Why You Should Use MickeyTravels — Lightning Lane Edition

In seven days, I’ll be at Walt Disney World. So, I performed one of the parks’ 2020 rituals this morning…and it didn’t go great.

Despite the fact that I’ve visited Disney World hundreds of times, I still mess up sometimes.

This morning, I documented my experience to make a point. Here’s why you should use a MickeyTravels agent: the Lightning Lane edition.

The Setting

I’m visiting Walt Disney World starting on Tuesday, May 26^th.

That date is notable because it’s right after Memorial Day, which means one thing.

The parks will be VERY crowded as the holiday crew stays in town for a while.We’re only spending a few days at Disney World this time and have a few high-priority targets.

Here’s our list of must-do attractions during our visit:

• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
• Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin
• Cool Kids’ Summer
• Disney Jr. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Live!
• Frozen Ever After
• The Little Mermaid – A Musical Adventure
• Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run (new mission)
• Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure
• Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets
• Soarin’ Across America
• Test Track
• TRON Lightcycle / Run
• Villains United: Unfairly Ever After
• The Walt Disney Studios Walkthrough and Character Greetings
• Zootopia: Better Zoogether!

I’d like to include Bluey’s Wild World in here, but I’d feel like a jerk if I did.

Since Disney is employing a virtual queue, we’d be taking this experience from a family if we booked a reservation.

I’m not about to do that, which has the side benefit of allowing us to split a day.

We will start at Disney’s Animal Kingdom but then finish at Magic Kingdom. We’re also splitting our Wednesday between Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom.

My traveling party will only be in the latter park for Extended Evening Hours.

That’s when we will ride TRON during this trip, presuming everything goes according to plan.

Here’s the thing about Disney vacations, though. Things rarely go to plan. This morning proved a blueprint example of this fact.

Trying to Book Lightning Lanes at 7 AM

I often joke that I’m not a morning person, but it’s also not a joke.

At 2 AM, I was wide awake and writing, but I knew I had to be up at 6:55 AM.

That’s when our booking window opened for our trip, allowing us to buy Lightning Lanes.

My wife and I rarely take impulse vacations. This trip is one, though. We only set it up a month ago, and it has included virtually no planning.

I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to get ahead on my work to account for the vacation.

So, I haven’t plotted my vacation day itineraries as intensely as usual.

At one point, we learned that a friend of ours, a Cast Member, can join us. She will meet us at the parks on two of the first three days.

Since none of this was really organized, we have tried adapting our plans as we go along.

The one thing we knew was that to achieve all our plans, we’d need Lightning Lanes.

Several of the must-do attractions I mentioned are debuting the week of our visit.

A few are beginning on that day! So, yeah, it’s gonna be chaos.

I needed to keep my wits about me, which is always hard at 7 AM. As planned, I woke up five minutes early, prepped my account, and was ready. Or so I thought.

Lightning Lane Mistake #1

When the booking window opened, I immediately noticed a problem.

Our Cast Member friend owns an annual pass, requiring them to make Park Passes.

They did so for one day but hadn’t yet for another, which is a glaring problem.

Disney doesn’t enable Lightning Lane purchases for people without valid park admission.

So, we couldn’t book her Lightning Lanes for that day.A MickeyTravels agent would have reminded us of that fact immediately.

We didn’t think about the problem until it was already too late.

I only noticed once I tried to book our Lightning Lanes in real time.

Speaking of which, Disney would have been no help on this front.

Do you know when I received the push notification to buy Lightning Lanes?

That message reached my phone at 11:55 AM, long after we’d completed the process.

I’ll toss in the fact that some of our top Lightning Lane choices had already sold out. A MickeyTravels agent would have known that since they book these reservations daily.

Lightning Lane Mistake #2

We purchased Lightning Lanes for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Our Tuesday park visit was at EPCOT, so we targeted:

• Test Track (Tier One)
• Soarin’ Across America (Tier Two)
• Spaceship Earth (Tier Two)

The only new attraction next week is Soarin’, so we expected a struggle there.

Sure enough, the times that Disney suggested were atrocious. Here’s where I remind you of a pro tip: You can modify your time!

As you’re booking, take the three selections that you want.

Before you confirm, try to modify them to better times. Earlier is what you want.

The sooner you use Lightning Lanes, the sooner you can book another.

Since we also want to do Frozen and Ratatouille, that’s important.

Alas, fate wasn’t on our side. So, we ended up with these reservations:

• Spaceship Earth: 2:35 – 3:35 PM
• Soarin’ Across America: 5:45 – 6:45 PM
• Test Track: 7:50 – 8:50 PM

Technically, we got what we wanted, but you can see that this setup is rough.

We’ll need to stay at the park all day to experience everything we want. A MickeyTravels agent would have known the system better and found us better times.

Day Two Went Okay, But…

The Hollywood Studios morning went wrong right from the start.

Right off the bat, I noticed that Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets had sold out.

We never even got a shot at our top priority on this trip. The good news is that we will participate in Early Theme Park Entry.

We expect to experience this ride first thing that day, although that still may be a 60-90-minute wait.

Even with Early Theme Park Entry, I’m expecting a massive line on day one.

For this reason, I’m happy with our first booking at Hollywood Studios that day.

As for the rest of them, well, we’ll make adjustments later. Here’s what we wanted:

• Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run (Tier One)
• The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (Tier Two)
• Toy Story Mania! (Tier Two)

Here’s what we got:

• Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run: 10:15 – 11:15 AM
• The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror: 3:55 — 4:55 PM
• Toy Story Mania!: 7:00 – 8:00 PM

Yeah, two of those aren’t great, which means I’ll spend the next few days tweaking.

Hopefully, I can get the later experiences pushed earlier in the day. Otherwise, I’ll have the same problem as with EPCOT.

My traveling party won’t maximize our Lightning Lane purchase with the current setup.

Realistically, we’ll be lucky to book five Lightning Lanes as things stand.

A MickeyTravels agent could have hooked us up with a much tighter itinerary.

We’re still relatively satisfied, as beggars can’t be choosy the day after Memorial Day.

We got the Lightning Lanes we wanted, just at terrible times.

Disney fans vastly prefer that option over getting shut out entirely.

Day Three

We cannot complain about our day three schedule at all. While this setup didn’t go perfectly, it went smoother than most.

We had hoped for these three Lightning Lanes:

• Expedition Everest
• Kilimanjaro Safaris
• Na’vi River Journey

Disney’s Animal Kingdom doesn’t use tiering for its Lightning Lanes.

However, those are typically the three most popular options.

As such, we didn’t know what to expect on the third day of Bluey.

What appears to have happened is that fans didn’t want to commit here.

Since they won’t know about their Virtual Queue results until that matter, they kept their schedule free.

For this reason, our Lightning Lanes feature an ideal timeframe for our needs:

• Kilimanjaro Safaris: 8:40 – 9:40 AM
• Expedition Everest: 9:40 – 10:40 AM
• Na’vi River Journey: 10:45 – 11:45 AM

Since my wife always wants to eat lunch at Satu’li Canteen, this is perfect.

We enter the park at Early Theme Park Entry and head to Avatar Flight of Passage.

Then, we go north to Kilimanjaro Safaris and then east to Expedition Everest. Afterward, we return to Pandora – The World of Avatar for a ride and a meal.

Once that’s done, I suspect we’ll watch Zootopia! and then Park Hop to Magic Kingdom.

So, this itinerary allows us to maximize our day to the best of our ability.

In fact, we can start checking for Magic Kingdom Lightning Lanes by 11 AM.

Reviewing Our Missteps

We’re visiting Disney World for four days and will use Lightning Lanes on three of them.

When I handled the scheduling myself, I went one for three.

Given how much I paid for my Lightning Lanes, that’s just brutal.

We’re spending $35 per person at EPCOT and $37 per person at Hollywood Studios. For that price, we would prefer better times and also, in a perfect world, RnR Starring The Muppets.

We only got that on the third day at Animal Kingdom when the tickets cost just $19 each.

So, that date is the only one where we feel like we’re getting great value.

Should this happen to you, I reiterate that you can modify your Lightning Lane times. You can do this when you book or later if you don’t want to risk losing what you have.

Why You Should Use a MickeyTravels Agent    

A MickeyTravels agent would have reminded us that a member of our party needs a Park Pass.

Then, they would have ensured that we all booked our Lightning Lanes as a group.

During the booking process, they would have known what was available.

We wasted time trying to book an RnR Lightning Lane that just wasn’t an option.

We also had one final hiccup I haven’t mentioned yet.

My wife and I both use Disney Rewards cards via our credit cards. Some of our Lightning Lanes should have ostensibly been paid for by those cards. They weren’t because the app kept displaying an error when we tried.

So, we had to pay out of pocket instead. Our MickeyTravels agent would have known about the issue.

You must enter the full card number again, even if it’s saved in your Disney Wallet.

Otherwise, the system will reject the payment. AI even taunted me on this one.

I did a Google search to determine what I was doing wrong. The AI result led with, “You can easily pay for Lightning Lanes with a Disney Rewards Card…”

I really wanted to go Sarah Connor on the AI right then and there. 

My wife and I could have slept in and saved ourselves a ton of aggravation.

All we needed to do was use MickeyTravels for our booking.

This seems like a good time to mention that MickeyTravels agents offer their services for free.

We were total idiots. Be smarter than us and use a Diamond Earmarked agency instead.

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. One of the agents from MickeyTravels, an EarMarked By Disney – Authorized Travel Agency – Diamond Level, will be in touch soon!

Feature photo: Disney