Tips for Spending a Single Day at Disney World

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

You’re in Orlando for the day and want to spend your free time at Walt Disney World. Is that even possible? Yes!

Sure, in a perfect world, you’d take your time and savor your visit by eating, drinking, and shopping your way through the parks.

Sometimes, we must work with what we’ve got, though, and some Disney is night and day better than no Disney.

So, here are a few tips for spending a single day at Walt Disney World.

Make a Decision

Before you even touch down in Orlando, you should make a decision.

You must pick which Disney theme park you’d prefer during your visit.

While I’ll still suggest a Park Hopper admission ticket for reasons I’m about to explain, your primary opponent is time.

Even when you wake up first thing in the morning and stay until Cast Members kick you out at night, you’re still limited in time.

So, you don’t want to waste time waiting on buses or boats to transport you to other parks.

Monorails and the Disney Skyliner are a bit more reliable for quick transportation. The general problem remains, though.

When you only have maybe 12 hours at Disney, you don’t want to spend a significant amount of time switching parks.

Your best bet is to prioritize one theme park over the others, which means you need a strong understanding of each one.

Pick the Right Park

At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, you’re choosing to spend the day petting the animals and enjoying interactive exhibits.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios leans hard the other way, as it’s primarily a park for rides, with some shows thrown in for good measure.

Realistically, when you only have one day, you should gravitate toward EPCOT or Magic Kingdom, though.

At EPCOT, you can enjoy a bit more of a relaxing day, albeit one with plenty of walking.

You’ll have your choice of rides at the front of the park or shows and experiences at the World Showcase.

So, you’ll find plenty to do here, and you’ll have the added bonus of the finest cuisine of any theme park in the world.

Should you visit during a festival – and there’s about a 60 percent chance of that – you’ll find exclusive merchandise and activities, too.

Still, for most people, Magic Kingdom is probably the best choice for a single-day visit due to the sheer volume of experiences.

You’ll never lack for entertainment opportunities at this park, which explains why it’s the most popular one in the world.

Maximize Your Time

I’d strongly encourage you to read MickeyBlog’s wait time articles before your visit.

With this information, you’ll better understand the most popular rides at the park, at least in terms of time spent standing in line.

In a perfect world, you’d rather not wait in attraction queues for a disproportionate portion of your visit. That’s not fun, right?

You want to do and see as much as humanly possible. That way, you can brag to your friends about everything you did.

The catch is that you may need to sacrifice a few E-ticket experiences like Tron Lightcycle / Run.

Otherwise, you’re dedicating ten percent (or more) of your entire visit to a single ride, which isn’t ideal.

I’d recommend that you focus on some of the iconic attractions at the park like Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and It’s a Small World.

Combine them with attractions that are high-quality but virtually walk-on to guarantee you do a lot during your visit.

Options include the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover, Country Bear Musical Jamboree, Mickey’s PhilharMagic, and Mad Tea Party.

The same strategy works at EPCOT as well. During a full day here, you can probably ride everything at the park.

However, you can drop one of Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure or Frozen Ever After if it doesn’t appeal to you or you’ve done it a lot.

In that scenario, you reduce the amount of time you spend standing in line to very little, thereby increasing your enjoyment.

During a single-day visit, I feel strongly that you should be in pure tourist mode.

You want to eat, drink, and shop as much as anything else. So, build your itinerary around those options.

Mobile Ordering for the Win

Disney introduced Mobile Ordering in 2017. The early reception to it was icy at best.

Park officials practically begged customers to try it, but few would.

Everything changed during the pandemic, as society warmed to the idea of online meal purchases.

Nowadays, Mobile Ordering is the default option for many, maybe even most, park guests.

You should learn the ins and outs of the process to maximize your park visit. MickeyBlog has posted a full guide to help.

By using Mobile Ordering, you take full control of the timing of your visit.

You won’t wait in line for your meal. Instead, you can stand in line at an attraction, pull out your phone, and order a meal.

When you’re ready to eat, signal the restaurant to prepare your food. It should be waiting when you arrive.

This sounds like a small thing, but it vastly improves your efficiency during your visit.

I reiterate that a few minutes here or there can make all the difference.

Let’s say that you save 30 minutes by using Mobile Ordering for your meals. That basically buys you another ride!

Consider Lightning Lane

Okay, I realize you’d rather spend your vacation money on things like food, drinks, and (especially) merchandise.

When you buy souvenirs, you have lasting keepsakes from your vacation.

Conversely, a Lightning Lane purchase doesn’t help much after your visitation date.

Sure, you’ll make memories during your visit, but I’d still classify it as more of a temporary, quickly forgotten purchase.

Even allowing for that reality, you should still consider Lightning Lane Multi Pass or possibly even Premier Pass for your trip.

Premier Pass costs about as much as an Apple Watch for a single day of usage at one (and only one) theme park.

However, you can enter the Lightning Lane for every qualifying attraction at the park.

At Magic Kingdom, you basically break the wait time economy with Premier Pass.

I’m not joking when I say that you can do virtually everything at the park in a single day.

Tourists have figured this out, which explains why Premier Pass is selling so well at Magic Kingdom.

For those unwilling to spend $350+ for this upsell, Lightning Lane Multi Pass is a viable option.

You should manage to book half a dozen Lightning Lanes during your visit, which may double the amount of attractions you experience.

That’s very strong value for a price of $25-$40 at Magic Kingdom or even less at the other three parks.

You’re adding a significant amount to your park visit for what’s pretty much the price of an Applebee’s meal.

Consider Park Hopper

As I mentioned, you don’t want to spend much time moving between Disney theme parks.

Still, you should consider Park Hopper if you don’t mind a fairly aggressive day at Walt Disney World.

And you shouldn’t mind that anyway since you know what you’re signing up for with a single-day visit. It’s gonna be intense.

So, you may consider starting the day at a park that opens earlier. Then, you switch to one that stays open later.

With Park Hopper admission, you can do that, and it maximizes your purchase and park visit.

You’ll squeeze a couple more hours from your single day at Walt Disney World.

Yes, you’ll sacrifice a bit of that while awaiting Disney transportation. That’s why you should know how this works.

The bus system at Disney is notoriously mercurial, especially early in the day.

During a single-day visit, you definitely shouldn’t start at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

It’ll take too long to get anywhere else unless you pay for a rideshare.

However, EPCOT is an ideal park as part of a Park Hopper strategy.

You can either ride the Skyliner to Hollywood Studios or the monorail to Magic Kingdom.

So, you’ll have more efficient transportation options and thereby less time wasted traveling from park to park.

These are the types of considerations you should make before you arrive at Disney.

Presuming that you choose wisely, you’ll be shocked by how much you can do during a single day at Walt Disney World!

Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below, and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond Level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon!