Park Order

I have some friends who are going on their first trip to Disney next month and they asked what order to do the parks. At the time there were four Disney-crazed women there offering advice and we all seemed to have different points of view.

For me, I had always heard to not go to your favorite park first; particularly if your favorite park is the Magic Kingdom and you have kids traveling with you. The reason? Because Magic Kingdom is the ULTIMATE in the Disney experience for kids, that they will be disappointed in the other parks after that. Now, several of the gals disagreed because their kids (and them!) are so excited to see the castle, that it is the first thing that they want to do.

So as our discussion progressed, we realized that if you are the type of person that does not really mind what order to do things in and you are staying on Disney property, you should ultimately look at the schedule for Extra Magic Hours which is only is available to Disney resort guests. Knowing which parks open early or which ones open late can help you determine your order of park visits. This information does not necessarily mean that you should GO to the parks that are opened for Extra Magic Hours, but can actually help you AVOID those parks so that you won't be with the crowd.

Is there a guaranteed formula to order of the parks? No. It is a personal preference. As I said earlier, we never do Magic Kingdom on the first day. For us we tend to to Hollywood Studios first, Magic Kingdom next, then Epcot, then Animal Kingdom and on our last day, we park hop and hit all of our favorite rides one last time.

If you get park hopper passes, you can use them to hit two parks in a day but you won't see an entire second park that way. Animal Kingdom closes at 5:00 and can be done in half a day if you get there at park opening time. So hitting a second park could be a good thing. But that is a topic for another post!