4 Free ways to Maximize Time & Money at Disney World

4 Free ways to Maximize Time & Money at Disney World

Have you ever wondered how to save time and money while visiting Disney world? 

No one who shells out the money to visit Disney World wants to spend time standing in line all day. But how can you really maximize your time at Disney World? Here are four helpful suggestions.

1. Maximize your Fastpass selections

Sweet Success!

When I was a newbie at Disney, I made all our Fastpass selections for the mornings so that they would be out of the way. We almost always found that the standby line would be 10 minutes or less, so it felt like our fastpasses were going to waste. Now we generally make our fastpass selections for between 12-3 if possible. Sometimes a ride or meet and greet does not have selections for that time frame left, so we take when we can get. We are also choosy about what fastpasses we will get; we don’t waste it on attractions that don’t usually have more than a 40 minute wait. But how can you know which rides would be of best value for fastpass?

Pro tip! If a fastpass has run out, try getting them for one person at a time. For example, three of us really wanted to meet Anna and Elsa last year, but the fastpass ran out for them. So I tried getting them for one of us, they had a slot open from 4-5, I snagged it. Then I tried it for the other young lady in our party, there was a slot for 4:30-5:30, I took that one too. Finally for myself I got a slot of 3:45-4:45. That meant for all three of us to meet them at the same time, we had a window from 4:30- 4:45.

2. Touring Plans, AKA the Golden Nugget

Not a care in the world with Touring Plans.

Touring Plans is an app created by Touringplans.com that boasts it will help you outsmart crowds, save 4 hours in line and so much more. All you have to do is download the app or visit Touringplans.com and create an account. From there you can follow one of their sample plans or make your own. We made our own which included choosing which rides you want to go on, what characters you want to visit, what shows or parades you want to watch, when you want to take breaks and for how long and linking your dining reservations. Here are some of the apps features:

•         It recommends which rides and attractions to use a fastpass on.
•         It includes a 10 day crowd forecast.  
•         Once you input all your preferences it automatically calculates when to visit each ride to limit time standing in lines, thereby allowing you to visit more attractions.
•        You can choose your walking pace so that it won’t have you on the other side of the park before you can realistically do so. 
•     You can choose whether you would rather spend more time waiting in line or walking.

·         And that is just the tip of the ice burg. The best part, it is completely FREE! There is an upgrade you can buy that has even more features, but the free one worked perfectly for us.

But does it actually work? I’ll admit, I thought it was too good to be true until we were Magic Kingdom and we had ridden every ride we wanted, watched the festival of fantasy parade, taken several snack breaks and it was only 5 pm! We literally had nothing left that we wanted to do until the fireworks. I did two things to help me have such a positive outcome, 

1. I would always make such to hit “optimize” again every so often so that it would have the most up to date information about wait times.
2. We didn’t overload it with every attraction and meet and greet under the sun. We rode 2 of the roller coasters, 8 of the classic rides, met 4 characters as well as watched the Festival of Fantasy parade and the nighttime spectacular.

All and all, if I have any complaints it is that the app works too well!

4. Make a Breakfast Reservation for Before the Park Opens

A photo in front of the castle
 with few people in the background?

Alright, so this one is technically not free, but I included it because you have to eat breakfast anyway. You might as well do it on the park rather than in the hotel. On the day we travel to magic kingdom we make a reservation for Be Our Guest at least 40 minutes or more before the park opens. As a result,

•         We are allowed in the park almost a full hour before the rest of the crowds! We are able to walk down a nearly deserted Main Street.
•         We don’t have to wait in line for any of the photoPASS photographers.
•         Our photos in front of Cinderella castle don’t have crowds of people in them.
•        When we are done eating, we are just a hop, skip and a jump away from some of the most popular rides. Last visit, we rode Big Thunder Mountain, It’s A Small World, Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan all within an hour.

You can do this for any of the parks that offer breakfast reservations, and it will work just as well.

Pro Tip! Make sure you calculate travel time in. We almost missed a Be Our Guest breakfast because we hadn’t factored in that we would have to take the boat since the monorail wasn’t open yet. If you are staying on site, this may be a day you would want to ride the bus since it drops you off right at the gate, therefore eliminating an extra boat or monorail ride.

4. Rapid Fire Suggestions

•        Arrive early.
•        Eat a big breakfast and don't eat a full meal again until 3 pm. At this time the crowds are largest and the day is its hottest. 
•         Head straight for the rides and attractions your party most wants to see. Or visit the most popular rides first.
•         Most people enter an amusement park and head right, working their way through counter clockwise, do literally anything other than that.
•         Don’t waste too much time shopping in the parks since Disney Springs has nearly everything you’ll want. 
•      Meet Minnie, Mickey, Donald and Goofy in Epcot. They all share the same line and they rarely have a long wait!
•      Don’t shy away from rainy days, less people will be in the park and it won’t affect most rides.