Park Hopping Strategies at Walt Disney World

In our previous article about buying Walt Disney World tickets, we touched upon the Park Hopper option, which allows you to visit multiple parks per day (with some restrictions which I will touch upon below). Today we will talk about some strategies to make the most use of this add-on feature.

What is Park Hopping?

The Park Hopping option allows you to visit multiple WDW parks in a single day. In the past, there were no restrictions to park hopping. You could go to the Magic Kingdom for rope drop, head to Epcot for lunch, bounce over to Animal Kingdom to see the animals, and then return back to the Magic Kingdom for fireworks. However, this flexibility was eliminated after Disney introduced its Park Reservation system. Now the rules are a bit more restrictive.

• You must always first visit the park for which you have a reservation on that day
• You must wait until after 2pm before you can visit another park

This definitely cuts down on the flexibility that you previous had. Let’s say that you rope drop Magic Kingdom (the park you reserved for that day) but you want to have lunch at Epcot. Now you need to wait until mid-afternoon to enter Epcot, which may not be ideal if you are interesting in an earlier lunch!

The other consequence is that you always need to visit the park that you reserved first. That can also lead to some non-ideal restrictions. Let’s say that you reserved Animal Kingdom for the day. However, you decided to sleep in and just go directly to Epcot instead. You might think that, as along as it is after 2pm, you’ll be good, right?

Wrong!

You still need to visit your reserved park first, even if you don’t plan on staying there.

That means that you first need to travel to AK, enter that park, turn around, and only then head over to Epcot!

Pro Tip: You potentially can avoid this situation by changing your park reservation to Epcot. Using this workaround, you aren’t really park hopping, so you are no longer bound by the park hopping rules. However, this only works if there are still Epcot reservations available.

Park Hopping Strategies

Besides the obvious additional cost, the downside of park hopping is the time it takes to travel between parks. Any time that you spend in transit is time not spent riding rides, meeting characters, enjoying the in-park entertainment… all the reasons why we go to WDW in the first place. With few exceptions, I would imagine that nobody goes to WDW to ride the buses, or walk from the parking lots to the entrance. Those are necessary evils… a means to an end… but they aren’t exactly how you want to be spending your valuable vacation time if you don’t have to.

In fact, I would go to far as to suggest that, if you don’t travel to WDW often, you should consider NOT getting the Park Hopper option. You are better off using your limited time in WDW actually enjoying what Disney has to offer.

I would only consider park hopping if you are planning a more leisurely trip. This would apply to:

• Frequent visitors (“if I don’t see X on this trip, I can catch it next time”), or
• People who are already planning on building breaks into their day, or
• People who are staying in Central Florida long enough that you can see everything at a slower pace

All that said, if you do decide that you want to park hop, it still makes the most sense to minimize wasted travel time to the greatest extent possible.

To that end, here are a couple of strategies to think about when using park hopping

Park-to-Park Hopping

One obvious use of park hopping is to travel directly from one park to another. The best way to do this is to choose parks that are easy to travel between. There are two pairs or parks in particular that lend themselves to park hopping

Magic Kingdom and Epcot

These two parks are connected by the monorail, which makes it very easy to go between them. From MK, take the monorail to the Ticket and Transportation Center, transfer to the Epcot monorail, and then head to Epcot. If you want to go from Epcot to MK, just to it in reverse. This will usually take you about 45-60 minutes gate-to-gate depending upon how long you have to wait at the platform for the monorail. The good thing is that you are within the security bubble, so you don’t have to wait on line to get your bags checked.

Epcot and Hollywood Studios

This is another great pair to travel between. These two parks are linked by both boat and Skyliner (Disney’s gondola system) which makes it easy to hop from one to another. If you are in an active mood, it is also possible to walk between these two parks.

To take the boat, you need to exit Epcot via the International Gateway. This is the “back entrance” between France and the UK. Right outside the entrance, there is a dock where the boat loads and unloads. It usually takes about 45-60 minutes from gate-to-gate when you take into account the wait time for the boat, and the wait time at the various stops along the way.

The Skyliner is another potential option to get between these two parks. Because the gondola continuously loads, the travel time using this method is less than that of the boats. As with the boats, you exit Epcot at the International Gateway and the Skyliner station is right there! It will usually take you only 20-30 minutes to cross between parks via the Skyliner. However, if you are afraid of heights or are claustrophobic, this may not be the best option for you.

A third option is to just walk between the parks. Again, exit at the International Gateway and take the path to the left over the bridge, past the Boardwalk area, and onto Hollywood Studios. The walk itself is just over a mile… same distance as walking around the World Showcase. At a reasonable pace, it will take you about 20 minutes or so to make the journey on foot. Of course, if it is hot or you are tired, walking may not be appealing.

Park-to-Resort-to-Park Hopping

Park Hopping with a Midday Break

Another strategy that many people use is to plan for a break in the middle of the day. Especially if it is hot, you might not have the stamina to spend an entire day touring a theme park. Therefore, some people will visit the parks in the morning, then go back to their hotel for lunch, a nap, and/or a swim in the pool during the hottest portion of the day. Then when it is a little cooler in the late afternoon, they will head back for “round two”.

Since you already have this additional travel + downtime baked into your schedule, it isn’t any more time consuming to visit a different park after your break. If this is how you tour, park hopping can make a lot of sense.

On Property Park Hopping

If you are staying on Disney property at a resort in close proximity to a park, then park hopping to the nearby park is another great option! Here are two of my favorite examples:

EXAMPLE #1: If you are staying at the Beach Club and are looking for a quick bite to eat, instead of going to the somewhat limited Beach Club Marketplace, you can head to Epcot. Take the short walk to the International Gateway entrance of Epcot, go into the park, and grab some fish and chips from the Yorkshire Fish Company. Yum!

EXAMPLE #2: If you are staying at the Contemporary Resort, take the the short walk to the Magic Kingdom if you want to see the nighttime fireworks. I love the Contemporary for this purpose since it is so easy to get back to your resort afterwards. You don’t have to worry about waiting for transportation like 99% of the other park guests.

The table below summarizes the various resort areas that make park hopping easy:

There are some other resort/park pairs to consider but they might take a bit longer:

• Polynesian / Epcot: Depending upon what building you are in, you might only be a short walk to the Ticket and Transportation Center (TTC). If so, you can directly access the Epcot Monorail without needing to make any other transfers or stops.
• Animal Kingdom Lodge / Animal Kingdom: While it is still a bus ride, the bus ride is relatively short. How awesome would it be if Disney created a walk path between these two?!

BONUS STRATEGY: Park Hopping and Genie+

If you have both a park hopping ticket and Genie+, you are allowed to make Lightning Lane reservations for the park you want to hop to, as long as the reservations are after 2pm. This opens up a possible Genie+ strategy:

• Rope drop the park at which you have your park reservation
• Don’t use Genie+ to reserve Lightning Lanes at your first park. Instead make ride reservations at the park you want to hope to.
• Take advantage of the shorter morning standby lines at your first park to ride what you want there. Then in the early afternoon, hop to your second park where you now have ride reservations.
• Use your ride reservations in the second park in the afternoon when standby lines are longer.

Since you can make Genie+ reservations every two hours, by the time you hop to your second park, you should have three reservations all ready to go! For example, if your first park opens at 9am, you should be able to make reservations at 7am, 11am (two hours after park opening), and 1pm.

There is a catch. You won’t be able to make a ride reservation for a time before 2pm at your second park. Depending upon the ride, you might not be able to make any after 2pm reservations right when reservations opened. This is because Genie+ will always try to give you the earliest available reservation time. This means that you might have to wait a little bit before times after 2pm become available.

One really expert level trick is to make a Genie+ reservation at your first park at 7am for a ride that has availability right as the park opens. Then go to the park, check in at this ride, and hopefully by then there will be rides at your second park that now have a post-2pm reservation time. At this point, you can start making reservations at your second park. Doing this gives you a bonus Genie+ reservation at your first park!

Of course the above trick only applies if there isn’t anything that has post-2pm availability at 7am when reservations open. Some rides (ex: Slinky Dog Dash) might have post-2pm reservations right out of the gate, in which case, this trick won’t be applicable.

So there you have our favorite park hopping tips and tricks. If you have your own best practices, feel free to leave them in the comments!

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