This Park Hopping Trap Can Screw Up Your Disney World Plans

Our best tip for having a GREAT day at Disney World is to plan ahead.

There are things that can happen that can totally ruin your day. Your favorite ride might be temporarily closed due to technical issues or maintenance. You might forget to grab your favorite snack or the weather is just not cooperating that day. If you are relying on Disney transportation, even more problems can arise. 

Imagine this — you just spent your morning at Magic Kingdom and now, you’re ready to go to EPCOT to grab some great food at this year’s Food and Wine Festival. You have a park hopper ticket, so you think it’ll just be an easy transition from park to park. However, without some planning ahead, this could ruin your day.

The rules have changed about park hopping in the past few years. You can not enter your second park until 2 PM. While you cannot scan into the park until 2 PM, you can travel to the park ahead of time to make sure you can scan in right on time.

If you are planning on taking Disney transportation to park hop, you’ll want to take one thing into consideration, buses between parks do not start running until 1:30 PM. However, sometimes it can take a while to get on a bus.

Our reporters have gotten in for a Disney bus at 1:30 PM and have not been actually on the bus until 2:10 PM. Then, you will have to ride on the bus to the park which could put you scanning in closer to 2:30 PM. Buses do become full or can come at various times and that can cause you to get delayed.

If you have a lightning lane that you are trying to make or a dining reservation at your second park of the day, you might want to skip the Disney bus and either drive your own vehicle or take a rideshare option. This will give you more control over your time of arrival and can help you avoid being late.

While you could take the Skyliner between EPCOT and Hollywood Studios or the monorail between EPCOT and Magic Kingdom, these can come with hiccups as well. The Skyliner can stop running due to weather in the area and the monorail can go down for technical issues. So if you absolutely need to park hop by a certain time, you’ll want to take a car.

We hope this helps you avoid a mistake on your Disney day. For more Disney World tips and tricks, be sure to follow AllEars.net.

Don’t Make This HUGE Mistake When Going to Disney World

What is your favorite park hopping tip? Let us know below.