Have you had success getting dropped off at contemporary? Everything I've read says they won't let you do that unless you have a dining reservation.

The buses will most likely start earlier than that. My best guess is the first bus will depart at 7 or 7:15am (based on having been on an MK bus that early 3 times, those with more experience please chime in as to whether this is normal), and I think you should have no problem getting to your dining reservation on time. If you don't want to take any chances, then I'd book a Minnie Van. An ordinary Lyft or Uber won't get you to the front gates of Magic Kingdom, and instead will drop you at the transportation and ticket center (TTC) and you'd have to take the monorail or ferry from there.

If you're planning to do Tron, the single pass would save you about an hour waiting. There is really no other way to save time on Tron since it's not open during early entry.

Since you have early entry, I guess you're staying at a Disney resort (though not necessarily). If that's the case, you get free admission to Typhoon Lagoon on your check-in day. Magic Kingdom is doable in one day, but it can be tiring. But so is park hopping. In either case I suggest taking a long mid-day break. That's when the line ups are the busiest anyway, you can get rides done more quickly in the morning and evening. And then it's immaterial whether you hop to another park in the evening or go back to the same one. Early entry is useful if you want to avoid paying for single pass rides (flight of passage, seven dwarfs), but to really take advantage of early entry you need to be there super early in the morning, ideally 1 hour and 15 minutes prior to early entry. This makes for a very tiring day. So since you have young kids and want to get a lot done, I highly recommend getting single pass lightning lanes instead of early entry for those rides. You could still use early entry for some less in-demand rides and not have to get there so early. I also highly recommend multi pass lightning lanes on your mk days. For ak it's useful but not absolutely necessary. Na'vi River journey will likely be a walk-on during early entry (and you don't have to show up super early to do it), and make sure to get to Kilimanjaro when it opens. But if you're planning to park hop, then definitely get the multi pass. It is possible to do every ride and show at Animal Kingdom and be done by 3pm. But it's also possible to take a more relaxed approach and just enjoy your day there. Check out the Ear Scouts Animal Kingdom lightning Lane video, where Rob shows up at a reasonable hour, and has a very easy time doing every ride. Which option you do will depend on exactly which rides you want to do. If you want to do absolutely everything at magic Kingdom, then doing 1.5 days there will definitely be less tiring. But if you're more selective about what you want to ride there, doing one park a day would give you more opportunity to just enjoy the parks.

I did early entry at Magic Kingdom on Sunday. I far preferred it to the previous procedures. I find queues way less stressful than hordes of people jostling for position getting ready to make a run for it (or brisk walk if they're following the rules). By 7:55 (35 minutes prior to early entry) I was ninth in line at Seven Dwarfs and had nothing to worry about.

Barnstomer has had a return time about 3 hours later than booking time the last couple days. This is a wider gap than usual, but not unexpected because the week before and after Easter weekend are particularly busy. PhilharMagic yesterday, and April 10 and 11 jumped from 5pm to 10pm. But the wait times remained 10 minutes bwtween 5pm and 10pm so these weren't outages. I guess they've decided to close the lightning lanes between 5pm and 10pm on some days. I don't think there's any ever point in getting a lightning lane for PhilharMagic anyway, unless as a burner ride to scan in early, so the 5pm - 10pm gaps don't matter anyway.

Unofficially, yes. While Lightning Lane return times are supposed to be 1-hour windows, you seem to be able to scan in for an additional 2 hours after the official return time. And once the official 1-hour return time window passes you are able to book another lightning lane. So if you let one of your 3 return times pass, you can book another, and now have 4 lightning lanes booked. You can keep doing this to create a stack. This is very handy if you have a mid-day break. Here's an example: Suppose you have Pirates at 12:00, Haunted Mansion at 12:30, and Peter Pan at 1:00, and you plan to be having lunch or lounging at your resort at that time. At 1pm, your Pirates has "expired" and you book Dumbo for 3pm. At 12:30pm your Haunted Mansion expires, and you book Buzz Lightyear for 3:30pm. At 1pm your Peter Pan expires and you book Space Mountain for 4pm. Then after you're done your relaxing mid-afternoon break, you head back to the park and you have a stack of 6 rides ready to go. You ride Pirates at 2:45 Haunted Mansion at 3:00 Peter Pan at 3:15 Dumbo at 3:30 Buzz Lightyear at 3:45 Space Mountain at 4pm For each of the last 3 you can book another. But keep in mind that you can't "unlock" lightning lanes without scanning into one. This means you won't be able to book additional tier 1's, or attractions in other parks. So if you're looking to stack so that you can show up later in the morning, then you will be limited in your choice of lightning lanes. Also note, that officially return times are 1-hour long, so Disney could close this loophole at any time.

I agree with @Jessica Walker that pushing your Tucker House reservation back will give you a lot more options. If you can get Navi done in early entry and get to Kilimanjaro just before park open (I don't believe Kiliminjaro is open during early entry), then you will avoid that 30-minute standby queue. Breakfast at 8:30 would be ideal if at all possible.

Here's one way you could do this: Do Navi first thing during early entry. It shouldn't be too long a line since most people will go to Flight of Passage first. You will likely be late for your Tusker reservation, but if the Navi lineup is short enough you won't be too late. Do Kilimanjaro right after breakfast, I'm guessing you'll have a 30-minute wait, but it will only get longer from there. Get single passes for Flight of Passage. If they are sold out, don't worry, they'll add more throughout the morning. Plan to do this after Kilimanjaro on your way back to the front gates. I think you'll get to Hollywood Studios at around 10:30 with this plan, so you will still be able to make the official return times for your lightning lanes.

Last I heard (and from personal experience in January), unofficially lightning lanes have a 3-hour return time window. So you should be able to spend a bit of extra time at Animal Kingdom as long as you get on Alien Swirling Saucers and Toy Story Mania before your lunch, and you'd be able to do Slinky Dog Dash after lunch but before 2:30. There is always a chance that things change and the lightning lane doesn't glow green after 1 hour, so there is some risk here. If you're starting in Animal Kingdom, then the burner ride approach won't really work. What are you planning to do at Animal Kingdom and do you have early entry?

@Jessica Walker @Craig Culp thank you for offering to beta test. I'm not quite ready for testers yet, my plan is to work the kinks out during my trip at the end of April, but it should be ready for testing after that. Is there a way to direct message here to coordinate? If not, please get my email address from Rob.

Yes, actually.

@Craig Culp yes that's very helpful, thank you! I wasn't planning to do another trip so soon but as luck would have it I'm going to be in Orlando for a conference, so I figured why not? It will give be a chance to test the Lightning Lane optimization app I'm building.

It really comes down to your specific priorities. If you can provide your list I can make some recommendations and give an explanation for each recommendation. I did a ton of thrill-data analysis on this.

I did this with Pixar at Epcot, which is a perfect way to book Frozen and Soarin' after doing Remy in early entry, and had no issues. My only worry was that it might be a bit demoralizing for the cast member who was stationed at the lightning lane entrance because I get the impression that Pixar is used a lot for this purpose. He didn't seem to mind though.

Soarin can definitely be done twice. It's a good choice for early entry as long as Remy and Frozen aren't also on your list (I'm assuming Guardians is not). Soarin is also a fairly easy lightning lane to get. If Frozen or Remy are on your list then doing them twice would be a challenge. Buzz will also be easy to do twice. I've never heard it mentioned as something people do during early entry, but since it's in Tomorrowland I'm guessing it is open for early entry, and should be a walk on. If something in Fantasyland is also in your list (Peter Pan maybe?) you might want to do that first. Since Buzz is a tier 2 attraction you might as well book it ahead but you don't have to, it should still be available to book on the day, so if there are popular tier 2s on your list (Haunted mansion, Pirates) book those and wait to book Buzz when you tap into something else.

The feasibility of your plan depends on which rides are your favorites. You can book only one tier 1 ride ahead of time per day, and some of them can become difficult to book on the day. A single popular ride can take up your entire early entry time, and some rides aren't open during early entry. Another way to ride something popular without using up park time is getting into the standby queue just before the park closes.

The nice thing open the On Broadway Concert was that we just strolled up a few minutes after it started and were still able to get decent seats. The show was fun and the performances were top notch. Biergarten wasn't so much about the food, but the atmosphere and band. We spent a good chunk of time on the dance floor. The 1-liter beer stein was fun too, though difficult to finish!

We really enjoyed Biergarten, so definitely keep that one on your list. We enjoyed the On Broadway concert series, watching the sunset at Space 220 Lounge (the off-menu plant-based appetizers are amazing), meeting Captain Jack Sparrow, doing Star Tours many times in a row (it was different every time), having the Lemonade Julep at Casey's Corner while watching the parade, bringing Dole Whip from Aloha Isle into the Enchanted Tiki room, and watching the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular from Rob's favorite seats.

I find the best way to determine the least busy days for each park is by looking at the lightning lane pricing. Disney bases the price on how busy they think it's going to be, and they know better than anyone. You can see the pricing here: https://www.thrill-data.com/lightning-lane/wdw/price-history though they haven't announced pricing for your April dates yet. The graphs make it clear that average wait times correlate strongly with lightning lane pricing.