Walt Disney World Lightning Lane Strategies

Your vacation is booked, you grabbed those must have dining reservations, and now it’s time to think about Lightning Lane Strategies! So which park should you be booking for each day? Is your crew going to be devastated if they don’t get to ride a certain ride? Are you trying to join a Virtual Queue or are you good with purchasing a Lightning Lane Single Pass? Are you overwhelmed yet? Yep. Most people are. So here are a few tips to help take the scary, crazy, overwhelming out of planning your Disney day!

Park Reservations

Date-based tickets that are purchased individually or as part of a Disney Vacation Package no longer require Park Reservations. The Disney Park Pass system is now only for guests with certain types of tickets:

• Annual Passholders
• Disney Military Salute Tickets
• Florida Resident Discover Disney Tickets
• Student, Sport, and Convention Tickets

Lightning Lane Service

formerly known as Fastpass+/Genie+

Lightning Lane Multi Pass starts at $15 per person per day that gives you access to Lightning Lanes (aka shorter lines). It is not available for every ride, and you can only ride each ride one time using the Lightning Lane. Lightning Lane Single Pass rides in each park are purchased individually that isn’t included in the Multi Pass purchase, and the price per ride depends on the day. You can buy up to 2 Lightning Lane Single Pass rides per day, and if you have a Park Hopper, those 2 rides can be in different parks – ex: Rise of the Resistance + Flight of Passage. You can also buy just the Single Pass experiences without buying Multi Pass, so if you want to ride Flight of Passage but aren’t concerned about doing Lightning Lane for anything else that day, you can just get Flight of Passage and not purchase Multi Pass.

Guests staying at a Walt Disney World Resort can purchase and select their Lightning Lane experiences beginning 7 days before arrival while all other guests can purchase and select their Lightning Lane experiences beginning 3 days before arrival. All purchases and bookings for Lightning Lane must be done through the MyDisneyExperience app, and booking is not available on the website.

Once you redeem a selection on the day of your park visit, you can choose another Multi Pass experience from either group. If you have tickets with the Park Hopper option, you could even choose a multi pass experience in a different theme park. Ex: for our Animal Kingdom day, we booked Kilimanjaro Safaris, Festival of the Lion King, and Expedition Everest at the 7 day booking window. Once we got to the park and rode Expedition Everest, I booked our next Lightning Lane for Magic Kingdom around 2pm because we were going there after lunch. I was able to book 3 Lighting Lanes for the first few hours that we were in Magic Kingdom, and then booked more Lightning Lanes as we used them.

Pro Tip: As soon as you scan in for your Lightning Lane, immediately jump on your app and book your next one while you’re waiting in line. Some rides require you to scan in twice (like Space Mountain, Tower of Terror, or Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster) and may not let you book a new experience after only one scan, but go ahead and try to book once you scan in the first time because the second scanner is not always active on these rides.

Lightning Lane Single Pass Experiences

Multi Pass Lightning Lane Experiences

Virtual Queue

On the day of your visit, you can join the Virtual Queue at daily distribution times (7:00am EST + 1:00pm EST if there are spots available after the 7:00am drop). Select one member of your party to access the virtual queue to check for an available boarding group for everyone in your party. If multiple people in your party try to join the virtual queue simultaneously, that may inhibit your ability to join a group. Virtual Queue gives you access to the Standby Line, not the Lightning Lane Line. If you would like to be in the Lightning Lane for this experience, you need to select the ride as on option on Multi Pass (Tiana’s Bayou Adventure) or purchase the Single Pass (Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind). If your ticket requires a Park Reservation, the Park Reservation must match the park for your Virtual Queue

Pro Tip: Create your Boarding Group by 6:58am and begin hitting the Refresh button as quickly as you can at 6:59am until 7:00am for the best luck at securing a Virtual Queue spot!

Know Your Park Layout

Location is key to making your Multi Pass reservations. You do NOT want to be running from Frontierland for Big Thunder Mountain to Tomorrowland for Space Mountain and then back to Liberty Square for Haunted Mansion. If you have lots of options to work with, try to make sure that you’re not jumping all over the park.

and last but not least…

Be Flexible

I know, it goes completely against everything that I just said, but hear me out. Do not let missing out on a Lightning Lane or 2 ruin your vacation for you! Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to book them if you paid for Multi Pass, but there are other ways to ride your must do rides: even if that means waiting in standby. Not having a Lightning Lane does not mean that you can’t ride something (unless it’s a Virtual Queue or Lightning Lane only access ride like Tiana’s Bayou Adventure or Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind). It just means that it may take longer to do it. Also, keep checking back to see if that Lightning Lane becomes available! People are always changing them, and we’ve managed to score some great reservations at the last minute.

Use a Travel Agent 

If you book your vacation through a travel agent, you have someone to do all of this for you! Not only do they save you time, money, and sanity, they’re also FREE. You read that right: 100% free! So if you aren’t using a travel agent, you’re literally missing out on free help and having to do it all yourself. If you don’t have a travel agent, we recommend using Embrace the Journey Travel for all of your travel needs!