How Much Disney Can You Fit Into Three Days - My Pre Trip/Trip Report

We map out a last-minute Walt Disney World trip I’m taking with my 13-year-old daughter and break down the exact plan from flights to parks. I share how I use resort location, Lightning Lanes, and a few smart shortcuts to squeeze maximum fun out of a short Wednesday-to-Saturday visit.

• last-minute trip basics, park hopper plan, and why a short trip works 
• flight change reasoning, arrival timing, and rental car approach 
• Bay Lake Tower choice for Magic Kingdom proximity and extended evening hours 
• Magic Kingdom ride order strategy, Lightning Lane multipass picks, and single pass priorities 
• food and downtime plan, including quick service favorites and a themed lounge reservation 
• split stay logic and why Art of Animation supports Skyliner efficiency 
• Epcot day plan with Cosmic Rewind, festival stops, scavenger hunts, and shopping traditions 
• final day approach with Animal Kingdom goals then Hollywood Studios multipass strategy 
• using Wait Magic to improve Lightning Lane times and leave slots open 
If you haven't yet, I would love if you would go to Apple Podcasts and just leave a five-star review and tell me why you like the podcast.

Transcript

Flights And Rental Car Choices

Bay Lake Tower And Late Night Magic Kingdom

Magic Kingdom Strategy And Lightning Lanes

Split Stay To Art Of Animation

Epcot Plans With Festival Focus

Animal Kingdom Morning Then Hollywood Studios

Using Wait Magic For Lightning Lanes

Wrap Up And Listener Requests

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to Disney Travel Tales. I'm your host Jenny. Here we talk all things Disney destinations, be it the parks or cruises. If you love traveling to Disney or just dream about it, then you have found the podcast for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Okay, so let's get into today's episode. This is episode 137, and it's my pre-trip trip report. That is so hard for me to say, but it is. But yes, I'm gonna be talking about my upcoming trip to Walt Disney World with my 13-year-old daughter. So let's just get into it. So we are heading on a very last minute planned, pretty quick little trip that's going to be a Wednesday to a Saturday. My daughter is in competitive dance, and this is kind of competition season. And so when I saw a weekend that she didn't have any dance scheduled, and my husband was already going to be gone on a trip, I thought, you know what, we need to get to Disney. And just like if you listened to last week, I talked about taking short trips. This is just a perfect example. If you take little trips, you can take them more often. In this episode, we're just going to go over where we're staying and kind of a brief outline of what we're going to do while we're there or what we are planning to do while we are there. Last week I had mentioned that I would have my lightning lanes by the point I record, but that's not the case because I am recording earlier than I had planned because no one is in my home currently. So I thought this would be a great time. And being spring break, I figured we're gonna have a lot of ins and out while you know my kids are out of school. So just some trip basics. We are traveling a Wednesday to a Saturday. We are going to do three and a half, three and a fourth days in the parks. Um, and we do have a park hopper ticket. We are actually doing a split stay during this trip, which I don't recommend for short trips. However, I do have a good reason for this. It's just all goes with my strategy. So stay tuned for all of that. I also would like to mention that I am my own personal, like craziest travel planner. I'm constantly looking at ways to change my trip before it gets here. I don't even know why I do this, but I do. And so this morning I had like a last-minute epiphany and changed my flight. Like our arrival flight to Disney. So let's just start at the beginning. We originally were going to be leaving on a Wednesday. We were gonna leave here, we're in Central Texas around 7:30 p.m. and get to Orlando at 10.50 p.m., which was fine because that wasn't going to be a park day for us. So I was like, we'll just get in late. I didn't want my daughter to miss school. But after thinking about it a little bit, I thought, I don't really know if I want to arrive in Orlando so late, just being me and her, and then having to drive over to Disney and all that, just in case we got in like car trouble or something happened. And so I actually went ahead and moved our flight. So now we're gonna be leaving Wednesday at 5 p.m. and landing in Orlando around 8:30. She is going to have to miss a little bit of school for this, but only about a half a day. So it should be okay. I mean, half a day this day and then two other days, but you know. I know since I've already been there, that once your kids get to high school, it is very hard for them to miss school. So I'm just trying to remind myself and take advantage of these moments. She does very well in school. She's not behind, she makes great grades. So her missing a few days, especially right after spring break, isn't going to be the end of the world. So, anyways, now that I've justified myself to everyone listening, I will take her out of school a bit early. We will land in Orlando at 8 30. We are renting a car, so we'll just go pick up our car. I'm a little bit interested or curious how this is going to go because for the first time ever, I am renting, I'm doing the I click you pick, which through Enterprise, which means they're gonna pick which car we get. It was actually the lowest rate, so I just went ahead and was like, hey, why don't we just give this a go and see what we get? Hopefully we get something good. I have driven terrible cars in Orlando. One time we had the tiniest little like golf cart size car. So I figured I've driven the worst. It if I get that kind of car again, who I don't even care. It is what it is. After we get our car, we will go ahead and drive over to our first resort, which is Bay Lake Tower. Now, hear me out. I went ahead and booked us this specific resort for a couple of reasons. First, was there was a fantastic pass holder rate on it. And since I am a pass holder, I get a pretty good rate. I think it was 40% off. Also, I've never stayed here, and I do like to try to stay at new resorts. So that just makes me a better travel agent. It makes me a better podcaster because I can give you a different experience. So I am excited for that. But most importantly, I chose this resort because it is the closest resort to Magic Kingdom. And that's going to be our first park. When I take a short trip, I want to try to say, stay close to the parks, or I want to try to stay at a place that has great transportation to the parks so that I can get there quicker so that it doesn't take a lot of time out of my total trip. When you have, when you're only going to be there for a certain amount of hours, you need to really take advantage of each hour. So we're going to drive over to Bay Lake. We will park, unpack our bags, and this is where I feel a little bit insane. However, my daughter's at a fantastic age to stay up late. Like she absolutely loves staying up late. But Magic Kingdom actually has extended evening hours for deluxe guests this night. I'm thinking we'll probably get to our resort around nine. That's maybe a little after nine. How but the park is open until 1 a.m. for deluxe resort guests. So the plan is to go to our room, unpack, change if we want, just kind of depending on the weather, and then walk over to Magic Kingdom and basically just do what we can do. I'm not going to be purchasing lightning lanes for this day in case there's flight delays or anything. I just don't want to have to be worried about that. But we'll just get in line for short rides or you know, shorter lines. If we can make it in time for Starlight, I'd like to see that with her because she's never seen it and it's really beautiful. And yeah, just do what we can do. Off the top of my head, some of her favorite rides that I think would be fun to try to get done today would be Space Mountain People Mover. If we can do Tron if the line's not too long, Seven Dwarves if the line's not too long. I know it's going to be a spring break, a time of travel, and so it could be really busy. We're just going to be really relaxed and go with the flow. Also, because we're getting to squeeze in this little mini evening before our main Magic Kingdom day, I'm going to challenge her and I to do every single ride and every single show at Magic Kingdom during the day and a fourth that we are going to be there. So that's going to be kind of fun. Her and I like to do little challenges like that. So I think that'll be exciting. So the first evening is just going to be really simple. Maybe stay out late, maybe come back early. It is what it is. Like we have no plan for this time since I literally just booked it today. Like I haven't even told her she's going to be pretty excited about it, especially since she gets to leave school early. I also would like to mention that at Bay Lake Tower, we are staying in Adelux studio with a resort view. So this room has a little kitchenette, it has a nice size bathroom, it has a queen size bed, and then a queen size Murphy bed. This will be a great size room for just the two of us. Even if we were staying longer in this room, I think it'll have plenty of space and I'm excited to actually see it. Moving on to Thursday. So Thursday is our full Magic Kingdom day. And that is originally why I chose this resort so we could just be super close to Magic Kingdom. When you stay at the Contemporary Resort or Bay Lake Towers, you actually have your own security when you're walking over to Magic Kingdom that you get to go through before you get to the park. So once you get to the park, all you have to do is go through the ticket stalls. And I just find these security lines to be much easier to get through. It's not that it's less strict, it's just less traffic. So I feel like you won't get tagged as much as maybe you know the regular security when it's just a lot of people walking through. So I love having this option. We are going to wake up early. I know we're probably not going to have a lot of sleep, but it's the beginning of our trip. We're going to be ready to go. And Magic Kingdom is my daughter's favorite park, and there's just a lot we're going to want to do. Plus, I am buying Lightning Lane multi-pass and single passes for this park. So when you buy multipass, in my opinion, you need to get to the park as early as you can and just start doing your rides, getting the new rides. And that's the best way to utilize this service and you know get your money's worth. I actually looked at purchasing the Premiere Pass. We bought the Premiere Pass last summer when we went. I am gonna do a whole episode about the Premiere Pass because I loved having it. However, the pricing for it for this trip was absolutely insane. It's going to be$449 a person. I cannot, I just, I don't even know who is purchasing this because that is absolutely bonkers. I added up how much multi-pass and then the two single passes are gonna be. It's like$73 a person. So I'm gonna be out of pocket, like$150 as opposed to$800,$900. But, anyways, back to the morning. So we are gonna wake up early, get ready, pack our things, which we shouldn't really be that unpacked. We're gonna take our bags, drop them off in the car, and then we're gonna walk on over to Magic Kingdom. I my goal for this is to try to get Tron for early, get Space Mountain for early, and then my other two multi-pass options I want to get at this time would be Haunted Mansion, because sometimes that one can be hard to get. And then possibly Speedway. I know that might sound insane, but depending, we're just gonna try. My goal for this morning is to go over to Tomorrowland first. We never do tomorrow land first, we usually do it close to the end of the day, and it's crazy packed. So I'm going to just try a new strategy on this trip and do Tomorrowland first. So the idea is to do Speedway. My daughter loves Speedway, Space Mountain Tron People Mover, if we didn't do it the night before, Astro Orbiter, unless we did it the night before, and then probably Carousella Progress. We might wait on that one, but then head on over after that across the park and do Adventureland, Frontierland, and then kind of finish the day in fantasy land, and then just grabbing the shows here and there because we're gonna try to do it all. So that would be Monsters Zing Laugh Floor, that would be Mickey's Phil Hermagic, Country Bear Jamboree, and then Carousella Progress, which we love. So that's kind of the idea. We might just head over to Tomorrowland and do the rides, do the rides in the other parts, and then kind of finish the day with some of the shows bouncing around. It's also easier to get the multi-pass for the shows. They don't technically, you know, sell out, quote unquote. So that's kind of the thought process there. I'm also going to be purchasing Seven Dwarfs Mind Train, and I'm gonna purchase that probably for the evening since we're gonna be doing Tron in the morning. We always do Tron at night. I just I want to try something new this year. Also, just mixed in is lots of shopping. We do have a beacon barrel reservation this day at 325. So we will head over and do that. The idea here is just to kind of see the inside of this. You know, it's a new lounge that kids can go to. So on my last trip, I didn't feel like I needed to do it because I knew I'd be able to do this with my daughter. Plus, she has a really cute pair of ears that I purchased for her that are pirate themed that she wanted, and so I thought this would this would be fun for her to get to wear a cute pirate outfit and go to this bar. So we will see what that is like. Aside from that reservation, we're really just going to be doing quick service. Some of our favorite quick service here is the waffle from Sleepy Hollow. We also love Gaston's Tavern for just maybe another breakfast treat to eat. We also love the flatbreads from Pinocchio's Village House. I know I'm probably in the minority here. We love those flatbreads and we like to sit where we can see it's a small world. It's really fun, or go upstairs to eat. Like either of those options for us is just really fun. Other things that we're gonna try to do is the carousel. I haven't done the carousel since I think my first trip with my kids, which was like 2014. It's been a really long time, so I would like to do the carousel. We haven't done demo in a few years, so doing demo would be fun. I we also might grab food at Columbia Harbor House if we're hungry. My daughter doesn't eat a lot, so I'm not predicting we're gonna be getting a ton of food and probably just be snacking mostly this day. I do want to take time to watch the parade. She will be marching in the parade in this summer with her dance school. She's never actually seen the parade, so I think it would be fun for us to just take the time, sit somewhere, watch the parade. Other than that, we don't have a specific time that we want to leave by. So if we just kind of get the things done that we want to get done, and if we're feeling tired or if we want to stay till the park closes, I'm down for any of it. I really don't care. She's already mentioned that she doesn't care if we watch the fireworks, so I think we might pass on the fireworks and just do rides or just leave. Just depends how we're feeling. We will be doing lots of shopping though because her and I do love to shop, especially at Magic Kingdom. So once we're done, we will just walk back over to Bay Lake Tower, get in our car, and drive over to our next resort, which is the Art of Animation. And we are staying in the Finding Nemo family suite. We have stayed at Art of Animation before. So my rule for myself is if I'm staying at the same resort that I've already been at, I need to stay in a different type of room. So the first time we stayed here was actually my daughter's very first trip to Walt Disney World back in 2021, and we stayed in a car suite. We actually loved this room and we loved this resort. So I'm really excited to stay in the Finding Nemo suite just because it has a better location in the park. It's very close to the skyliner, also all the dining areas as well. It is as well close to the pool. I'm not really sure if we're gonna be swimming at all on this trip because it is so short. I think we're just going to be spending most of our time in the parks, but you never know. We come home or come back to our resort one evening, kind of early-ish, we might decide to swim. But we're gonna head over there and check in. Our room should definitely be ready because I don't foresee us getting there anytime early. So we'll just park and head over to our room. And I'm excited to see it and just be at this resort again, kind of nostalgic. I don't typically double stay at resorts, so but I am actually really looking forward to staying at this resort. Friday is our Epcot day. So we will, I don't think we're gonna wake up early this day. I mean, definitely not necessarily sleep in, but not like rope drop this park and do early entry. I think we'll sleep in a little bit and then head over to the park sometime mid-morning. We're gonna take the skyliner, of course. I mean, that is one of the reasons we are staying at this resort. So we have Skyliner access. Once we get over to Epcot, we'll be at the International Gateway. We will probably just turn left to go over to the front of the park where most of the rides are. As of now, I think that for our lightning lanes, I'm going to choose Rimmi's, Soren, and Living with the Land, and then get a single pass or yes, a single pass for cosmic rewind. That is Amelia's favorite ride. So we're definitely going to be doing that. So we will just turn left, unless for some reason I can get an early Remy's. If I can get an early Rimmy's, we'll go over to France and do that and maybe get a crepe for breakfast. I've kind of always wanted to try that for breakfast, never have, so we might do that. That might be our plan. Then we'll head over through London and the England area and head up to the front of the park where we will do all the other rides, just kind of hang out up there for, you know, probably the earlier half of the day doing all the things and seeing all the things. There are some fun flower and garden things that I would like to do, like walk through the butterfly exhibit. We've never done that, so I'd like to do that. Just kind of the rides that I think we're gonna focus on for this portion of the day would be Living with the Land, Soren. We'll do single rider for Test Track, and then we'll do Spaceship Earth. Of course, Cosmic Rewind, probably Stop and Club cool because Amelia thinks that's fun. And you know, if she thinks it's fun, I will go along with it as well. I don't think we'll do mission space. The last time we did that, she didn't love it. And I don't, I think it's usually not a long way, but just the whole process of going in the ride and watching the videos. I just am not sure if it's worth it. After we're done up there, we'll head back into the world showcase. We'll buy the little scavenger hunts that you can do because I love doing those. I've heard that the Easter egg one will be there, which I've never had the opportunity to do, so I'm actually really excited about that. So we'll do that one as well, and then we will just spend the rest of the day enjoying the world showcase. We'll start in Mexico and just kind of make our way around. One thing that she definitely wants to do is eat lunch at lunch or dinner, depending on timing, at Ketchera Grill. She loves the chicken teriyaki. She's already asked me, can we eat that? So that's kind of the plan for there. If I can get a lightning lane for frozen, I'd like to do that. We haven't done frozen in a really long time just because we kind of prioritize Rimmies over Frozen, but they do have the new faces on the animatronics. So I would be, I am curious to see that, but she's not like, I definitely want to do that. So I'm not gonna use one of our lightning lanes on that unless it opens up and I have the chance to use it. I would also like to take time to see the voices of Liberty. That's one of my absolute favorite things to do in Epcot. So hopefully we'll get to do that. But yeah, we're just gonna kind of spend our day enjoying the flower and garden festival, trying some of the festival foods, browsing all the shops. We love the big shop in Japan, so we'll definitely stop there. One of kind of our traditions that her and I like to do is get foot detox pads and other beauty products while we're there, like some bath salts and stuff. And since we're staying at Art of Animation, we will have a bathtub. So we always like to do fun things like that. And we like to put the foot pads on at night after the park days because it actually really helps with your tired feet, I promise. I'm not sure if we'll stay for fireworks. I could really, I'm not a huge Epcot firework person. If we have time, I would like to walk over to Beach Club or Boardwalk and see their Easter egg display. I'm not sure if we'll have time, but if we do, that's something that I would like to do. But other than that, we'll just hit up the skyliner when we're ready to go back to the resort and head back. Then we are to Saturday, which is our last day. Now our flight does not leave till 9.50, so we practically have an entire day. The idea is to wake up early, so I'm kind of hoping we don't get back too late on a Friday night, but you know it's a short trip, so we can we can go with a little lack of sleep. But we are going to wake up early, we are going to pack everything up and then load up the car and head over to Animal Kingdom. Over here, we have two goals. One is to ride Everest, and the other is to ride Flight of Passage. Now I'm not going to be buying multipass for this park because after Animal Kingdom, we are gonna go to Hollywood Studios for the majority of our day. So I'm gonna buy multipass at Hollywood Studios, but I am going to buy single pass for flight of Passage. So just depending on the timing for that, we'll either go do Everest first or we'll do Flight of Passage, just kind of see what happens with all that timing. We will stop and do some shops in Animal Kingdom. I love the mercantile stores, right? Kind of when you're walking into the park. I think they're some of my favorite stores to shop at. So we'll definitely stop there. We might even grab breakfast at Satuly Canteen or just get the Pongo Lumpia and some boba at the little drink standover in Pandora. After we finish at Animal Kingdom, we will just drive over to Hollywood Studios, and that's where we plan on spending the rest of our day. So over here, I'm going to try to grab us on the multipass, Toy Story Mania, Slinky Dog, and then maybe Tower of Terror. We I actually could have been, I told Amelia I could pass on this park. She really likes this park, so she wants to go ahead and do it. So we'll just see. While we're here, I would like to watch the Beauty and the Beast Stage show. I've never seen that, so I think that would be fun to see. If we have time to watch the villain show, I would like to watch that as well because I've never seen that. Otherwise, other rides that we would like to do while we are here is the Alien Swirling Saucers. I'm sorry, I could not think of the name of it. Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. And I think that might be it. She's not really a big Star Wars fan. We might walk back over there and get the Coldbrew coffee because we do like that. But other than that, I'm really not sure if we're going to spend any time in that area. So that is kind of the nice thing about ending with these two parks, is we just kind of have the few things that we would really like to do. Plus, this, you know, park also has some great shopping as well. I am thinking I am going to be checking the security line times. That's you can find that on the MCO online. So I will be checking that to kind of see if it's good we're going to be facing some along security lines. We do have pre-check, but with kind of the stuff going on right now with travel, I'm not sure what that's going to look like for us. But the idea is to kind of leave this park around 6 p.m. If we can leave around 6 p.m., I think that's going to give us more than enough time. We actually might try to leave later. Might try to leave around 7 p.m. That'll put us at the airport or probably around 7.30. It's still like two hours before our flight. So I think that's what we're going to try to do. But we should definitely be able to get everything done this day. A tool that I've used on my last two trips that I've really enjoyed is Weight Magic. I'm not sure if y'all are familiar with Weight Magic, and by no way am I sponsored by them. I would absolutely love that, but I am not. But it's a tool that you can use and they can modify your lightning lanes for you. So when I get my lightning lanes, the window for me opens up on Wednesday and unfortunately Thursday because I'm doing a split stay. I'm gonna have to do it two mornings in a row. But when I go ahead and get that, I can then, if I'm not happy with the times and or the ride that I got, I can go into Weight Magic and ask them to modify my options for me. And this tool is actually shockingly fantastic. It works so well. So if I get like a slinky dog that is too late in the day, or if I don't even get it at all, I can just leave that spot open and ask them to try to grab it for me. So when you book a multipass, you don't actually have to book every single ride. You can leave a spot open. So I might just do that because typically Mickey and Minnie's is pretty easy to get, or that line just isn't as long as Slinky. And I could be wishful thinking because it is going to be spring break season, but that's kind of my plan how I'm gonna move forward with that. So that is our trip. I'm so excited to be going to be back at Disney. I haven't been to Disney in the spring in a really long time, and it's actually one of my favorite times to go, so I'm really excited. I love flower and garden. It's my favorite festival, so I cannot wait to get back and spend some time just, you know, at Disney. It's been a few months, so I'm definitely due for a vacation. I just want to say thanks to anyone who's left me a positive review. It means the world to me. If you haven't yet, I would love if you would go to Apple Podcasts and just leave a five-star review and tell me why you like the podcast. I read all the reviews, and so I would really appreciate that. It's a super easy way to support the podcast and it's free. If you're wanting to travel to Disney, you can head to the show notes and click on the link to my quote forms, and we can start planning today if you would like. I will be doing a trip report recap for this trip, but that won't be ready next Monday. So next Monday, come back for a new episode all about Epic Universe over at Universal. We visited Epic last October, and I have some thoughts about it, and I'd love to share it with you and let you know what our experience was. If you are on spring break, I hope you're having a wonderful time. If your spring break is coming up soon, I'm looking forward to it for you. And until next time, this is Jenny, and may all your Disney travel dreams become a reality.