1. Visit during a school day if you can to avoid the biggest vacation crowds.
2. Shop around and buy your tickets in advance to avoid long lines at the front gate ticket booths.
3. But don't buy tickets from eBay, Craigslist, or a timeshare sales pitch. Use only the park's official website or authorized resellers, such as AAA.
4. Consider the benefits of staying on-site versus the (usually) added cost. You typically can get extra time in the park, early access to reservations or even front-of-line privileges by staying in an official on-site hotel.
5. If going to the Walt Disney World Resort, use the My Disney Experience website or smartphone app to make your Fastpass+ ride reservations 30 days in advance. You can get them 60 days before the start of your stay if you are staying on-site.
6. Also, for Disney World, call +1-407-WDW-DINE 180 days before your visit to make table-service restaurant reservations.
7. For any theme park, arrive at the parking lot entrance 30-60 minutes before the park opens, in order to get on rides before lines build up at the start of the day.
8. Consider buying the park's line-skipping pass, if you are visiting on a weekend or school holiday and can afford the cost.
9. Don't buy anything inside the park that you can buy outside the park and bring with you, e.g. sunscreen, baby care needs, a mobile phone recharger, souvenirs easily available elsewhere, and generic mall food-court food. Save your money for unique stuff available only in the parks.
10. Look for single rider lines if you are traveling alone, to save time in queues.
11. Families with children who do not meet a ride's height requirement can use child swap waiting areas to allow everyone else in the family to ride. Ask at the ride's entrance.
12. If you don't have a lunch reservation, avoid eating between 11am-1pm, when the lines for counter-service restaurants are longest.
13. Attraction lines tend to be longest between 1-4pm. If you are spending all day at the park, that's a great time to head back to the hotel for a swim or a nap.
14. If you're not leaving the park in the middle of the day, use that time to visit less popular or high-capacity rides and shows that typically don't have long wait times. Sitting down for shows, especially indoor ones, in the middle of the day is a great way to rest and take a break, too.
15. Never forget that you're here to have a good time. If anyone is getting frustrated or angry, it's time to sit down and take a break. Don't run yourself or your family past the breaking point in an attempt to "get your money's worth." It's not about the number of attractions you see, the characters you meet or the number of hours you spend in the park. Forget all that, and just enjoy this wonderful place you are visiting.
16. You do not need to pay for any of this information, including crowd calendars, visiting strategies, or other advice. There are no "secrets" anymore. It's all out there for free — such as right here, on this list. If you can't find the specific advice you want, just ask on our Discussion Forum and a Theme Park Insider reader will answer.
Have a great time!
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#10 - You don't have to travel alone to use the Single Riders line. Unless your party includes people who wouldn't be able to ride on their own, or you are bound and determined to ride with your party in the same row/vehicle split up and go single. I've never once ridden Radiator Springs Racers in the stand-by line or used a FastPass.
#14 - Taking a mid-day rest at your nearby hotel for a nap or a swim is a great way to recharge, but for some leaving the resort and traveling to a distant accommodation can take more time that it's worth. Universal's CityWalk on both coasts and Downtown Disney in California offer a particularly great opportunity to relax - Multi-screen movie theaters. A couple of hours in a comfy seat watching a movie is a great way to recharge. Yes, Disney Springs has a movie theater too, but travel to that location from the parks can more time that you want to spend.
The florida disney parks are far enough apart that going from park to part eats up too much of your day. My circumstances may be a bit special in that my wife is in a wheelchair, so it takes us longer to get from place to place because of that, but trying to switch parks means at least 20 minutes to get to the front of the park, a 20 minute wait for transportation, a 20 to 25 minute drive, followed by 10 minutes to offload, then another 20 minutes to get through bag checks and back into the next park. Right there, you've lost 2 hours of your day.
I do think hoppers can be valuable for crowd averse guests. Sometimes you're rolling the dice as to which park to visit on a given day. Typically, you know any park that has Extra Magic Hours (EMH) for on-site guests are going to be a little more crowded, and nighttime shows/parades can give a boost to some parks if those shows only go off a couple of times per week. However, sometimes you never know how crowded a park is going to be until after you walk through the gate in the morning. With the My Disney Experience app, you can quickly scan wait times at the other parks and determine if other parks may be less crowded than the one you're currently in. For the first time or infrequent guests, hopping at WDW is probably more trouble than what it's worth, but for experienced guests that visit frequently, hopping can bring sanity to their vacation. I kinda look at park hopping as an insurance policy if the park I've chosen for the day is a complete mess, and occasionally certain parks are better to visit on rainy days than others.
Park hopping is much easier (and cost effective!) at Disneyland and Universal Orlando, where you can walk easily from park to park, and without having to go through security checks again.
As for the debate over spending some time at your hotel room in the middle of the day during your visit to a WDW park, I'd say the best thing to do is, if you're visit is lasting for several days, instead of leaving MK in the middle of the day, just set an entire day aside for vedging out at the hotel. Trust me, running around the parks everyday is really gonna tire you out. So you'll need a full day of relaxation. Or better yet, since most of DHS is under heavy construction right now, you can probably knock out that park in 1/2 a day and just spend the rest of the day doing whatever.
Lastly, if you're visiting as a local, try to bring your own food from home. Don't worry, there can still be certain days when you eat at the park (otherwise, what's the point of going to Food & Wine Festival?) But nevertheless, this is a great way to help save money.
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