Magic Kingdom-How to break into two days?

[cocob2000]

I am going to Disney Oct 12- Oct 18th. It will be me, my husband, 9 yr old son, 3 yr old son and 1 yr old son. Three boys!!! We have been a few days, but this will be our first trip as a family of 5! I am planning on breaking MK into two days, possible 2.5 days. I always feel like I am running around like a crazy person and still miss 3/4 of the park. I am trying to plan better this time around and since I can get my FP in a few days, I need to nail down a plan.

What is the best way to break MK into two days? Is there certain lands I should plan together? Any help would be great!!!

 

[imthemamahere]

You sound a lot more organized than me - I don't make a definite plan of attack, I just go with the flow and see what appeals to me and my family on any given day. (Though we do make our ADRs and FP+ reservations, everything in between is left open.) That gives us the flexibility to return to rides/attractions we really enjoyed the first time around, though I guess it makes our days a bit less efficient!

I guess I'd suggest making a list prioritizing the rides/activities you most want to do. With two littles and a tween, that could be quite an interesting list. Once you know what you're most interested in, what you can't miss, you can go ahead and see if some are clustered at one side of the park. If so, try to get FP+ for at least some of those, relatively close together in time, on the same day. Get your FP+ for the ones on the other side of the park on your other planned MK day.

Beyond that, I'm sure someone who does serious touring plans can give you more ideas. Good luck!

 

[disney world dreamer]

we don't "break it down".
we make our ADR's and FP+ selections and every time we go to MK we head straight back to fantasyland after that its just whatever we feel like doing next.
of course if we want to do pirates and jungle cruise we are not gonna do one and then head to space mountain and then go back and do the other.
we will do everything we want in one land and then move to another but we don't plan out which land we are going to next or anything it just sorta falls into place.
on our second day we do whatever we didn't the first day and then we do a lot of repeats from the first day cuz we like them so much. for example i MUST do carousel of progress at least once each day i'm there if not twice lol.

 

[PrincessX]

You may want to invest in touring plans at touringplans.com It's fairly inexpensive (under $20, which considering how much I'm spending on the Vaca anyways is like a drop in the bucket) and it gives you access to a decent crowd calendar. You can choose from their preset plans or make your own. I like making my own cause I can download the app, tell it when I'm planning to get to disney and when I plan to leave, then tell it what rides I want to go on and it calculates the whole thing and gives me a minute by minute breakdown of where to go and what to do, plus if I'm running late it'll recalculate for me.

 

[canadiandisneymommy]

We're using Josh's easy wdw cheat sheets. He even has recommended fast passes to book. He has a two day touring plan for mk:
http://www.easywdw.com/category/cheat-sheets/

 

[DisneyFansInNYC]

I have to tell you that the first night we did not organize our day at MK that well. We chose our favorite rides. We ended up running all over the place. The next two days we rearranged our FPs so that we were within two different lands. One day we did Fantasyland and Tomorrowland together. The next day we did Liberty Square, Adventureland and Frontierland plus any parades we were seeing. The park is really big and when you have strollers and there are large crowds - it can get crazy. Our son loves the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom game. He did the game in the lands that we were in.

I hope this helps.

 

[msmama]

If I have that much time I try to do (in no particular order):

1. Start left (to Adventureland)
2. Start right (to Tomorrowland)
3. Start in the middle (Fantasyland).

That said, I haven't been since FP+ and we don't do mountains, but honestly I don't think it'd change things too much. Before new fantasyland we could get at least half a park done before lunch (we also go in off times).

 

[WantToGoNow]

We always do Fantasyland, Tomorrowland and Adventure land one day and Frontierland, Liberty Square and Fantasyland (again) the second day. When we have 3+ MK days, we repeat all of our favorites as many times as we can. We did they LM ride five times last trip.

 

[WaltDaddy]

First off, I will share that my family and I have been to WDW about 12 times since 2008 and there are STILL attractions and restaurants we haven't yet tried. Unless you're going for a month-long trip, its nearly impossible to see and do it all.

That being said, all four of us (my wife and two young sons) each pick the 1 or 2 things we absolutely HAVE to do in each park, we then make our ADRs and FP+ and leave everything else up to chance!

 

[MandiC]

We did two days in MK and did every ride (except the ones down for refurbishment while we were there; splash mountain, barnstormers, people mover and the mine train wasn't open yet) we wanted and we even wondered Tom Sawyer Island and walked up/down Main Street, rode the train and played the sorcerers of mk game)
Our first day we had an 8am reservation at CRT, we got out of there just as people were entering the park for the day and we started in Adventureland and worked our way through Frontierland, Tom Sawyer island, and Liberty Square (FP for Jungle Cruise, POC, and Big Thunder Mountain). We ate at Pecos for lunch and had time for Philhar Magic (sorry for the butchered spelling on that), Princess Fairytale Hall and Prince Charming Carousel. I think we even did the tea cups that day if I remember right. All before we had to leave the park for our 7:40pm reservation at the California Grill (which was a pretty perfect timing for the fireworks in February, we were seated just before Wishes started). The second day we showed up at the gates a little after 8am and got a great spot to watch the park opening ceremony. We went straight for Tomorrowland for Space Mountain and did COP, the stitch 'ride' (which I do NOT recommend), Space Ranger spin, FP for Tomorrowland Speedway and then the Astro Orbiter, we actually got all of that done pretty quickly and ate a late 'breakfast'...a muffin from Main Street Bakery before we headed to Fantasyland (we brought lots of granola bars that day). We did everything in Fantasyland including Ariel's grotto, and her ride, It's a small world, we had a fp for Peter Pans Flight and a FP for Enchanted Tales with Belle. I also got a FP at Be Our Guest for a late lunch. We rerode Big Thunder Mountain and POC and then decided to take the train to Main Street where we got the cards for the sorcerer's game and then explored Main Street. I think we had a snack at some point and then sat down fairly early to watch the show at the castle and since we had such a good spot we decided to stay there to wait for the projection show/Wishes. We ate a late dinner at our resort when we got back (Which was LATE).
So, with a plan, it can be done. We did go in February and I used crowd calendars to pick the recommended days for MK. The only thing I feel I really missed other than the refurbished rides is the Main Street Electrical Parade. I am not a big parade person so we happily walked past the daytime parade but I wanted to see the Main Street Electrical parade. Unfortunately when using the crowd calenders I didn't know anything about the MSEP and I booked our dinner reservations before I realized they don't have it every night in February, so it wasn't scheduled for the days we were there (the crowd calenders will not recommend MK on MSEP days when it doesn't happen nightly I now realize ). Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it went though and I don't even feel like we did a ton of walking because we weren't running back and forth all over the park.

 

[Greenfield1984]

We always start our day at Fantasyland at rope drop and get most of it done by lunch. Aside from hitting FL first, we don't really have a set plan. We pick our FP+ and that dictates what area we go to next.
DD7 has asked that we do Splash Mountain as our very first ride on our next trip... which would completely throw off our touring plan, so we'll have to see about that...