Nicole Gardenier and her family follow the crowd as they arrive at Disney s Magic Kingdom in April. PHOTO: GARDENIER FAMILY

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1 The Best Disney World Vacation Hacks The apps, websites and tricks that get families the most popular rides and fewer long waits get ready to plan months in advance Nicole Gardenier and her family follow the crowd as they arrive at Disney s Magic Kingdom in April. PHOTO: GARDENIER FAMILY By ERIN GEIGER SMITH May 3, :15 p.m. ET When Walt Disney World s Magic Kingdom opened one Friday morning in April, Nicole Gardenier, her husband and their 13-year-old son rushed to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and boarded the roller coaster within 10 minutes. They hit 16 rides and attractions that day, including Space Mountain at 11:05 a.m., Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at 12:05 p.m., lunch at the Crystal Palace at 1:15 and a 2:10 Splash Mountain soaking. More than two months before the trip, Ms. Gardenier, a special-education consultant from Franklin, Mass., went to work. She analyzed daily crowd predictions on the website WDW Prep School. She compiled rides and restaurants in lists and spreadsheets before creating a master calendar with Trello, a project management app, for each of their six days in Central Florida. When a scheduling change meant she couldn t get a dining slot she wanted, she signed up for a third-party alert that ed her when one opened up. For her next trip, over Christmas, she booked lodging in February and plans to secure restaurants in June and rides in October, the earliest Disney allows. It sounds crazy because it sounds very rigid, Ms. Gardenier says. But for us, we don t want to wait in lines.

2 The Gardenier family enjoys the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, one of the Magic Kingdom s most popular rides. PHOTO: GARDENIER FAMILY Disney provides tools that encourage vacationers to book restaurants and attractions in advance, a company spokeswoman says. With a Disney vacation, guests are in control to plan as much or as little as they wish and still have a magical time either way, she adds. But some families that prefer spontaneity can arrive to discover capacity crowds and hourslong lines. With those come what travel agent Nanci Weinstein calls children s magical meltdowns. Repeat visitors and travel professionals say that with some effort, families can significantly decrease wait times and exhaustion levels. And they can avoid paying for high-end shortcuts like a VIP guide for $2,000 a day to escort them around the parks. Ms. Gardenier estimates her family spent $600 a day, including lodging, airfare and park entry. Their entry pass cost $1,200 for six days. Disney World was the world s most visited theme park in 2014, according to the most recent available data from the Themed Entertainment Association. Disney doesn t release visitor numbers. Knowing the expected crowd size on your particular days is essential, says Ms. Weinstein, a San Diego-based agent with Moments of Magic Travel, an authorized Disney vacation planning company. (It isn t part of Disney but receives commissions for vacations booked.)

3 The fireworks at Disney World are a popular attraction for visitors, though some say it s a good time to take advantage of shorter lines elsewhere. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES Nicole Gardenier scheduled her family s six-day trip to Disney World on the project management app Trello. GARDENIER FAMILY

4 The busiest times are summer and holidays. The earlier travelers start setting priorities and making reservations, the better chance they have of securing that coveted reservation to meet Anna and Elsa of Frozen. Websites like WDW Prep School and Touring Plans have calendars showing expected daily crowd levels at each of the four main Disney World parks, which include Magic Kingdom and Epcot. They check convention listings and local hotels for surges of visitors and report if a particular park is adding extra hours, closing early for a party or expecting thousands of competitive cheerleaders, closing early for a party or expecting thousands of competitive cheerleaders. Advance booking rules are fairly straightforward, albeit in their own lingo. Disney-goers staying on property in one of Disney s hotels can book a time for three rides or attractions a day through the FastPass+ system beginning 60 days from the start of the trip. With FastPass, visitors can book time slots for rides, giving them access to a separate line designed to have a short, if any, wait. The first three passes each day are included with park admission. Travelers staying somewhere other than a Disney property can begin booking 30 days out. Guests can try to get additional FastPasses at no cost after the first three are used. Dining reservations open 180 days in advance. I want to do a hotel and [park] package no later than seven months out, says attorney and self-proclaimed Disney freak Jennifer Black of Houston. That allows proper prep time. She books a sit-down meal each day, usually lunch, so her 12- and 9-year-old daughters can recharge. Her family loves meals where Disney favorites like Snow White and Winnie the Pooh work the crowd. Character meals are the best way to knock out getting autographs and pictures. The characters come around to your table, so you re not spending time [trying to meet them] when you could be riding rides, Ms. Black says. You do have to get on the phone at 6 a.m., Florida time at the 180-day mark for preferred times at the most popular spots, Ms. Black says. Booking online or via the official Disney app can help. Margaret Wolfe, whose site Disney Food Blog provides extensive meal tips and restaurant reviews, suggests booking a breakfast in a restaurant that opens before the park, like Cinderella s Royal Table. Visitors can wrap up breakfast and be among the first in line for rides, she says. Diligent planners say being at the park when it opens rope drop in Disney parlance and using the FastPass system are keys to ride success. FastPasses, the planners say, should be used for rides that generally have long wait times and booked starting late morning. What you don t want to do is schedule FastPasses at 9 in the morning, when it s not as crowded, Ms. Gardenier says. Instead, she and her family use the first few hours after the park opens to ride popular rides for which they couldn t get FastPasses. Though the days sound ultra-planned, families can choose among their favorites for early-morning riding, with plenty of time between FastPasses for scheduled afternoon spontaneity. Plus, Ms. Black says, a family meeting about ride and princess-visiting priorities at the beginning of the planning cycle makes her daughters feel involved in the process. For people who know which rides they want, Touring Plans has free tools that create schedules. A $12.95 one-year membership buys more than 140 suggested itineraries customizable for criteria

5 like traveling with small children or grandparents. Should visitors decide to deviate from the plan, like stopping for an unscheduled ice cream, an optimize button on the app will get them back on schedule. Jennifer Black and her daughters, including Sophia, pictured here, attended a story time with Belle from Beauty and the Beast on their Disney vacation in PHOTO: JENNIFER BLACK Travel agents specializing in Disney like Ms. Weinstein will do even more of the work for you free. This includes signing up for FastPasses and dinner reservations and creating customized, detailed itineraries for navigating the parks most efficiently. They re also there with some tough love that may help prepare families for the trip. This is an adventure, and less of a vacation, Ms. Weinstein tells clients. Clancy Statz, a Silicon Valley-based executive for a technology company, experienced some of the downfalls of starting to make plans just a few weeks before her spring break Disney World trip with her husband, 15-year-old son, 4-year-old twin boys and their extended family. She looked at social media and blogs for tips and downloaded wait-time apps, but she didn t have enough respect for the FastPass system, she says, and didn t prebook rides. They spent a lot of time in line, including a 90-minute slog for Splash Mountain. Asked whether her family would return to Disney World, Ms. Statz says, Maybe when [the twins] are much older and if they have a strong desire, we can be guilted into it.