Magic Kingdom Park, Florida, United States

4Jessica M 5:00 PM Nov 26, 2022

Must have a smart phone.
Review of Magic kingdom Disney world. We visited as a family of 11, 6 adults & 5 children the youngest being 5 & the oldest 12. It was magical & undeniably special especially to hard core Disney fans. However just some advise to get the most out of it means early starts & long days. Our children were exhausted & were actually asking for rest days at the hotel. I would say they had the most fun at the hotel pool so just my opinion but I really don’t think younger children fully appreciate it. I would say wait until they are 8+ otherwise why spend all that money if the children don’t fully appreciate it. This is just my opinion based on our children. Also you need a smart phone with plenty of battery or a battery pack. It’s virtually not do able without one. You need to be monitoring the que times throughout the day, and to use genie plus you need to have the Disney app on your smart phone. I would recommend look at the que times before you go & see which has the biggest ques in general. Go to that ride first & book the lightening lane if you can for it. Again I did not find the app, genie plus or lightening lane easy to navigate but luckily we had someone in our party who is good with things like that. So if you are like me, research, play around with the app beforehand & read about what these things are and how to work them. I recommend taking a packed lunch with you during the day found a lot of people doing this as food & drinks are expensive. Then maybe if you want to experience one of the restaurants or diners book that for the evening & book in advance. We took water bottles & re filled them with the water fountains throughout the day to save buying drinks. Also a lot of the food is fast food & a lot of the same things such as 99% of venders all selling popcorn & churros. I was disappointed we didn’t see more characters just walking about. I assumed it would be full of the various characters walking about but not so much. You have to research to find them. Also if you want thrill seeking rides the magic kingdom is not for you. All rides are pretty tame.

4ssk 5:00 PM Mar 23, 2022

Genie + and Lightening Lane passes are worth it.
We expected Magic Kingdom to be unbearable since we were there over spring break. On the advice of a friend who had recently been, we bought into the whole Genie+ / Lightening Lane service and it worked. Each morning at 7:00 a.m. we bought our lightening lane pass and also reserved our first genie pass. Throughout the day, as our Genie+ window opened, we would reserve our next attraction. I think you could book a maximum of 3 genie passes per day so you have to choose wisely. We ended up waiting in line for about an hour to go on splash mountain (we were very lucky to get on - Splash Mountain went down 3 times while we were there.) All our other waits were under 45 minutes or quicker on those rides where we had a genie pass. We got through 11 attractions. That's better than we have every done at Magic Kingdom. Of course we spent nearly 11 hours at the park and we can do that because our kids are older. We were able to book a last minute lunch at Be Our Guest which was very nice. Of course there were some things I was not happy with. First, the cost. After paying $133 per day for a ticket, add on $15 for the genie+ service plus another $10-15 for our one lightening lane. No more complimentary airport shuttle and magic bands cost $10-25. What's next? Will they start to charge for bus service to the parks? Corporate greed at it's finest. I thought the fireworks show was fantastic but very difficult to see because the park was packed. I also found that most the "cast members" seemed unhappy and bored with their jobs. There were no"magical moments." Characters stand 10 feet away from the kids, ride attendants are grumpy, etc. Wait staff at sit down restaurants were very good. Has Disney last some of its luster? For sure. But if you know what you're getting into and if you are willing to play the game (spending extra money on genie pass) it can be a fun day.