Our AK day is a short one, since we have to be heading back to the Poly to head back home at least by 3pm. My hope is to actually be out of the park by 1:30/2pm. I’ve never been to AK so I don’t know if this is possible:
Safari (got FP just incase we don’t make rope drop, 9:15)
going straight to meet Tarzan who starts at 9:30
maybe Daisy
Pocahontas
maybe Donald
10:20 FP for Mickey & Minnie (hoping to get to them by 10:30?)
11am Festival of the Lion King
12pm Nemo musical
12:45-1:45 FP for Kali Rapids
Is this all doable? Is there a better way to go about it reducing running around the park so much? It looks so huge that I’m not sure how long the walks between attractions will be. I also wanted to end the day with Rapids so we’re not sitting in any of the shows wet.
Thoughts? Thanks so much!
If you’ve never been to AK, I think you’d probably rather do something like Maharajah Jungle walk rather than see so many characters. I’d also do either Lion King or Nemo but not both (I’d do LK), if you’re short on time.
Make yourself a Personalized Touring Plan and run the Optimizer - it will figure out the best way to see everything that you want and make it back in time.
One tip - because you want to do it last, do not put KRR in the plan while you are Optimizing, as it will move it around. Wait until you are done Optimizing and have a plan you like, and then add KRR and Evaluate the plan.
In terms of “doability” I would say that you should be easily able to do this, as we did far more (albeit in early December) with an early afternoon finish time.
Pocahontas is a must, for sure. And Tarzan is really for me, heehee. I guess Mickey & Minnie isn’t a must, but it is the only place you can meet both. My daughter is really into shows…but I see what you’re saying, we really miss the park doing both. Hmmmm. I just consider us lucky we are getting to AK this time. Our first trip we didn’t get to go!
and that sounds great- I’ll make my own plan and see what it comes up with. Can you add characters too? That’s the only downside to me. The characters are pretty important.
That sounds similar to the plan we had in December. I think we were there from 8-2, but we had breakfast at Tusker House and I rode Expedition Everest.
We would’ve left sooner, but my DD fell asleep in her stroller. So we just found a shady spot and chilled out while she napped.
Festival of the Lion King is a must! I wanted to see Nemo too, but we opted for LK. I cried during the show, it has that true Disney magic feel. Simply beautiful.
We’ve done the 11 am LK/12pm Nemo transition twice and it worked perfectly. Walk with purpose and you’ll have at least 5 min to spare after you enter the theatre before the show starts. It’s a massive theatre, not usually full, so you should get a spot. Also, at Nemo, because of the human “animators” behind the puppets, it’s nice not to be too close to the stage. Looks like a fun day!
You can see Mickey and Minnie at the Epcot Character Spot, it has a fast pass, goofy is there too, at least when I was there, but you do not get them together.
Put them in as a break following the times suggestions from Kenny the Pirate. That should then allow you to optimize around the break for characters and give you an order and times for the rest of your attractions.
I have used breaks for lots of things not in touring plans- BBB, Pirates League, haircuts, characters, etc.
I can not find suggested wait times available from kenny the pirate. I do see time windows the characters are available and the exact places where to find them. Can you direct me to the expected wait times?
Another trick is to put in a meal break at the nearest restaurant instead of a regular break - that way the Optimizer will calculate reasonable walk times to and from the M&G
He does not have suggested wait times but does say things in the comments under characters to give you an idea of how long that character might take. Characters waits are unpredictable and hard to measure that’s why no one has predicted waits except for those that have FFP. It is too hard to collect the data for the other characters. I would probably block off an hour in the morning for character greetings and then prioritize who you want to see and go to them first. Then pick up the others when you are done with shows before you leave as long as they are still meeting then.
Depending on the time of year I think you should be good with your plan except it might be tight getting from Lion King to Nemo. I have not done it from the new Lion King location but I couldn’t get between the two from the old theater. The crowds were to difficult to get through to make Nemo in time to get in. They had just closed the doors and wouldn’t let us in then.
We did it last November (i.e. from the new location) with my 73 year old emphysemic mother and 2 kids in a stroller. We didn’t have great LK seats so it took us a pretty average amount of time to get out of LK, then we just hoofed it across the park, and made it with about 5, maybe 10 minutes until show time. Good thing we had taken a pee break from the LK lineup…
