I'm taking my 9-year old and 6-year old to Disney World next week, and my 9-year old wants to ride Tron but my 6-year old does not meet the height requirement. I could buy a single pass lightning lane for my 9-year old, it's available at exactly the time we need. But would he have to enter the lightning lane on his own or would I and my other son be able to accompany him (but not ride)?

I'm pretty sure the answer is no but everything I read simply says tapping into your first "Lightning Lane" unlocks the tier and park restrictions, without specifying that the tap in must be at a multi pass lightning lane. It would be great if I could book my MP LLs at HS for the afternoon, and buy a SP for Avatar Flight of Passage for first thing in the morning and use that tap-in to modify one of the HS tier 2s into a tier 1, or to an AK attraction.

I saw on Plan Disney they suggest budgeting 2 hours for a table service meal. 2 hours! Is this actually how long it takes? In my plans I had budgeted 45 minutes to an hour. The restaurants I have reservations at are: Jungle Navigation Skipper Canteen Roundup Rodeo Biergarten Space 220 Lounge Tusker House For each of those we'd need to be done in an hour to get to our next thing. Is this feasible? If not, I'd rather do quick service meals instead because for me the attractions are higher priority than dining. Also, if you have a reservation for a given time can you expect to be seated at that time, or might they make you wait a significant time to be seated?

My understanding is that prior to the day, the system restricts the amount of time that booked lightning lanes can overlap. I've also heard that when you are booking lightning lanes and haven't yet purchased, you can modify them to overlap more than you can after you've purchased. Has anyone been able to figure out the exact logic of what amount of overlapping is allowed? Are single passes treated the same as multi-pass attractions when restricting overlap? I have a MK plan that would require bookings of Dumbo at 9am, Seven Dwarfs at 9:30am, Jungle Cruise at 10:30am, and Pirates at 11:30am, and am trying to determine whether the system will allow me to do this.

I really appreciated the recent Ear Scouts video on Epcot early entry because Rob suggested a way to take advantage of early entry without having to get up super early and spend a lot of time in line. Similarly I appreciated the Animal Kingdom multipass strategy video because it did not involve getting to the park early. My goal is to not spend time in lines (including to get into the park for early entry), and I'm willing to purchase single and multi pass lightning lanes to make that happen. So here's what I'm thinking for each park, let me know if this makes sense. Animal Kingdom: replicate Rob's day where he starts in Dinoland and pre-books Na'vi for late in the day, getting into line for Avatar at park close. Early entry could be used to have some extra time before the park opens to just enjoy the park rather than trying to get in lines for popular attractions. Epcot: We'll be using the international entrance, so I'm thinking we'll go to Frozen during early entry and pre-book a Lightning Lane for Remy. In the Ear Scouts video from a year or so ago, Rob does Frozen as a walk-on after having done Remy by arriving super early. I'm hoping that if we arrive at the beginning of early entry we can do Frozen without a long wait at the gate or at the ride. I'm assuming I won't have trouble booking Soarin later. We probably won't do Guardians because it might be too intense for my youngest kid. Hollywood Studios: we plan to do Mickey & Minnie's during early entry. There's an "all the bells and whistles" hs video where Rob does Tower of Terror and then Mickey & Minnie's as a walk-on. Similar to the Epcot strategy, I'm thinking of pre-booking tower, and going straight to what was Rob's second ride as a walk-on. I'll pre-book Slinky, and buy single passes for Rise. Note we won't be doing Rock n Roller Coaster because of height requirements. Magic Kingdom: this is the hardest to figure out. I'm thinking we'll do Peter Pan in early entry, and hoping that if we show up at the beginning of early entry (without lining up super early), the wait for Peter Pan still won't be too long, and that after riding it we'd be able to get to Jungle Cruise before that queue gets too long. I'll pre-book Tiana's, and buy single passes for Seven Dwarfs. I might use Aladdin to tap in early (en route to Jungle Cruise), to book Space Mountain. Note we won't be doing Tron because of height requirements. Do these strategies make sense? Any other suggestions?

I'm planning to give my sons (ages 6 and 9) a trip to Disney World in January as a Christmas gift, and I'm looking for ideas on how to reveal the gift to them on Christmas morning. I had hoped to wrap magic bands, but as an international guest I can't get magic bands until we arrive at Disney. I'd love to hear if anyone can share any stories on how you revealed a surprise trip to Disney World to someone.

I just found out that during most of my trip in late January, MK will be closing at 7pm. From what I can tell on thrill-data.com, lightning lanes sell out much more quickly when there are limited hours like this. I've heard that the park is less busy when it closes early but the data seems to show that the lower supply of LL's significantly outweighs the lower demand from smaller crowds. Can anyone speak to this from experience? Is it significantly harder to get lightning lanes on shorter park days?

On the "all ears" youtube channel they recently talked about a "loophole" they discovered that allows you to stack many lightning lanes. Here's my understanding of it: 1. If you book a lightning lane, you actually have a 3-hour window during which you can use your lightning lane (2 extra hours after your official return time) 2. An hour after the return time starts, it actually lets you book another lightning lane even if you haven't used the one that "expired". 3. After booking another lightning lane, you can still access the original lightning lane for 2 more hours. So you could have 4 valid lightning lanes booked at this point. 4. Keep repeating this and you could have many lightning lanes booked (in the video they showed having 10 at the same time) Unlike the genie plus 2-hour window, this window starts after the lightning lane return time, not after the booking time, so at first glance it seems less useful. But one scenario where I could see this being useful is stacking during a lunch break (or resort nap break). i.e. if I were to take a break for lunch at noon, I could have 3 lightning lanes with return times at noon, and then at 1pm I can book 3 more lightning lanes. I'd have to use the first 3 within the next 2 hours but still have an additional 3 booked for later. If I get very lucky with return times I'd make the second batch of 3 happen at 1pm, so by 2pm I can book another 3. And so on. I wonder if you could also do this first thing in the morning, if you plan to not be at the park for an hour after it opens. Though without using a lightning lane, you're still locked to the tiers, so it would be less useful, if even possible.

Does anyone have any experience using apps like "Standby Skipper" (https://www.standbyskipper.com/) that book your lightning lanes for you? I'm interested to hear if they work, if they're worth it, and whether Disney frowns upon using them. I asked Standby Skipper support that last question, and this is what they said: As with any other third party app associated with Disney, we have limited visibility as to what’s going on, on their end. I can assure you we have received zero communication from Disney regarding any policy violation. And you see we aren’t hard to find! We have had legal review the terms and have been told we aren’t violating the terms, but Disney can always change things and those are often left up to interpretation. Wish I had a more black and white answer. We have NEVER had a customer report they have been blocked or banned.  I would still encourage you to review the terms associated with both them and us and that may help you decide if the service is the right fit for you.

It's not official, but word on the street is that a premier version of Lightning Lane is coming (https://blogmickey.com/2024/09/rumor-walt-disney-world-lightning-lane-premier-pass-universal-express-style-skip-the-line-offering/) similar to Universal Express. If it is modeled after Universal's version, it will be $200 per person per day and require no bookings. You would just walk into any lightning lane any time, but not the same LL more than once in a given day. I think it makes sense that they introduce something like this. However, I wonder how they would keep it from hurting Disney resort bookings. If this new LL pass is what I think it is, I might cancel my resort booking, book off property and use the savings to pay (partially) for the premier pass. There's no need for early entry or 7-day pre-booking if you have the premier pass. But maybe they'll only make this available to resort guests, or only to deluxe resort guests, for exactly this reason. Thoughts?

It seems to me that the only really useful Mutlipass lightning lanes at Epcot are Remy and Frozen. If you are doing early entry at Epcot and entering via the international gateway, you should be able to do both those attractions before the park opens (based on the Ear Scouts video). The rest of the Multipass lightning lanes seem to have fairly short queues every time I check the app. So is there any reason to purchase Multipass? Am I missing something?

I've noticed from watching Rob and Erick's videos that their actual wait-times in standby queues are usually much less than the posted wait-times. Are the posted wait-times usually exaggerated? If so, why? Here are some possible explanations that come to mind: 1. There is an inherent delay in updating the posted wait-times, and Rob and Erick tend to choose attractions where the wait-times are decreasing therefore the actual wait-time has decreased since it was posted. But if this were the case, you would experience longer than posted wait-times when the standby queue is increasing, and I haven't seen many instances of this in any of the videos. 2. Disney intentionally errs on the side of over-estimating wait-times since they know it is a better guest experience when the wait-time is less than anticipated. 3. Disney wants it to appear that wait-times are longer to make Lightning Lanes look more valuable. (but maybe this is too cynical?) Am I right that the wait-times are usually less than what is posted? Any thoughts on the reasoning?

Are there any attractions where the standby queues are so good that you'd prefer spending time in the queue over using the lightning lane? Conversely, are there some queues that don't add to the experience at all, and you would always opt for the lightning lane? I'm wondering about attractions across all the WDW parks.

I haven't been to Disney World since I was 9, and am now planning a week long trip with my 9- and 6-year old kids in January. We'll be staying at a Disney resort (Caribbean Beach), and will have park-hopper passes. I've watched many of the Ear Scouts videos and have found them extremely helpful and enjoyable. But I noticed that the general theme is getting the most out of your "precious park time". I think that day after day of getting as much done as possible for a whole week with kids is probably not sustainable or the most enjoyable way to spend the week. So I'm hoping for some guidance on how to plan a week long trip to Disney World. I've heard of the strategy of doing afternoon naps, and we'll probably try to do that. What else should I be thinking about in terms of strategy for getting the most out of our 7 days, without getting exhausted? A video on this would be amazing.