I have been tinkering obsessively with our MK touring plans and would love to get people’s thoughts! Day 1 is a full day in the park with a focus on Adventure/Frontierland + parade/fireworks, and Day 2 is a half day focused on Fantasy/Tomorrowland with the goal to return to resort by late afternoon to relax:
https://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=3977278
https://touringplans.com/plans/print?id=3977221
I was pretty happy with my plans except the waiting time for ETWB on Day 2 seemed really excessive and got me thinking whether I should maybe swap out one of my Day 1 FPs for a Belle FP at 6 PM (which is still available) - would that be a better strategy? From what I can tell it looks like the odds of getting a same day Belle FP are slim to none? I was kind of excited to test out the tap and refresh strategy on Day 1 but moving our third FP to the evening would defeat that plan. What do you think? Any other comments or suggestions on our plans are much appreciated!
Day 1:
You have some inefficient back-and-forthing at times…you might want to toy around with reordering a few things to reduce walking. For example, doing HM first, but then you head over to IASW, then Aladdin, then BTMRR, etc. I’d drop IASW, frankly. (Your map shows it is across from Columbia Harbor House, but you’ll actually be over by HM, so you are going out of your way a bit.)
Why not do HM, then BTMRR, then Frontier Arcade, then Aladdin, then Tiki, for example? Less back-tracking. Look for other opportunities to do this as well. While you might get shorter wait times in another order, make sure you factor in WALKING time. (I recommend setting your walking speed to Relaxed.)
Note that if you do A Pirate’s Adventure, and/or Sorcerer’s of the Magic Kingdom, those aren’t just one-off things. After signing up, you’ll have to spend time following the clue to the next location and then perform the challenge there, for which there might be a wait. It can take a lot of time. If you aren’t willing to dedicate that time, I’d remove it from your plan…but as of right now, I’m not sure if you’ve dedicated enough time.
Tom Sawyer’s Island is getting short-changed as well. 45 minutes isn’t likely going to be enough time if you really want to explore. I think a MINIMUM is 60 minutes, and could be longer, especially considering you have to account for the time to raft to/from the island.
Your day 2, I think you have a similar issue with a lot of back and forth going on. Day 2 also doesn’t have any breaks other than a single meal.
I’d suggest moving Astro Orbitor and Buzz Lightyear to later in the day when you are doing more in Tomorrowland…although, I can see that your FP times are unfortunate for this day, as it does kind of force your hand a bit. I do wonder if you can move ETWB ealier in the day, where Astro/Buzz are currently?
IASW is a pretty easy same day FP to get and its duration is significant enough that I would not do it in the first 2 hours of park opening. I also wouldn’t do Tiki Room in the first two hours. Especially after I checked your CL for 18 Feb. There’s also good availability for Philharmagic and MCoA Same Day FP+.
However, you don’t have a ton of other high demand standby attractions scheduled either. If it were me, I would rope drop BTMR (I see you’ll be riding it later as well), then do HM. Then maybe PotC if the standby time is good. Swap out your fastpasses for either BTMR or PotC then if you don’t want to do them a second time.
I just recently went to MK (Here’s the link).
Thanks for taking the time to weigh in. I hear you about the backtracking. The reason I put IASW there was because it shows as only a 2 min walk from HM (with relaxed walking speed) and the wait times build during the day so I thought it was an efficient thing to do while waiting for our BTMRR FP window. Same thing with Aladdin. (I can’t skip IASW, it’s a classic and this is our first trip! My kids actually have NO interest but literally that’s the only ride I remember from the last time I was in Disney 35 years ago so I have to check it out!) Not sure when else would be a good time to do IASW?
If I go straight from HM to BTMRR I will get there 20 min before my FP - but the software shows only a 5 min wait so maybe I should switch the FP for something else?
Yes, I realize those could take longer. My kids seem really into the interactive challenges so I wanted to put some placeholders in and if they want to do those for longer time we could always drop some other things they aren’t that interested in like the Riverboat or the Presidents.
Yeah, I was wondering if that will be enough time. I will up it to 60 min.
Looks like that would cut my walking time by about 5 min and increase my wait times by about 15 (since the Buzz wait goes up to 35+) so not sure it’s worth it? What do you think about trading BTMRR or one of the other Day 1 FPs for Belle FP in the evening?
That’s kind of my issue - I realize it doesn’t make a lot of sense to do some of these low wait time/long duration rides during the first two hours, but then I don’t have a lot of other things to fit in since we’re spreading the park across two days, and a lot of the high wait rides are on the other side of the park
Thanks for sharing. I can see you made great use of the tap and refresh! So that suggests to me that we should keep the current FP selections and then use same day FP to get through IASW, MCoA, etc where lines will build mid-day? Instead of taking the evening FP for Belle?
I’m not sure how that fits with Ryan’s advice above to not spend a lot of time back-and-forthing? I’m assuming once you’re in “same day FP mode” you’re kind of taking things as they come up and chasing attractions around the park based on what FPs open up?
Day 2, when you plan to do Fantasyland.
Yep that was actually my original plan! But I had trouble fitting it in without a long wait and it seemed like a shorter walk from Liberty than a lot of the rides on the other side of the park.