Early Entry

If you are staying at one of the Disney resorts you can make use of Early Theme Park Entry and enter the park 30 minutes before non-resort guests. We highly recommend using Early Theme Park Entry in order to beat the crowds and spend less time in line for some of the more popular attractions. Not every attraction opens early, so you need a clear strategy to take advantage of this.

We recommend getting to the park at least 30 minutes BEFORE the posted Early Theme Park Entry time. You will, in fact, get to enter the park about 20 - 15 minutes prior to the Early Entry opening time to join a queue for one of these rides. Then once the clock reaches the official opening time guests will get to start riding. If you wait to enter the park at the official Early Entry time there will already be a 30 minute or more wait for most of the popular rides.

Let’s look at the attractions that open early and our recommended strategies at each park.

Magic Kingdom

Magic Kingdom Early Theme Park Entry Rides:

• “It’s a small world”

• Astro Orbiter

• Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin

• Dumbo the Flying Elephant

• Mad Tea Party

• Mickey’s PhilharMagic

• Peter Pan’s Flight

• Prince Charming Regal Carrousel

• Seven Dwarf’s Mine Train

• Space Mountain

• The Barnstormer

• The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

• Tomorrowland Speedway

• Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover

• Under the Sea ~ Journey of the Little Mermaid

• Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress

We recommend taking this park either left to right or right to left if possible, there are a lot of rides and you can find yourself zipping from Tomorrowland to Liberty Square, to Adventureland, to Fantasyland (a bad route if you look at the map) if you are not careful. We do understand based on Genie+ and the TRON virtual queue some backtracking may be unavoidable, but a general plan will help minimize this. The exception to this is if the rides in Fantasyland are super important to you. Fantasyland is the most popular area of the park and as such it becomes crowded very quickly compared to other areas in the park. If this area holds a lot of must dos for you and your family we recommend arriving for park opening (so an hour before park opening) and going to Fantasyland first. Unless you really are at the front of the crowd going in for Earlly Theme Park Entry, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train will likely already have a sizable wait by the time you get to it. Know that if you join that queue it will probably be the only thing you accomplish with your extra park time, and lines for other attractions will be building by the time you get off. If you are trying hard to avoid spending the extra money on ILL then that is still going to be your best option for riding Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. This is still the ride most people go to at park opening and its wait time builds fast and typically remains high all day. There is a possibility of getting in a ride with only a short wait if you stay until park closing and slip in line shortly before the park closes. However, the Cast Members will sometimes close off the queue before park closing to prevent an hour long line after park closing. However, if you are okay spending the money, we recommend just grabbing the ILL at 7am.

Epcot

Hollywood Studios

Animal Kingdom