The View from Scopa Towers

Alright! You’ve been given some time to think it over. Just how would you be able to navigate through the four Walt Disney World theme parks under the parameters set by yours truly?

It takes some thought; some planning; and probably a little luck.

I’ve put some thought into this and I’m ready to share my thoughts with you.

Here is what I came up with:

• First, if possible, I would try and pull this stunt off on a day that offers both an Extra Magic Hour Evening Hour Morning in one park and an Extra Magic Hour Evening in another park. If both occur on the same day then potentially I am looking at an extra four hours of touring time to complete my park touring requirements. Every minute counts so the strategy here is to look for a way to get more time.
• If there are no days with this combination of both an EMH Morning and EMH Evening then I would look for a day in which either EPCOT or Magic Kingdom has an Extra Magic Hour Evening and focus on that day. The preference here would be the Magic Kingdom because Spectromagic and Wishes would play a big part of my plan but either park will work.
• My thoughts are that it would be wise to use a combination of both a rental car and Disney Transportation to go from one park to another…you’ll understand how when you read my plan later on.
• The more in your travel party the slower you move so my plan says try this with no more than three other friends. If I go beyond four in my travel party then there is a greater chance that there may be times when the party will need to wait to get on certain attractions…not to mention getting around in a car. So to maximize my potential for success, I’m doing this solo or with just one other person.
• I plan to stretch out my eating plans. I’m thinking that I will eat at my resort before going to my first park. This breakfast has to hold me for a long time. I want a lot behind me before I stop to eat lunch. Preferably I want to eat lunch towards the end of my time in park number two but realize that due to attraction queues lunch may happen in park number three and dinner in park number four.

My Attraction Strategy

Before I go into my detailed plan let me discuss my thoughts on how to attack the attraction touring portion of this plan:

• For the attractions I will focus on will be those which I feel move guests in and out of the attraction as quickly as possible. So, I will be looking to ride any attraction that is a constant loading attraction, that is, one with continuous moving ride vehicles thatnever stop.
• The proximity of certain attractions to each other will also play a key role in making the most of my time in the parks. Travel time between parks is important but so is travel time between attractions.
• Now here’s an interesting thought. FastPass may be more of an enemy in this challenge than an ally. Sure early in the morning it may help but come afternoon the FP distribution times usually run from four to as many as six hours out. So it may be better to wait 40 minutes in stand-by as opposed to waiting four hours to make use of a FastPass.
• Diversions. I will make good use of diversions. By diversions I mean parades or fireworks, or anything that draws crowds away from attractions. You’d be surprised as to how much you can do in a theme park during a diversion.

The Plan

I'm not sure if there is any type of barometer that can be used to determine what is the best way to do this little challenge. We all have our favorite parks and favorite attractions so we all have different takes on what would work well for an approach to accomplish this feat.

For me, my thought is to try not to necessarily do this as fast as I can and do so in some commando mode but to try and do it without running from park to park and attraction to attraction.

So after much thought, here is what I came up with for doing four parks in one day:

• The day I've chosen to do this challenge is Thursday, July 3, 2008 because on that day Disney's Animal Kingdom, my first park of the day, will be offerring Extra Magic Morning Hours and that evening The Magic Kingdom will be hosting Extra Magic Evening Hours. So this means that the turnstiles at Disney's Animal Kingdom will be open for me at 8:00 A.M. and later that night Magic Kingdom will be open to me until 1:00 A.M. Sure it may be hot and may be crowded but this 17 hour window offers me the best chance to do this challenge.
• I will get up as early as possible so I can be at the Animal Kingdom turnstiles around 7:30 or so. This means either eating an early and quick meal at one of my resort's eateries or having something in my room. My preference is to have a little breakfast snack in the room...either way I'm pulling into the DAK parking lot no later than 7:00 A.M.

Park #1 - Disney's Animal Kingdom

Here's how I will attack my first park of the day:

1. It's 7:30 and I am already at the turnstiles. When I get into the park I walk over to Expedition Everest and grab a FastPass. I then go to Kali River Rapids. Why? Well everyone else is doing the Safari or Everest so I can get my first attraction (KRR) out of the way real fast. My guess is that I can be out of Kali River Rapids by 8:30. One attraction down.
2. Time to use my Expedition Everest FastPass. Most likely my FastPass distribution time is probably for sometime between 9:00 and 10:00. No problem. If I go on Everest somewhere between 9:00 and 9:30 I will be off the attraction no later than 9:45. Two attractions down.
3. At this point my guess is that my best choice would be Dinosaur. It is one of those attractions which some people do not like because it's loud, rough, and downright scary. That translates into a short queue. It's also not that long of a walk from Everest to Dinosaur.If I can get into Dinosaur somewhere in the vicinity of 10:00 to 10:15 then I could very well find myself leaving Disney's Animal Kingdom around 11:00, if not sooner. One park down.
4. Since I got to the park early I may not need to wait for the traim to take me to the parking lot and my rental car. I may be parked close enough to the park entrance to walk to the car...another reason why I arrived to the park so early.

My next park in this challenge is Disney's Hollywood Studios.

Park #2 - Disney's Hollywood Studios

I chose as my second park of the day because this park is really suited only for being park number two. It cannot serve as my first park because the attractions aren't open until mid morning. It cannot be my third park because that would mean I would be in the smallest of the four theme parks in mid to late afternoon, and of course it cannot replace Magic Kingdom on this day because Magic Kingdom offers Extra Magic Hours in the evening and two diversions which will lower the queues for my targeted attractions.

Here we go:

1. Let's assume that worse case scenario, I am going through the Studios turnstiles at 11 A.M. My first stop is the SuperGreeter Board at the the corner of Hollywood Bvd. and Sunset Blvd. to check out the waiting times. The first bit of information is to determine which of the two attractions, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror or Rock 'N' Roller Coaster, have less than an hour wait. The second important piece of information is to find out what the FastPass distribution times are for both of them.
2. I will grab a FastPass for the attraction with the longest queue and get in line for the other attraction. My guess is that the Fast Pass Distribution time will be somwhere between two and three hours out. So that tells me that in that time I should focus on doing two other attractions and try to eat lunch. The one flaw in this plan is that I really cannot risk eating lunch too soon before doing either the Tower or RnRC.
3. Let's assume RnRC has the longer line. I will then grab a FastPass for that attraction and get in line for the Tower. Now I'm guessing that if it's around 11:30 or so that my FastPass will have a distribution time of somewhere between 1:30 and 2:30. Let's say it's a 45 minute wait for the Tower. I emerge from that attraction somewhere around 12:30-12:45. I should be able to squeeze in attraction #2 before my RnRC FastPass time arrives.
4. I check the board again...what has shorter lines...Toy Story Mania, Star Tours, or The Great Movie Ride? My guess is that it's Star Tours...Toy Story Mania is new and will be crowded...TGMR is always packed in the afternoon during the summer...and compared to TGMR and TSM, Star Tours will almost always have the shorter queue line.
5. The assumption is that I arrive at Star Tours around 1:00 and get on the attraction no less than 45 minutes later. I thus emerge from the attraction around 2:00 and head over to use my RnRC FP. To be fair I must assume that it will still be at least a 15-20 minute wait even with my FP. I thus assume I'm walking out of the attraction sometime around 3 P.M.
6. I need to eat lunch so I stop off at Cantina Eddie's for some pizza and a drink to fulfill the lunch requirement before heading out the turnstiles sometime around 3:45 or so.

Park #2 is complete. I drive to EPCOT.

Park #3 - EPCOT

With luck I'm walking through the EPCOT turnstiles no later than 4:30.

I'm glad I stopped for a quick linch at the Studios. It's all attractions for this park.

For EPCOT there are some options I have to consider. To save time I will do eithe the tandem of Test Track and the Gran Fiesta Tour or Oh Canada and Soarin' as ther first two and the last two are relatively close in distance. The other attraction I will focus on is Spaceship Earth because it is a constnat loading attraction.

1. Once again, first stop is the Supergreeter Board to get information on wait times.. Now here is where it gets tricky. It's late afternoon and probably not a good idea to look at FastPasses as they may have distribution times that go into early evening. I will still check but remember it's summer time with lots of crowds. The question that I know I must answer is whether I do Soarin' or Test Track. That decision will determine my World Showcase attraction.
2. I will assume Test Track will have the shorter wait...plus there's always the possibility of getting on quickly via the single passenger line. before getting in line I check the FP distribution times. If it's less than two hours I may go for it, head to Mexico, and possibly try to squeeze in Spaceship Earth too, although I prefer not to backtrack.
3. Let's assume I get into the Test Track standby queue and am out of there by 6 P.M.
4. I head over to Mexico and party with the three Caballeros and step off that attraction by 6:45.
5. With luck I'm entering my Spaceship Earth ride vehicle sometime around 7 P.M.,
6. I should be walking out of the EPCOT turnstiles around 7:30.
7. I need to save time so I head to the monorail and go to the Ticket and Transportation Center and switch to the Magic Kingdom Express Monorail.

Next and final stop is The Magic Kingdom.

Park #4 - The Magic Kingdom

If I can get to the Magic Kingdom before 8 P.M. I'll be estatic but realistically I will probably go through the turnstiles around 8:30.

1. The first thing I do is get my wristband for Extra Magic hours.
2. Time to eat. Where. Columbia Harbor House because it's centrally located in the park.
3. My guess is that everyone is lining up for Spectromagic, one of the diversions I had mentioned earlier. So after I emerge from a quick supper I head over to Haunted Mansion. Hopefully I'm out of the Haunted Mansion no later than 10 P.M.
4. Wishes may be just about to start so while everyone heads to the front of the park to watch Wishes I make my way over to Splash Mountain.
5. I should be able to gauge which of the two, Splash Mountain, or Big Thunder Mountain has the shorter queue. Whoever does have the shorter line will have me as a guest that night.
6. My guess is that it's now about 10:30 to 10:45 and I have one more attraction to do...and it's Prirates of the Caribbean.

And I'm done.

Reader's Comments

The response to this challenge has been overwhleming and I thank everyone for sending me their comments and their experiences. I am trying to read and respond to all the email I have received. Please be patient as I will get to your email. I plan to post a "Mike's Mailbag" edition with my favorite emails.

Do me a favor. Don’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. Just keep it between you and me okay?

Promise?

Okay…(Mike looks over both shoulders.)

I’m in Walt Disney World.

Yep.

I flew in on Thursday afternoon.

I decided to surprise my partners in crime on the WDWTODAY podcast. They decided to come down for the Annual Passholder’s Preview for Toy Story Mania.
For a long time I really wasn’t sure if I could come down…for many reasons.

Then for many more reasons I decided ON MONDAY to fly down.

So on Thursday afternoon I found myself lining up ate gate 15 to fly to Orlando

On Friday I surprised everyone and we all went over to Toy Story Mania for the Annual Passholder’s Preview.

When you first enter this renovated area of Mickey Avenue you immediately see the huge Pixar sign.

There was also the sign announcing the sneak preview.

The FastPass machines looked like something right out of the film.

The Green Soldiers were working hard across the street.

The queue for many people will be a stroll down Memory Lane with images of Candy Land…

…Viewmaster…

…Chutes and Ladders on the ceiling…

…Barrelfull of monkeys…

…and Tinkertoys.

There are some other old time favorites but I'll let you discover them for yourself.

The star of the show was Mr. Potato Head. This audioanimatron was amazing and via the use of soundboard technology, interacted with the guests.

He can produce many expressions.

However, this is what is truly amazing...I asked him to remove his ear...AND HE DID!

Mr. Potato Head was illuminated by the Pixar Lamp.

I found a Hidden Mickey

I also found the 3-D glasses needed for the attraction.

Here’s a glimpse of the ride vehicles.

That’s about as far as I could go with the photos. Once in the ride vehicle guests must put on their 3-D glasses and secure the lap bar.

The vehicles begin to spin and from time to time stop in front of a video wall and guests will try their luck at some arcade games.

I won’t spoil it for you but suffice to say this attraction goes by faster than any attraction I have ever seen at Walt Disney World.

Each guest has this cannon and on the back of the cannon is a cord with a knob on the end of it. For each arcade game guests must pull on the cord to go after some targets presented to them.

It is very fast paced and the music and action is non-stop.

You will find yourself a bit tired after riding this attraction.

The Annual Passholder’s Preview saw many people go through this attraction and I noticed that as each day came and gone the scores improved.

On Saturday the highest score was around 160,000…then on Sunday 300,000 was reached and on Monday the highest score I saw was around 560,000 so everyone is learning how to play this game.

There is a single rider line but I really do not recommend using this line as I know of people who waited almost an hour in that line. Besides if you use that line you'll miss all the neat stuff in the queue.

Toy Story Mania is a lot of fun and I would say pretty contagious. Some may argue this point but I think it’s the first real video game like attraction ever to show up in Walt Disney World

I feel badly for Buzz Lightyear in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom…he just won’t feel the same after riding this.

Next Time

Remember the four parks in one day challenge? Oh yes, I know all about Kali River Rapids…no big deal…you can adjust that to attraction number three for that park.

Anyway, a dozen of my friends attempted four parks in one day this past Sunday.

How did we go about attempting g this challenge?

Were we successful?

I’ll tell you next time.

I think it was just over a month ago that the idea of doing four parks in one day came up. It started out as an episode on the WDWTODAY podcast with me, Matt Hochberg, Len Testa, and Mike Newell tossing around ideas as to how we envisioned doing that kind of a challenge.

Then I decided to toss the challenge your way and give you some rules and regulations and guidelines as to how to make each park visit viable on that day.

Many of you, including Anita Answer, wrote to me and said you are accepting the challenge and even some of you told me of your escapades trying to do so.

Then I gave you my thoughts on how I would do this little challenge and some of you pointed out a mistake in my plans. I did not check to see if Kali River Rapids was open during Extra Magic Morning Hours at the Animal Kingdom and it is not so you would not be able to do that attraction until later in the morning… some have said it doesn’t open until 9:30.

The solution is to switch and do Kali River Rapids as your third attraction.

Anyway, all this talk about doing four parks in one day got us to thinking about doing it and just over a week ago about 14 of us started out to do just that… visit all four parks and do at least three attractions in each park.

This is how it went:

Park #1: Disney’s Animal Kingdom

We got to DAK 15 minutes before the gates opened. When the turnstiles opened we immediately headed to just in front of Discovery Island and waited for the rope to drop.

We immediately headed to Expedition Everest and got FastPasses for that attraction. We then went to Dinosaur to open that ride.

Oh no… problems. While waiting in the queue we noticed the attraction seemed to be having troubles starting up… tick tock.

We finally boarded our Time Rover sometime around 9:25. Our trek had started. There was one point during the attraction in which the ride slowed down for about a minute... but it quickly started up again.

Here we are.

From there we went to Kilimanjaro Safaris…no FastPass but it didn’t really matter as the crowd level was not too bad.

We loaded onto our vehicle about 10:00. Then everything seemed to slow down. This attraction seemed to take forever to finish. We did not get off our vehicle until 10:30 and it was off to Everest.

Our FastPasses came in handy here and there was a little excitement too. As we waited to board we noticed several members of the Dream Squad mulling around the dock where guests get off the train. Was someone about to win a dream? Was it someone from our train? Was it to be one of us?

Uhhhhh.....no!

We got off our train at 10:30 and saw that the Dream Squad had awarded some dreams (FastPasses) to a family on the train ahead of us. Well, if one of us HAD received a dream in the form of DAK FastPasses for that day we couldn’t use them because we were done with that park and headed off to park number two -- Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

It was 11:00 A.M.

Park #2: Disney’s Hollywood Studios

We headed straight for Sunset Blvd. and noticed that the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was virtually empty. The wait time said “13 minutes” but that really means no wait at all.
We managed to all get on the same elevator. It was 11:30.

We needed to do the Tower before considering lunch.

Lunch was quick… a bite to eat on Sunset Blvd. and then it was off to either the Great Movie Ride or Star Tours. We took a chance and did The Great Movie Ride first.

We were on our vehicle at around 12:30 P.M. This park had been kind to us to this point. We think that the reason for the short lines was that a lot of people, at least Annual Passholders and Disney Vacation Club Members, were at the Toy Story Mania preview.

After TGMR we rushed over to Star Tours… again we walked right on. The time was 1:00 P.M.
After that attraction we headed for the exit and jumped on the tram to the parking lot. I got into my rental car around 1:30 P.M.

We had completed half of the challenge in about 4 ½ hours and things were looking good.

Part II will talk about the second half of this challenge.

This is the second of two parts in which I describe how a number of friends and I did the four Walt Disney World theme parks in one day.

Park #3: Epcot

Everyone knew this park would be a challenge. It was early afternoon and we figured the crowds were peaking. We arrived at 2:00 P.M. and decided to do Spaceship Earth first. This was a toss-up… we had been thinking all along to do Spaceship Earth either first or last but decided to get it over with as soon as we got into the park.

The line was fairly long but we managed to exit that attraction by 2:30.

We then needed to make a decision regarding which attraction to do next. It came down to either Soarin’ or Test Track. The time board near the fountain told us that Soarin’s wait was 10 minutes less than Test Track. We had to do Standby… as FastPass distribution times were looking like early evening, 6 P.M. and later.

We entered the Soarin’ queue at 2:40…

…and waited for 75 minutes before getting on our glider.

It was to that point the longest wait of any attraction.

We left Soarin’ and The Land about 4:10 and headed over to Mexico to ride the Gran Fiesta Tour.

Unfortunately even though there was a short queue we had some problems. The CM overloaded our boat and we got stuck for a few moments.

Eventually we got the boat moving again…

We had finished our third park and it was only 4:35 P.M. It had taken us two hours to do DAK, two hours to do the Studios, and two and a half hours to do Epcot.

We had one park to go… Magic Kingdom… and that had EMH evening hours so we were looking pretty good… we had seven-and-a-half hours to do three attractions.

A number of us wanted to rest while others stayed at Epcot… staying at Epcot was dangerous because we came up with another challenge… I’ll tell you about that later.

While walking around World Showcase we stopped and enjoyed Jamie and the boys from Off Kilter.

We all met up at Saratoga Springs for dinner at 6:30 and took our time and talked about our day and our prospects for MK.

Park #4: The Magic Kingdom

Now up to that point we all had some challenges to meet. My colleagues on the WDWTODAY podcast and I were challenged to do attractions we are not too crazy about.

Matt Hochberg was dragged onto Dinosaur, an attraction he really has no love for and actually dislikes; Mike Newell sucked it up and went on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and Mike is not a big fan of what the Tower does… but he went on; and Len Testa who gets dizzy on Star Tours gutted it out and just closed his eyes and covered his ears.

So everyone then turned their attention to me and I opened my big mouth and mentioned the dreaded Tea Cups.

“We’re doing that first!” shouted my “friends.”

That was followed by, “Whose favorite ride is the Tea Cups?”

Annette Owens of MEI-Travel and Mouse Fan Travel shouted, “I love it and love to spin!”

So it was decided that Annette would accompany yours truly on the Tea Cups.

We all got in line and I was thinking, “Me and my big mouth!” But I had a plan… and hoped it would work.

When we got into the Tea Cups Annette let out a sinister chuckle.

Just as the attraction started I said to Annette, “I guess we’ll see who the stronger of the two of us is!” She started to spin the tea cup and I countered her actions by spinning the cup the other way. Basically it was a standstill until my hands started to slip and Annette put everything into it.

I then noticed something… I did not get dizzy or sick… for some reason this ride did not find me light-headed and nauseous. It had been at least 14 years since I had been on this attraction.

Guess I had finally grown out of getting sick from spinning.

Not sure if everyone was happy for me or not... I know I was.

We then headed off to do either Splash Mountain or Big Thunder Mountain.

Those who did not want to get wet went to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and those who were still reeling from the mid-90 temps of that day went to Splash Mountain.

There was an approximate wait time of 15-20 minutes for all the attractions that evening.

Our 12th and last attraction of the day was Pirates of the Caribbean. There was an interesting queue going on for Pirates. All the guests were going to the left queue and Mike Newell and I decided to go to the right queue and we had a boat all to ourselves.

To celebrate our accomplishment Len treated everyone to a Dole Whip.

We finished just before 11 P.M. and we were tired.

I think we lucked out in Hollywood Studios. Had we not been able to do that park so quickly we would not have had the luxury of waiting a few hours between Epcot and MK.

It was also proven that you need either an Extra Magic Hour morning or evening to help with extending the operating hours of your first or last park of the day.

Another important factor is the time of year you try this challenge. Early May seems a lot more accommodating than Easter Week, the 4th of July, and Christmas Day.

When we started the day there were at least a dozen of us… throughout the day some dropped off and others came on.

The four of us Len, Matt, Mike, and yours truly made it through the entire day.

Only two others were with us for the entire day so a tip of the Mickey Ears goes out to Danielle DeCerbo and Marissa Daurio for putting up with our shenanigans and keeping us company for all four parks. Special kudos go out to everyone else who at one time or another joined us and energized us along the way.

Hmmm, I wonder if this could be done if the challenge was four attractions per park.

Oh, I almost forgot. Remember when I said Annette Owens and I walked around Epcot and thought of another challenge? Well, we proposed this idea to the gang and a few days later we all tried it and we ended up more wiped out from that challenge than doing the four parks in one day.

Curious?

I’ll have to tell you about it sometime... like maybe next time.