Do you have to queue for everything?

[086penguin]

Hi, we are a family of five traveling to Orlando in July and have flights and accommodation booked. We are staying off site. I’m just looking at tickets now and have to admit I’m panicking a bit. I know July is going to be very busy and hot/rainy but we are limited to school holidays and by going in July we are able to stay for for nearly three weeks. Every post I read seems to talk about queues. I know there will be queues and long ones for the popular rides but it seems like there a queue for EVERYTHING. I was kind of hoping that we could just do smaller, less popular rides and they might have reasonable wait times and maybe get a few fast passes if possible but I sounds like everything from rides to food involves long queues. I’m struggling to see how much fun that can be and regretting not doing more research before booking flights!

[BevS97]

Yes and no. You can get fastpasses for three rides initially. They should have a short queue. You can get more after the first three if you aren’t too choosy about what they are for.

With a fastpass you could walk straight on or wait upto 10 minutes. Longer for a small handful of rides.


You can go into most Shows by just waiting for the next one to start.

Early in the morning and later in the evening the queues are shorter.


However even if you do have to queue. It’s not a disaster. The queues generally have things to look at. Some have interactive things and we chat or play games. It’s rare we are in a queue long enough to frustrate us. (Minions ride being the exception that springs to mind)

[BevS97]

I’m mostly talking Disney as we don’t go to universal very often.


But re food. Look at the preordering on the app. We used this extensively last summer and if worked extremely well. We ordered as we decided we were hungry then walked in and collected our food. Only once we did have to wait for it.

[Clarkd3]

We are a family of 5 and stayed on site for the first time in 2016! Thank goodness for advice from a friend and this forum, as a result we were only recently reminiscing about minimal queue times for most things!
I know we had the benefit of 60 day fast passes but with ADR's, the MDE app allowing you to monitor wait times, mobile ordering plus the fast pass system and good advice about utilising rope drop and park closing, ride when fireworks are on, watch second night time shows and ride during the first shows etc etc it's really quite manageable but have a plan of attack! I'm sure more experienced dibbers will add their thoughts!
We are heading back this August, fingers crossed we will equally have such an enjoyable time and I'm sure you will too!

[Tinkermom]

Use the busy day guides, we’ve used them more often than not in 20+ trips and they have never let us down.

Don’t arrive mid morning expecting to get everything done, early starts arrive just before opening and have a good plan of action, look at the park maps prior to arrival so you know which areas you are headed too.

And don’t forget to keep hydrated but most importantly enjoy it, you don’t have to do everything, if you’ve got small children give then time to take it all in.

[Guest]

I don’t think I have queued excessively, other than once at the MNSSHP when there was no option but queue.

In Disney I use fastpasses 95% of the time. I have rarely used a standby line as I have rarely seen a short standby line and I am not queuing for anything for more than twenty to thirty minutes. Instead I search for the next fastpass and keep on using them. We have normally been able to get a fastpass for something.

In Universal we always stay in an express pass hotel and have found that works well the majority of the time.

For dining, we use ADRs at Disney and I don’t believe we have ever been kept waiting, other than when we turned up early hoping to get in early but were not able to, which I can’t really call being kept waiting. At Universal where we typically don’t make bookings we avoid peak times but if there is a queue we find somewhere else.

[vampiress88]

We stay offsite. We went june last year and didn’t wait in more than 25mins queue but we did have a disability pass which we used on two different rides (slinky dog and seven dwarves)

You just need a good plan of action. For me it’s an itinerary. I love my itineraries and although hubby and kids don’t like it so much they are thankful at the end when they have gotten to do what they wanted with minimal wait.

1. I have my days planned. I use the busy day guide and the touringplans crowd calendar.
2. I have a list of rides/shows/characters my kids want to do. They tell me which ones are most important and I explain to them that sometimes we can’t do everything.
3. I have my step by step personalised itinerary from touringplans. I love this but also be prepared to be a little flexible in it too.
4. Know which fastpasses to make and how to use the app. Book your main three. Understand tap,grab,modify etc.
5. Know the park. Have a look at the maps. Try and know where you might be going. You always see crowds of people not knowing where they are going. Also don’t always follow the crowds as your heading towards the long waits.
6. Use Mobile order. This is what we did where we could. We only did snacks and counter service and never had to wait long. If you want a sit down meal do the ADR.

There will be a few rides with long waits as always but the majority shouldn’t be if you have a plan.
For these ones that you can’t get fastpasses for, rope drop.

Even with the best plans you might not do everything. We wanted tower of terror and every day we were there it broke down.

Also work out how many days you want visit. Out of three weeks we usually go to Disney for 10 or more days. As we like to do half days rather than full as we have young kids. But you have to factor in the parking fees.

For example this was our first day magic kingdom. Mid June

Castle at 9.10 - we were late. We were supposed to be at the castle for 8.45 to watch the show but it took far longer than I thought to get from the car park to the castle.

Meet Ariel
Little mermaid ride
Belle -FP
Tiana & Rapunzel
Cinderella & Elena -FP
(30mins for snacks)
Petes -Daisy & Pluto
Splash mountain-FP
(30min for snacks)
BTM
Magic carpets -FP snagged but we did do this while the others rode BTM.
(30 mins waiting for royal friendship fayre show that didn’t start)
Winnie Pooh -FP snagged
(15mins wait for Merida that didn’t happen)
Pirates -FP snagged
(From 2.15-3 we had snacks and waited for parade but it didn’t come on due to it raining hard)
Small world -FP snagged for 3pm
Philharmagic
(20 mins snacks)
Meet Gaston
Dumbo
Buzz -FP snagged
Laughing floor -FP snagged
Meet tinker bell -FP snagged
(20mins at guest relations)
Out by 6pm

[Nimbus]

Originally Posted by 086penguin

Hi, we are a family of five traveling to Orlando in July and have flights and accommodation booked. We are staying off site. I’m just looking at tickets now and have to admit I’m panicking a bit. I know July is going to be very busy and hot/rainy but we are limited to school holidays and by going in July we are able to stay for for nearly three weeks. Every post I read seems to talk about queues. I know there will be queues and long ones for the popular rides but it seems like there a queue for EVERYTHING. I was kind of hoping that we could just do smaller, less popular rides and they might have reasonable wait times and maybe get a few fast passes if possible but I sounds like everything from rides to food involves long queues. I’m struggling to see how much fun that can be and regretting not doing more research before booking flights!

See more...

Just like with every other theme park around the world, I'm afraid you do have to queue a bit for the rides, to meet characters and you sometimes have to queue for food (especially around lunch time when it seems everyone wants to eat around 12:30pm) when you're in Orlando. That's no different to anywhere else, especially during the summer holidays. For example, on Friday I had to queue about 15 minutes to get served in a cafe at the Trafford Centre.

The difference with WDW is it's the most popular theme park destination in the world and therefore gets more guests than anywhere else. And it's not like the theme parks are any bigger than others around the world. So therefore some of the queues tend to be longer - a few can be very long.

But having said that, most of the queues are not that long. The vast majority of the time we've only queued for 30 minutes or less (admittedly, I've never been in July) for rides, 15 mins or less for a show or to get some food. Sometimes it's only 10 mins for the less popular or high capacity rides. And fastpasses allow you to skip most of the line, often resulting in a queue of 10 mins or less. We've certainly never joined a queue that states it will be 1 hour or more and we've done most of the rides and shows at Disney. There are only a few rides with average waits more than an hour.

If you look at the Wait Time page here on the DIBB, you can see the current average wait times for the rides. Now, they're currently based on waits in the middle of January, not July, but it gives you an idea of the wait times. Most of the rides in Fantasyland at MK have average waits of 30 mins or less. And remember you'll be able to fastpass some of them - aim to fastpass those rides with long queues that you want to do (eg. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train or Peter Pan's Flight).

[Cannavar]

To back up some comments on here. Use the app to mobile order, its CRAZY how few people are currently doing it. At Christmas there were long lines everywhere and some quick service were queued out the door. No one was using mobile so I ordered, walked straight up and pick the food...maybe 60 secs tops for the whole process at one point. Its baffling why so few people are mobile ordering.

If you are waiting in line for an attraction and want to eatt afterwards. Place the order for your group and as soon as you get off the ride, click the "im here" button and your food will be waiting for you.

This goes for Dole whip too...why on earth would you stand in those lines when the mobile order hatch is clearly empty with staff doing nothing

[vampiress88]

Originally Posted by Cannavar

To back up some comments on here. Use the app to mobile order, its CRAZY how few people are currently doing it. At Christmas there were long lines everywhere and some quick service were queued out the door. No one was using mobile so I ordered, walked straight up and pick the food...maybe 60 secs tops for the whole process at one point. Its baffling why so few people are mobile ordering.

If you are waiting in line for an attraction and want to eatt afterwards. Place the order for your group and as soon as you get off the ride, click the "im here" button and your food will be waiting for you.

This goes for Dole whip too...why on earth would you stand in those lines when the mobile order hatch is clearly empty with staff doing nothing

See more...

This is exactly what we did. It was quite funny actually as I wanted to see what the queue time differences would have been. If I got in line I was behind some ladies with purple shirts on. I did the mobile order, got the dole whip, we all shared one, not actually sure if I would order again maybe a different flavour but we anyway we decided to go from where we were sat near the Aladdin ride to get a space for the 3pm parade and as we were walking past the purple ladies still weren’t even at the front of the queue yet!
Never waited more than a few mins for mobile ordering.