My family and I visited Disney World in Orlando, Florida in April 2024. We travelled as a family of four, with children aged 6 and 3. Here are some of the questions I got asked about our trip, as well as some tips and tricks we learned during our research and time in Disney.
What is Disney World?
First up, you need to know that Disney World is made up of 4 theme parks and 2 water parks. The theme parks are Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and Epcot. Magic Kingdom is the biggest of the four parks and is where you will find the Disney Castle. You need to purchase an entry ticket to each individual park, but there are usually package deals that you can get depending on the combo you want to visit. We purchased a 3-day Park Hopper ticket, which meant that we had access to the 4 theme parks for 3 days.
Where can you stay?
There are lots of options, Disney Hotels, outside hotels, Airbnb… take your choice. The advantage of a Disney Hotel is that you get early entry to the theme parks which means you can enter the parks 30 minutes before guests staying offsite. You can also access the free Disney transportation to get you to and from your hotel to the park you are visiting that day. Disney Hotels are split into 3 categories, Value, Moderate and Deluxe. We stayed in Pop Century which is a Value Resort. It was perfect for us and the 5 nights we stayed there. It was a single room with 2 double beds. There wasn’t heaps of space, but we were hardly in the room. The hotel facilities included 3 fabulous pools, a playground, cafeteria style dining and heaps of resort activities. Pop Century also has access to the Sky Liner, which is a gondola system that you can take to access Hollywood Studios and Epcot. You will use the Disney Bus to access Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom.
How long do you need at each park?
This is hugely dependent on your family, your interests and needs. This was how it worked for us. We spent three quarters of a day at Animal Kingdom (7.30am – 3pm), and then Park Hopped to Epcot until 7pm. Then we spent half a day at Hollywood Studios (8.30am – 1pm), and then Park hopped to Epcot until 6pm. Our final Disney day was at Magic Kingdom, where we were there from 8.30am until 4pm. We chose to use Early Entry and make the most of the morning when the park was quiet, and to skip the nighttime entertainment. Our kids are still very young and it would be too much for them to do an early start and into the night each day. These are huge walking days, and even with the pram they were tired. The adults were tired too! So it was a sacrifice we decided would make our limited time at Disney more enjoyable. Most Americans visiting Disney will go for 7-10 days and have rest days in between, and then they can stay into the night. This is ideal, but we didn’t have that kind of time to spend there. Also keep in mind that with young children we weren’t trying to ride the ‘big’ rides, and didn’t have to worry too much about queues for the rides we chose to go on.
How to ride with kids?
Most of the rides offer Rider Swap, whereby families who have a child that is under the required height can swap out without having to queue twice. As a family, you approach the attendant at the start of the queue and tell them you want to use Rider Swap. They will give one parent a Rider Swap pass, and that parent will then go off and wait wherever they like with the non-riding child. The other parent queues and goes on the ride. Once they are finished, they find the waiting parent and swap child minding duties. This parent then goes into the Express Rider lane, hands in their Rider Swap pass and gets to skip the queue. We utilized this system a few times and it was so easy and a great way to maximise your time. Alternatively, some of the rides my husband wanted to go on, I was happy to miss out on (I don’t like adrenalin rides!!) and we didn’t need Rider Swap, so he used the Single Rider lines and again got to skip the bulk of the queue! We made sure to use the Rider Swap rides first up in the day, and then the Single Rider rides later on when lines started to get long. This way we didn’t have to purchase any of the “express pass” options that are available but can add up in cost.
How much does it cost?
We purchased 3x 3 day park hopper tickets and 5 nights accommodation at Pop Century as a package deal. My youngest was under 3 years so he visited for free. It cost us just under $3000 in April 2024.
Tips and tricks
- Look at the online Crowd Calendars for Disney and work out your busiest and quietest days. This was how we determined which parks to do on which day. Magic Kingdom is the busiest, so we did that on the quietest day. Animal Kingdom is a good one for when the parks are all busy.
- Read up on Rope Drop strategies if you plan on using Early Entry time. This really helped us to work out what rides we needed to head to first to maximise our days. I printed out copies of the park maps and numbered our first 5 rides so we knew exactly where we had to go and in what order.
- Stop for snacks often! These are long days and you need to refuel to keep your energy up. There is usually at least one snack stand in each area of the park, and these were great as small snacks that we could eat on the move when needed. Americans are big on dining in, but we didn’t want to waste time on full service restaurants at Disney! Also, our kids don’t like going near the Characters, so Character Dining was not on our radar. Many people will book a Character Dining experience for lunch or dinner.
- You must try the Cheeseburger spring rolls, and the fruit waffle with Nutella both available in Magic Kingdom. There are entire blogs dedicated to the best snacks at Disney – definitely give them a read!
- Don’t forget about Disney Springs. This is an outdoor shopping, dining and entertainment precinct that is free to visit and does not require a ticket. Every shop has some sort of bonus play attraction, we did an around the world taste testing flight at Coca Cola, you can get personalised M&M’s at the M&M store, play with Lego at the Lego Store… the opportunities are endless! You can even go for a boat ride on the lake, or go up in a tethered balloon!
- The Disney Springs restaurants are exceptional – we dined at the T-Rex Restaurant and the Rainforest Restaurant, there are many more to choose from. The T-Rex Restaurant has a giant sandpit discovery play area that you can play in while waiting for your table or meal! Both restaurants have animatronic shows that go off every 20 minutes or so – an asteroid shower in T-Rex, and all the animals come to life at The Rainforest.
