park. Great for #proofofmom. Book early for a discount.
• Magic Bands (watch-like devices that allow you to tap into the parks, rides, hotels, photo pass) are sort of worth it if going for a few days but definitely not necessary. Two things to note: there’s a discount if bought early and you will need a Magic Band to get some of the photo pass photos. Our most recent trip I had a Magic Band and no one else did and it worked out fine.
• IMHO there are two ways to do Disney: the full-blown week-long Disney trip where you do all the parks, the waterparks, Disney Springs, you DO DISNEY or a couple of days combined with a beach vacation. If combining with the beach, Cocoa Beach is about an hour away on the Atlantic coast. This was always my family’s favorite option. Nowadays, I prefer the Gulf Coast, especially with kids. The beaches of Clearwater, St. Pete, and Treasure Island are about 90 minutes away depending on traffic. You can also fly into Orlando and out of Tampa to cut travel time. 

There are a lot of Disney bloggers out there and I suggest you do some research before going. I found these posts on the best Disney resorts, the best Disney pools, and Disney Character Dining very helpful for planning.

I also strongly recommend using a Disney Vacation Planner. We’ve been traveling with Alyssa for Disney, cruises, and all inclusives for a few years and I highly recommend her ( vacationbyalyssa@gmail.com follow on IG: @dishingondisney). Here’s a short list of why I will always book Disney through an agent:

• Ease of booking everything – hotel, tickets, dining reservations, photo pass, and in our case even our Lightening Lanes.
• Advice and guidance – Alyssa probably fielded 1,000 questions from me from strategizing ride plans to dining advice. It’s amazing to just have a dedicated person to ask all of the questions. She also had guides to dining, rides, extras, all kinds of helpful resources.
• Discounts – Alyssa monitored our reservation and rebooked us during a promo saving us a couple hundred dollars.
• It’s free! Seriously, a Disney planner is part of the cost of a Disney trip whether you use one or not.
• Random perks – I got two free Disney Masterclasses by booking with Alyssa that had great advice, planning tools, and other things for me to nerd out on. I included a screenshot below of our planning spreadsheet to give you an idea.

Now, on to the main point of this post: 

Tackling Disney with a Toddler

What We Did Well:

• IMO, 2 days in the parks is the most I’d want to do with any child under 5. I have plenty of friends and family who feel differently, so I think this one is a know yourself (and your kid) kind of thing. I’ve also been told to do 2 days, rest day, 2 days, but for us, 2 days was enough.
• Have a plan: I knew what rides we wanted to ride and what the average waits were. I also knew what rides we would skip if we couldn’t get a Lightning Lane (LL) pass (looking at you Avatar).
• LL when it makes sense, skip if it doesn’t. Our daughter DOES NOT do well in lines, even those with lots of activities to keep you busy. A multi LL package was a no brainer for us, and I’ve included more on it below.
• Bring your own water bottles! You can refill throughout the park and get ice at the restaurants to keep you hydrated without spending a fortune.
• Bring a small cooler for snacks/sandwiches/milk. We have some dietary restrictions so it was actually easier to BYO  for lunch and snacks. There were plenty of picnic tables and benches to eat at. This is a great way to save money! We grabbed extra plastic bags from housekeeping and filled up from the ice machines to make sure everything stayed cold. If you are flying in, you can get groceries delivered to your hotel.
• Keep all the stuff in your stroller basket in a bag. You have to fold up the stroller to take the train and parking lot trams. Having everything in a bag, and being able to toss all the loose items we accumulated throughout the day into it made this a much smoother process.
• Bring your own stroller fan and misting fans. While they sell the misting fans in the park, they are double the price of these that I got on Amazon before the trip.
• Pack a spare outfit or two. There are lots of water attractions that are great to cool down at, but leave you with a soaked child.
• Accept that you will not do it all and be ready to pivot. We weren’t able to get a LL pass for Peter Pan and no chance we were waiting an hour to ride. Our most recent trips rides kept breaking down and taking twice as long as expected reducing how many things we could do and forcing us to continually change plans.
• Plan around your big must dos and think of everything else as icing on the cake. Pick no more than 3 things that are most important and plan accordingly. We anchored around Tiana and Tron on MK day; Frozen, Guardians, and Princess dinner for Epcot. So when we unexpectedly lost an hour waiting for Minnie Mouse in MK and an hour waiting for Soaring in Epcot, it didn’t feel world ending because we still did the most important things (still annoying though, I won’t lie).
• Skip the big kid rides if your kids are two small, rider swap if not (or bring willing grandparents). When we came with our oldest sub 35”, we skipped all the big kids rides. This time we did a combo of rider swap (more on that below) and grandparents watching littles. None are ideal but you can make it work.
• If you can, get a resort view room for the fireworks or book a resort you can see them from in a common space (This applies to the Grand Floridian, Contemporary, and Polynesian). The fireworks started at 10pm when we were there, which is way past our daughters’ bedtime. When we stayed at Contemporary, we watched from our balcony, then IMMEDIATELY put her to sleep. There’s also a deck anyone can come and watch at. At the Polynesian, they pipe the sound onto the beach and the vibes are great (there’s also a bar so honestly, low key better than the park?). I slightly preferred the balcony convenience but my husband is all in on Polynesian vibes.
• Don’t forget to wear and bring lots of sunscreen and hats! I bought these hats for everyone so you get the vibes of the ears with the protection of a hat. We also tried to time it to take in a show in the afternoon so we could sit in some air conditioning and rest a bit.

What We Did Differently This Time:

• Dealt with water bottles differently – I used a stroller caddy (this one, which I generally love) for all our water bottles. Last time I saw someone using the Mom Hook for them and was very jealous. I tried it this time and had mixed feelings. The hook was great for hats and bags though.
• Got an ID tag for the stroller. When you are searching for your stroller among the 300 parked in the lot, a tag can help. So can a balloon. A quick search on Etsy for “Disney Stroller Tag” yields lots of cute options. I tried to DIY one this time and it was still not as good as just buying one.
• Booked dining reservations early. The character dining fills up quickly. Chef Mickey (our first choice) was booked over a month out from when we went. Tusker House is apparently the sleeper character dining experience for dinner. We were able to get a reservation a week out, and plenty were still available day of. 
• Researched dining options in the parks. Last time I was very focused on rides and failed epically at pre-planning meals. This left us hangry. This time I had things prebooked, leveraged the menu previews in the app and mobile ordered when possible. A quick note on mobile ordering – it’s a two step process. You order for a pickup window but still need to check in when you arrive. It takes 5-10 min from check in so plan accordingly.
• Established one person to be in charge of all things Disney app. Last trip we had a world of troubles with travel companions getting delinked, LL reservations getting deleted, and other issues. To Disney’s credit, I was able to chat with a cast member on the app and work it all out, but I also lost 2 hours of my day dealing with it.
• Appointed one person to be in charge of autograph books. When no one owns it, it gets forgotten. I speak from experience. But, Disney is Disney and they will let you send the books in to get the autographs you forgot. This takes time though (even if I was multi-tasking to get my LL issues squared away)
• Prebought special outfits including princess dresses, tiaras, and glitter. Someday, we will do Bippity Bobbity Boutique. For now, we rocked Amazon dresses and crowns. ccepted that I would not get into a park before 10am. Some day we will rope drop but not anytime soo
• Accepted that I would not get into a park before 10am. Some day we will rope drop but not anytime soo
• And a note from the original post that was not applicable this trip – Don’t visit the animal trails at Animal Kingdom during the hottest part of the day. This one isn’t really a toddler tip, but an FYI. The animals are all resting in the shade so it’s a bit of a letdown.

My Complete Thoughts on Lightening Lanes (LL)

TL:DR – I’ll do them again and again. You will still wait in lines, sometimes still 20-30 minutes long, but the lines will be half to 2/3 as short as standby.  

Multi Pass Lightening Lane or Single pass LL are add-ons that enable you to book “Lightning Lane” access to certain rides and attractions. This means you reserve a time and cut the line at your appointed time. You have 1 hour to tap in for your LL reservation. As of this writing, you can have 3  LL reservations at one for the multi pass.   As soon as everyone in your party taps into the ride. WDW resort guests can prebook the LLs a week out, a HUGE perk.

Multi LL is a dynamically priced per-person add-on. We’ve paid $22-35 for multi LL passes. Certain rides (Tron, Guardians, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train) also have single LL pass options. We paid $19-20 for the two we did. 

We get LLs for Magic Kingdom and Epcot. We’ve skipped it at Animal Kingdom. I tend to monito wait times on the app during the 2 weeks before we went and got a sense for the average wait times for certain rides. At Animal Kingdom, that was a max of 30 minutes, assuming we skip Avatar. At Magic Kingdom, several things were over an hour. We have a very impatient toddler so 30 minutes is about the max line time we could manage.

Some tips for maximizing your LL experience:

• Pick your Tier 1 rides and anchor around them. You won’t know what times you can get till you are live and booking.
• Be strategic about using your Lightning Lanes. Pick a LL that’s in an area that has other rides with shorter lines so you can go to that area, ride 1-2 rides with short waits, then use your LL as close to the start time as possible. Then, you can book your next LL while boarding the ride!
• Use it for a mix of the BIG attractions and moderate lines. This enables you to get more rides in, even if you miss some of the big rides. Again, this is a personal choice. You will get fewer LL times for big attractions though, and usually will average only 4-5 LLs in a day according to Disney. Expect to only get 1 tier 1 ride unless you are staying late. When we used our first LL the next available time on a towel 1 ride was after 7pm.
• If a ride breaks down during your schedule LL time, you will get a freebie to come back at any time (i.e. you will now be able to hold 4 reservations).

I put in a screenshot of our prebooked LLs. Because so many rides were broken down or on delay during our recent visit, I had to continually shift our LL times to continually pivot.

There’s something truly magical about Disney World no matter your age. Watching our daughter literally dance with glee meeting Minnie, Mickey, Donald, and Daisey was the best. I can’t wait to do it all again!