By day three of a Disney World trip, we can handle another ride line. The towel that’s still damp from this morning? That’s when we start getting cranky.
It’s usually the little things that wear us down: no cold Diet Coke in the room, another walk to the food court, standing in a bus line when we’re ready for bed. Nothing that ruins the trip, but enough to make a vacation feel like a lot of work.
Over enough trips, Arya and I have figured out which of those annoyances we can avoid and which are worth spending a little money to fix. We order groceries, ask for extra towels, split up when we want different things, and leave more room in the day than we used to.
These are the things that make our Disney World trips easier, from arrival day to the flight home. Each comes with its tradeoff, so you can decide what fits your trip.
The point, though, is to have enough energy left for the parts you actually came for.
Pick Your Fix
Find the thing that wears you down, then jump to the fix.
What wears you down |
Our fix |
The tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
The front desk line after a flight | Free, 5 minutes | |
A room by the parking lot | Free, 2 minutes | |
No water, no snacks, no Diet Coke | Groceries plus delivery fees | |
Getting from the airport to the resort | A ride share fare, split | |
Burning out on day one | Free, but hard to make yourself do | |
Hitting a wall in the afternoon | A few hours of park time | |
Standing in a Quick Service line | Free, 2 minutes | |
Doing every single thing together | Free | |
Long bus rides | Narrows which resorts you pick | |
The bus line after fireworks | A ride share fare | |
Paying for things you don’t care about | Spending less somewhere else | |
Damp towels and two flat pillows | Free, 1 minute | |
Running out of clean clothes | Machine cost and waiting time | |
One of you is hot, one is cold | Free blankets, plus a fan and mask to pack | |
Checkout in the morning, flight at night | Free, plus a tip | |
Trying to do everything, every trip | Doing less, on purpose |
Arrival Day: Get to the Room
Online Check-In, Straight to the Room
Free, 5 minutes
Check in on the My Disney Experience app before you leave home. This one is easy peasy, and we do it every trip. When your room is ready, Disney sends a notification, and your MagicBand or phone opens the door.
That means you skip the front desk. After an early alarm and a flight, the last place we want to stand is a lobby line, so this keeps us from that.
If the room isn’t ready yet, leave your bags with Bell Services and go. They’ll bring them up once you’re in.
Room Requests at Online Check-In
Free, 2 minutes
Online check-in asks if you have room requests. Disney doesn’t promise to honor them, but asking costs you nothing, so fill it in. It isn’t going to hurt.
Have Groceries Waiting (Diet Coke Included)
Groceries plus delivery fees
We have groceries delivered on every single trip. The order always has water, Diet Coke (a non-negotiable lifeblood), breakfast stuff we can eat on the way to the bus, and a cheap roll of paper towels. The point on arrival day is simple: no store run, and a cold drink is waiting when we walk in.
The delivery goes to Bell Services, which holds it and keeps the cold stuff cold, so it doesn’t have to line up with your room being ready. We time it around when we’ll be back at the resort. If our flight lands before 2 pm, we’re usually headed to a park, so we schedule delivery for around 7 pm and grab it on our way in that night. If we land later, we schedule it for about two hours before we land, so it’s waiting when we arrive.
I wrote up the whole system, including which services we use and the alcohol rules, in our guide to grocery delivery at Disney World hotels.
Split a Ride Share From the Airport
A ride share fare, split
If we can split the cost, we take a ride share from the airport almost every time. It goes straight to our resort, with no waiting on anyone else’s luggage or anyone else’s stops.
Split between two or more people, the fare is a lot easier to justify, and the trip starts at your resort instead of on a shuttle. If you’re comparing every way to get around property, our complete guide to Disney World transportation lays them all out.
The Easy Arrival Day (We’re Bad at This)
Free, but hard to make yourself do
This is the one we do least, and I’d bet most of you are the same. You land, and within the hour you’re in a park. You’re too excited! We are too.
Do we follow our own advice here? Not often. BUT a full park day on top of a travel day comes out of day three, every time.
If you can talk yourself into it, an easy day looks like the pool, dinner somewhere you don’t need a park ticket for, and an early night. The parks will still be there tomorrow, and you’ll be in better shape for them.
Everyday Disney World Tips for Adults
Take a Midday Break (and a Shower)
A few hours of park time
We head back to the resort in the middle of the day on a regular basis, and the shower is the whole reason. We each shower once or twice a day on a Disney trip, because Florida humidity has you soaked by lunch.
A cool shower and dry clothes make your evening feel like a fresh start. If a trip back to the resort doesn’t fit your day, take a shorter break in the park instead, like an air-conditioned show or a sit-down snack. On a trip of four days or more, the full break pays you back.
If you’re running a runDisney race weekend, your midday break becomes a nap after every race. Our runDisney guide for adults lays out the whole weekend.
It costs you a few hours of park time. We trade that happily for not being miserable at 8 pm, when the parks are nicest anyway.
Mobile Order While You’re in Line
Free, 2 minutes
Standing in a ride line is a good time to place a Quick Service order in the My Disney Experience app. You pick an arrival window, and when you get to the restaurant, you tap that you’re there and the kitchen starts your food.
You skip the ordering line, and all that’s left is a short wait at the pickup counter. Anything you can do that gives you one less line is a win.
Split Up on Purpose
Free
Arya and I love traveling together, and we still split up on purpose. Two adults don’t need to want the same thing at the same minute. One of us rides something again, the other one goes and finds a drink, and we text a meeting spot.
Neither of us spends an hour on something we’re only half into, and we have something new to talk about at dinner. If your group is the same way, give yourselves permission. Our group trip guide has how six of us split up at EPCOT and met back up for drinks.
Stay Somewhere You Can Walk, Boat, or Skyliner
Narrows which resorts you pick
You make this call when you book, but you feel it every single day of your trip. A resort on a walkway, boat route, or Skyliner line keeps you off the bus for EPCOT and Hollywood Studios. You’ll still ride a bus to Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom from most of them, but that’s two parks instead of four.
The Yacht Club, Beach Club, and BoardWalk Inn are a 5- to 12-minute walk to the EPCOT International Gateway, the back entrance into World Showcase. The Skyliner resorts get you to EPCOT and Hollywood Studios in the air, which is a lot easier on your feet at the end of the night. We sort out which resort fits which kind of adult trip in our ranking of the best Disney resorts for adults.
Ride Share Home After a Long Night
A ride share fare
The ride share (aka Uber or Lyft) we use most is the one at the end of a long night. When the fireworks end and the whole park heads for the buses at once, paying for a car back to the resort feels like the best money we spend all day.
We rarely use one for the first park of the morning. The end of the night is when we’re tired and the lines are longest, so that’s where the money goes.
One catch at Magic Kingdom: ride shares pick up at the Transportation and Ticket Center or over at the Contemporary, not the park gate. You still take the monorail or ferry over first, so it saves less there than at the other three parks. Our guide to getting to Magic Kingdom walks through the options.
Spend on What’s Worth It to You
Spending less somewhere else
After this many trips, we know what’s worth it to us. We’ll save money on the resort so we have more for good drinks, unique food, and the experiences we love and keep going back to just because.
That’s our call, not a rule. If it’s your first trip, or you plan to spend real time at the resort, the nicer resort can be the right place for your money.
Fireworks at Magic Kingdom are a good example. When we want to see them, we usually book a fireworks dessert party, because we get drinks AND a place to watch without camping out on Main Street for an hour. Magic Kingdom’s dessert parties include beer and wine for guests 21 and up.
The one room upgrade we do pay for is a preferred room at a Value resort. Preferred rooms sit closer to the main building, where the food court and the bus stop are. You make that walk every morning and every night, plus the midday break. A shorter walk is SO worth it.
If good drinks are where your money goes too, I keep a running list of the EPCOT drinks worth it over on Drinking Around the World.
Build a Towel Stash With Hey Disney
Free, 1 minute
I am always SO hot, and Arya is always cold. Housekeeping at the Moderate and Value resorts comes every other day. We each shower once or twice a day, and in Florida humidity a towel you hang up in the morning is still damp at bedtime.
Do the math: two of us, up to two showers a day, two days between housekeeping visits. That can be eight towels before anyone comes back. So on the first night, we ask Hey Disney, the Amazon Echo device in every Disney resort room, to send up extras. Our standard request is 4 towels, 4 extra washcloths, 2 blankets, and enough pillows that we each have 3.
It takes a minute, and you’re covered until housekeeping comes back.
Do One Laundry Load Midweek
Machine cost and waiting time
Every Disney resort we stay at has guest laundry, and we often run one load in the middle of the trip. You pack a lighter suitcase, and you get clean, dry clothes for the back half of the week. After three days of humidity, that feels like a luxury.
Sleep: One Hot, One Cold
Sleep is where the hot-person, cold-person problem gets real. Arya wants the room warm and I want it cold, with one thermostat between us. Our fix is to set the room for the hot one and give the cold one more blankets. That’s why 2 extra blankets are on our Hey Disney order every trip.
A clip fan pointed at the hot side of the room and an eye mask for the early riser help too. So does a power strip, because hotel outlets are rarely where you want them. Our Disney World packing list for adults has the rest.
Departure Day Without the Scramble
Let Bell Services Hold Your Bags
Free, plus a tip
Checkout is in the morning, and most flights home are not. So we check out and leave our bags with Bell Services. Then your last day is yours: a few hours at the pool or one more morning in a park.
When it’s time to go, we pick up our bags and head to the airport. Tip the Cast Member who hauled your suitcases around, because they earned it.
What We Stopped Doing
I know we’re lucky to go as often as we do. Skipping something this trip doesn’t cost us much, so not all of these will fit your trip. But social media makes it look like the only way to do Disney is to do EVERYTHING, and that pressure is how a vacation turns into a money suck.
We used to feel like we had to do all the things or else our trip wouldn’t be the best it could be. Then we realized that if we traveled smarter and focused on the things we truly cared about, we could be wiser with our money. And we could go more often!
So, these are the things we let go of.
Doing Every Must-Do, Every Trip
We stopped feeling like we had to do ALL the must-dos every trip. After enough visits, you’ve done them, and they’ll be there next time. Now we pick the few we’re excited about and let the rest go, and the days feel a lot less like a checklist.
Rope Dropping Every Single Day
Rope drop happens on the days it gets us something we want. The rest of the time, we sleep in. Five 6 am alarms in a row is how you end up done by day three.
Staying for Fireworks Every Night
Fireworks are a sometimes thing for us now. When we want them, we book the dessert party. The other nights, we’re back at the resort before the whole park heads for the buses.
Park Hopping Every Day
Most days, one park is plenty. Every hop means another bus, boat, or Skyliner ride and another bag check, and you’ll see more of the park you’re already in.
Planning the Day Hour by Hour
Our days have a couple of anchors now, like a meal or a show, with room around them. When the plan has gaps, a long line or an afternoon storm doesn’t wreck it.
Taking the Last Flight Home
We stopped trying to take the last flight home. It sounds smart: one more park, one more drink, every possible hour of the trip. Then you land after midnight and walk into a regular week with no gap at all.
Now we look for a flight that gets us home at a decent time. We like having time to unwind at home before real life starts again. Does it cost us a few hours in the park? Yes. We’ll take that trade.
A Few Smaller Things We Dropped
- A Table Service meal for every meal. We book the ones we’re excited about and mobile order the rest.
- Magic Kingdom on every trip. If we don’t have a reason to go this time, we skip it without guilt.
- A full park bag. A smaller bag is less to haul around and gets through bag check faster.
- A souvenir every trip. Most of what we’d buy, we already own.
- Lightning Lanes every trip. We save them for trips when we want to do more rides. Our honest guide to Lightning Lanes for adults covers when they’re worth buying.
- Repeat visits to Beak & Barrel. Book it once if you’ve never been, or you’re bringing someone who hasn’t. It’s super cute, but the drinks suck: ordinary, some way too sweet, and $18.50 to $21 each. Our full Beak & Barrel review on Drinking Around the World has the rest.
Make your Disney World trip easier wherever you can, and spend the energy you save on the parts of the trip you came for.
