Park Parent Perspective #3: Lightning Lane Booking Strategy

Park Parent Perspective #3: 3/31/25 - Lightning Lane Booking Strategy

We are officially 7 days away from check in at Disney’s Beach Club Resort – which means it’s Lightning Lane Booking Day! At 7am ET, 7 days before your Disney World resort arrival day, you are able to book lightning lanes for ALL of the days of your reservation. 

Traveling to Disney World with a toddler + infant for us means that we’ll be purchasing lightning lanes whenever necessary and accepting it as just a part of the trip cost. We’re still riding out an annual pass for 4 more months, and we booked our resort stay with DVC points, so the LL purchases are one of the few costs we have to plan for our trip. Is this a perfect example of Disney Adult Math? Absolutely. Will it help us minimize the potential for toddler tantrums? Also yes. 

Here’s the day by day breakdown for what we booked, along with the context behind each day’s plans to make the most of our park days without exhausting our girls (or ourselves):

Day One (Arrival Day): Epcot PM

Lightning Lanes booked: Frozen Ever After 5:30; Nemo & Friends 6:30, Turtle Talk 6:50

Single Pass Lightning Lane booked: Cosmic Rewind 5:50

Normally we wouldn’t be considering a park day on the same day we’re driving 9 hours… but because we’re staying at Beach Club, Epcot’s World Showcase is just a short walk away. Our plan is to leave around 4 AM, and I know that might sound crazy but it has worked wonders for us in the past! Our toddler can transition to the car and stay sleepy until sunrise, and our infant will get a bottle before (hopefully) dozing back off in her car seat for the first leg. We’ll make it to Buccee’s in Florence, SC for breakfast before it gets busy, and traffic-willing we’ll be at Beach Club by around 2:30.

We have an Elsa and Anna-obsessed toddler, and I can’t think of a better way to start our trip than stretching our legs post-drive with a walk over to Norway and meeting the princesses, riding Frozen Ever After, and getting dinner at the Flower & Garden booths! And as an added bonus, this will be the first time I get to ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind! As a huge Marvel fan but a reluctant roller coaster rider, I’m both excited and slightly nervous about finally doing this. We’ll see! It will be a short evening at Epcot with an early bedtime planned to make sure the family is ready for the rest of the week.

Day Two: Magic Kingdom AM

Lightning Lanes booked: Winnie the Pooh 10:10, Peter Pan 10:40, Pirates of the Caribbean 12:50

Our first full day at the parks has a unique factor: we hired a nanny from Once Upon a Nanny to join us at the park from 10am - 2pm. An extra helping hand will give us a bit of grace as we get used to navigating a park day with two strollers, two feeding schedules, two sets of diaper changes, and two unpredictable emotional roller coasters! 

We are planning to rope drop, with our eyes set on Buzz Lightyear, Dumbo, and a character experience with Daisy + Minnie at Pete’s Silly Sideshow before we’re joined by our park nanny at 10. Normally,  we would aim to set one LL as early as possible in the area of the park we planned to be at so that we can begin booking additional rides later in the day, but instead we loaded up three in our nanny window. We’ll be hoping to pick up additional LL’s for Haunted Mansion, Buzz Lightyear, and Barnstormer (first time our toddler is tall enough!), making some short line stops along the way at Little Mermaid and Aladdin’s Magic Carpets, and mixing in a walking break to watch a show (likely Country Bears Jamboree). 

We’ll be heading back to the hotel not long after 2pm to give the girls a chance to nap, and depending on how we are feeling after they wake up we might pop over to Epcot for dinner at Flower & Garden booths. We don’t want to push it too early in the trip, so quick service + Disney movies from bed is also an option to end the day. 

Day Three: Magic Kingdom AM, Epcot PM

Lightning Lanes booked: Buzz Lightyear 10:15, Winnie the Pooh 11:25, Peter Pan 12:10

Character Breakfast: Topolino’s Terrace 8:00am

Day Three has two variables that affected how we booked these Lightning Lanes: first, we’ll be starting the day at a character breakfast rather than heading directly to the parks. We loved Topolino’s Terrace the first time we tried this character dining experience in 2023, and we’ll be taking advantage of our Skyliner access to get to Riviera bright and early. From there, we’ll head back to the hotel and meet with our Once Upon a Nanny again, but this time for a hotel stay so that our infant can have a restful day and our toddler can be the center of attention from 10am - 2pm.

We will be coming into our second MK day with a “what we missed” list from the day before, along with aiming to hit all of our toddler’s favorite park activities. That may mean we end up doing more character meet and greets, or she might decide that she’s obsessed with Barnstormer and we’ll ride that over and over again. Outside of those first three LL’s, everything else is going to be completely flexible based on what she’s enjoying the most.

The afternoon/evening is another tentative plan for park hopping over to Epcot to take advantage of Beach Club’s proximity; once we know we’re winding down with our LL’s at Magic Kingdom, we’re going to take a peek at the (unlikely) availability for Remy/Frozen and hopefully scoop one of those up for the evening. We might even try to stay for Luminous if things are going well! But we aren’t afraid to call it a night early; I’d much rather miss out on the nighttime entertainment to avoid creating overtired girls for the rest of the trip.

Day Four: Hollywood Studios AM, rest PM

Lightning Lanes booked: Runaway Railway 9:15, Alien Saucers 10:40, Toy Story Mania 12:30

Single Pass Lightning Lane booked: Rise of the Resistance 1:15

Hollywood Studios is the park that always sneaks up on me when I realize just how much we’re trying to fit into the day. There are only a handful of kid-friendly rides, but that actually makes booking LL’s more necessary for us because the wait times can really get long on busy days. Add in the shows (we’re planning on both Frozen Sing Along + Beauty and the Beast), and the nostalgic need to see Muppet*Vision 3D + get lunch at Pizzarizzo one last time, and we’ve got a pretty full day planned! I’ll be doing another solo Single Pass LL to experience Rise of the Resistance for the first time, and we’ll be trying to get a Slinky Dog Dash LL for my wife to ride solo as well. We are not planning anything after the park for this day, but if by some miracle the girls are awake and ready after some rest we’d love to try and get back to see Fantasmic. 

Day Five: Epcot AM, TBD Park Hopping 

Lightning Lanes booked: Remy 9:10, Nemo & Friends 11:40, Living with the Land 12:40

We’re planning a park hopping adventure for our final day of the trip, and we might be in and out of Epcot right after riding Remy at 9:10. If we’re there early enough, the plan will be to rope drop Frozen + follow it up with that Remy LL which would be perfect. If that works, then we’ll forgo the other LL’s we have at Epcot and pick another park to head to based on what LL’s are available. And if there aren’t any, we will gladly take a slow Epcot day and ride Living With the Land, walk through Moana: Journey of Water, and enjoy the Flower & Garden topiaries and treats one last time. 

Animal Kingdom is the only park we don’t have specific plans for, but I don’t think it’ll be where we end up on Day Five either. Adding an infant to the mix makes a lot of what we want to do at AK a bit trickier, so we are likely going to skip it for this trip. There’s always next time!

Day Six: Checkout 

And then… we leave the Disney bubble and drive back home on Saturday, and start our countdown to the next trip. We will almost certainly have to call an audible somewhere along the way, but even if we miss a few of these plans it’s going to be a great week! I’ll be sharing some more about our experience next week once we return, including a Flower & Garden-specific food review and a sneak peek at any new shirt designs inspired by the trip!