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After a couple of years of begging Jay to let us take the kids to Disney World, he finally agreed to letting me plan a trip! We just got back last week, and we had an absolute blast. We were only there for 3 nights, but I feel like in that short amount of time, I know a lot of answers to questions that I had before going.

Are my kids old enough to enjoy it?

My kids are 3 (almost 4) and 18 months. I knew Hollings (my oldest) would love it. She is the perfect age for it, and will even have some memories from this trip. What I didn’t know going into it was how much fun my 18 month old would have! William LOVED the rides, the animatronics, the characters, the whole shabang. Will he have core memories from the trip? Doubtful… but he had equally of an amazing time as Hollings, if not more! If you’re looking for a sign to take your small children to Disney, this is it!

Disney Springs

Growing up, my parents always took us to Disney Springs (or what we called “downtown Disney”) on the night we arrived. Living 7 hours away, it’s silly to waste a day ticket to the parks on the day you spend most of the time driving, but Disney Springs is free to enter, and has enough fun Disney stuff to get you excited for the rest of the time there. We waited a bit too long to make reservations this night, so we ended up getting into City Works Eatery and Pour House. The food was SO good and they had a ton of craft beer to choose from. However, if I were to do it again, I would first try to make reservations somewhere the kids would like better, such as The Rainforest Cafe or T-REX. Also, even if I waited too long for a reservation, I would have rather gone straight to one of those restaurants, and then walked around for an hour or so until our table was ready, because you’re going to want to walk around anyway.

Genie+ Service

So basically the way Disney is currently doing a “fast lane” is through the Disney World app on your phone. You pay $15 per ticket (so in our case, we had 4 people, but since William was young enough to get in without a ticket, we only paid $45), and then you get to reserve lightning lane spots for certain rides at certain times. The catch here is that you can only reserve one ride at a time, but as soon as you check into the lightning lane ride, you can go ahead and reserve your next ride, even if you haven’t actually gotten on the ride yet. So you’re definitely going to want to reserve your next ride as soon as you check into your reservation. All that being said, some rides book up so fast because they are super popular. Say its 10am, but you want to reserve a Peter Pan ride and it’s not available to reserve until 4pm. You can reserve it at 10am, and then after 2 hours passes, the app will let you reserve another ride.

Between reservation times, we just tried to do as many things that had short wait times. Your Disney app has a map on it that will show you the current wait times of all of the rides. This had us walking back and forth around the park, but it’s definitely the best way to maximize what you do during the day.

Per recommendation, we only did the Genie+ on the day we did Magic Kingdom, and did not do it for Animal Kingdom, but if I were to do it again, I would get it for both days, because I think for $15 per ticket it’s very worth it.

Magic Kingdom

Between the two parks we went to, Magic Kingdom definitely had the most stuff for the small kids to do! Our favorite rides were The Little Mermaid, It’s a Small World, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Meal reservations open up 60 days out from your travel date, and you NEED to make reservations as soon as they open up. I made ours about 50 days out just because I was busy and thought it would be fine. Even so far in advance, it was slim pickin’s. We ended up getting into Tony’s Town Square at 6:50, and it was actually really good! I had heard bad things about the food at Magic Kingdom, but I really enjoyed our pasta at Tony’s. Was it the best pasta we’ve ever had? No. Was it overpriced? Yes, but so is everything at Disney. I guess I had low expectations, but I thought it was pretty good.

We only made dinner reservations and thought for lunch we would just grab something quick, but that was a mistake, because we really need to be at a sit down place to feed William anyway. Plus, it was so hot outside in July, that we were looking for a break in the day to go inside and get some AC.

The daily character parades are at noon and again at 3pm. We went to the one at noon, but next time I think I would go eat at noon while half of the park is at the parade, and then go to the parade at 3. We scoped out a good spot on the sidewalk to watch the parade about 20 minutes before the parade started and we didn’t have any issues getting a good view.

Animal Kingdom

We ended up getting a late start on Animal Kingdom day, because we were all up until 11:45 the night before. We decided to not worry about eating breakfast first thing in the morning and to just everyone ready and head to the park as soon as possible and make it our first mission to get food.

We got to the park around 10:20, and right before the park entry is the Rainforest Cafe. I knew the kids would enjoy it, so we scoped it out to see what the deal was. The wait ended up being 25 minutes, which would probably be pretty comparable to all of the other restaurants inside the park, so we decided to go for it! I’m really glad we did, because the kids really loved it, and the food was really good. It was definitely an attraction in itself.

The two things I went into Animal Kingdom day thinking were a must were the animal safari and the Lion King performance. Well, unfortunately the Lion King wasn’t performing that day, which was a bummer for sure, but we saw the Finding Nemo show instead, and it was very very good! The whole family enjoyed it. The line outside looked sooooooo long, I thought there was no way we would make it in to see the show, but the theatre was very big and we made it inside.

The longest we stood in line for anything the entire trip was for the safari, and even that was only 30 minutes without genie+. That was the first thing we did when we got inside of Animal Kingdom, because I wanted to make sure we did it.

For dinner, we had a 4:15 reservation at Tuskers. That was the only time they had available, but they ended up running behind schedule, so we didn’t get seated until about 4:35, which was fine with us. We hung out at the outdoor bar while we waited. The food at Tuskers was definitely good, but at $55 per adult and $35 for child (William was free), it was overpriced, even for an all you can eat restaurant. Still, I would say it was worth it, because it’s a character dinner, and it was the only character dinner we got into the whole trip, and the kids loved it.

It started to rain pretty hard when we were at dinner, but by the time we left the restaurant, it was a light drizzle, and the park had majorly cleared out, so we got to ride 3 more rides quickly before the park closed at 8.

What to Bring and Other Tips

The stroller is a must. We put both kids in ours between every single ride, and not only did it allow us to get from ride to ride quickly, but we also stored all of our stuff in the bottom basket. We didn’t need to carry anything, and could leave everything in there when we parked our stroller while we rode rides.

Neck fans were a game changer for me and the kids. Jay refused to wear his, but whatever. I’d rather be comfortable and look silly.

We all brought in our own refillable water bottles, because the water bottles they sell are expensive. There aren’t an abundance of water stations, but they are around if you look for them. Just go ahead and fill up whenever you see on.

If you have young kids who still nap, don’t go back to the hotel to nap. It’s such a waste of time when there’s so much to do in a short, expensive day. Both of our kids napped in the stroller while we were walking around/in line.

Don’t forget sunscreen! I packed it, and then of course forgot to put it on all of us the first day until we were all a little red already. I was better about it on day two.

This time of year, the pop up summer showers are unpredictable. Our rain jackets were absolutely necessary.