Walt Disney World

Which park gets your day?

There are four parks, they're wildly different, and the right one depends entirely on who you're traveling with. This page breaks down each one so you can pick with confidence or jump straight to the one you already know you want.

Jump to a Park

Animal Kingdom
EPCOT
Hollywood Studios
Magic Kingdom

Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom is the park that most first timers underestimate and most repeat visitors wish they'd given more time. It's built around a concept none of the other parks share: living animals. Not animatronics, not screens, actual wildlife, everywhere you turn. The animals aren't a side attraction here. They're the point.

The headline is Kilimanjaro Safaris, which puts you on an open air vehicle driving through a 110 acre savanna with giraffes, elephants, lions, rhinos, and dozens of other species roaming freely. Every single ride is different depending on where the animals decide to be that morning. But the safari is just the beginning. Animal Kingdom has real animals woven into the park at every level, and most guests walk right past the best of it.

Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail picks up right at the safari exit and takes you on foot through a series of habitats. The gorillas are the headliner, a full family troop in a forested outdoor habitat, but the trail also has hippos, meerkats, exotic birds, and more. It's free, it's shaded in places, and most people blow through it in a few minutes when it deserves much longer. The Maharajah Jungle Trek, over in the Asia section of the park, is built around a similar idea but centered on tigers. You'll walk through ruins and come face to face with Bengal tigers separated by nothing but glass, and the trail also includes giant fruit bats, Komodo dragons, and a walk through aviary. These trails are some of the best free experiences at Disney World and they almost never have a wait.

Over on Discovery Island, the park's central crossroads that connects to every other themed area, the Discovery Island Trails let you see kangaroos, Galapagos tortoises, and other animals right along the walkways. Most guests are rushing through Discovery Island to get somewhere else and never realize the animals are there.

In the Anandapur area of Asia, look for the siamang gibbons. They're housed in an exhibit right by the entrances to Kali River Rapids and the Maharajah Jungle Trek, and watching them swing from their tower structure is one of those unexpected moments that stops people in their tracks.

The park also has two bird experiences worth knowing about. Winged Encounters The Kingdom Takes Flight is a short macaw flyover on Discovery Island. You can't miss where it happens, it's right at the park's crossroads, but you can absolutely miss when it happens. Check the times board or the app, because if you're not there at the right moment, you'll walk past the spot without knowing it existed. Feathered Friends in Flight! is the seated bird show at the Anandapur Theater in Asia. It's the one where a cast member gets their dollar bill "stolen" by a bird, and the whole show features free flying birds soaring over the audience. It's funny, it's impressive, and the theater is outdoors but covered, a decent heat break.

Beyond the animals, Pandora The World of Avatar contains Flight of Passage, one of the best rides Disney has ever built. You're strapped onto a motorcycle style seat, "linked" to a banshee, and sent soaring over an alien landscape. It's technically a 3D motion simulator, but calling it that undersells the experience, the sensation of flight is visceral and unlike anything else at Disney World. The land itself is staggering. Bioluminescent plants, floating mountains, and an attention to detail that makes the rest of the park look understated by comparison. Na'vi River Journey, the gentler boat ride through Pandora, is beautiful but draws wait times that don't match the ride length, save it for a rain delay or the last hour of the night.

Expedition Everest is a solid roller coaster with a backwards section and a broken track moment that catches first timers off guard. It's a good thrill ride, though not as intense as the headliners at Hollywood Studios.

The stage shows at Animal Kingdom deserve more than a passing mention. Festival of the Lion King is one of the best live performances at any Disney park, period. It's a full scale theater in the round production with singers, dancers, acrobats, stilt walkers, elaborate floats, and fire effects, all set to the Lion King soundtrack. The performers are genuinely talented, this isn't a character meet with some background music. It's a Broadway caliber show that happens to be inside a theme park, and it routinely makes people emotional who weren't expecting to feel anything. The theater is fully indoors and air conditioned, which in summer makes it both the best show in the park and one of the best places to be during the 2 p.m. heat. Finding Nemo: The Big Blue and Beyond! is the other major stage show, also indoors, also air conditioned, combining puppetry, projections, and live performers in a retelling of the Nemo story.

Inside the Tree of Life, the massive carved tree at the center of Discovery Island, is the Tree of Life Theater, which now houses Zootopia: Better Zoogether!, a 4D show featuring Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde. It's a newer addition, fully indoors, and another solid air conditioned escape right at the park's central hub.

The tradeoff with Animal Kingdom is ride count. It has fewer total attractions than any other park. If your measure of a good day is "how many rides did we do," this park will disappoint you. But if your measure is "did we experience something we couldn't experience anywhere else," Animal Kingdom wins. The landscaping alone took decades to grow in. Entire areas are designed so you can't see any other section of the park, you genuinely feel like you've been dropped into a different continent. The people who love this park love it because they slowed down, walked the trails, watched the gorillas, caught the gibbons mid swing, stumbled onto the macaw flyover, and realized the whole park is alive in a way nowhere else at Disney World is.

Summer changes the calculus here. The safari is open air with no AC. Many walkways are exposed. Animals are most active in the early morning and tend to find shade as temperatures climb, an 8:30 a.m. safari and a 2:00 p.m. safari are practically different rides. The park often opens earliest and closes earliest of the four, so check the calendar for your date. If Animal Kingdom closes at 7 p.m. while EPCOT stays open until 11, consider doing Animal Kingdom in the morning and hopping to EPCOT for the evening.

The best strategy here is to arrive at park open, knock out the safari and Flight of Passage in the first two hours, walk Gorilla Falls and the Maharajah Jungle Trek before the afternoon heat sets in, then use the indoor shows and Feathered Friends in Flight as your afternoon heat shelter. If you pace it right, Animal Kingdom can deliver a full day that feels completely unlike anything you'd get at the other three parks.

Continue Planning Your Animal Kingdom Day

-Animal Kingdom: Big Group (8+)

- Animal Kingdom: Mixed Ages

- Animal Kingdom: Young Kids

- Animal Kingdom: No Kids

EPCOT

EPCOT is two parks stitched together. The front half, World Celebration, World Discovery, World Nature, has the big rides. The back half, the World Showcase, is an 11 country walking tour around a lagoon with restaurants, bars, shops, and cultural experiences in each pavilion. These two halves have almost nothing in common, and that's exactly what makes EPCOT work.

The World Showcase is the reason EPCOT has a reputation as "the adult park." The loop contains pavilions representing Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, the American Adventure, Japan, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Each one has at least one restaurant or bar, many have shops staffed by people actually from that country, and some have rides or films tucked inside. The dining here is genuinely good, not just "good for a theme park." People build entire days around eating and drinking their way around the lagoon. The tequila flights in Mexico, the pastries in France, the beer in Germany, the sake in Japan, it's a legitimate food and drink experience that happens to be inside a theme park.

But the World Showcase isn't just restaurants and bars. Several pavilions have attractions hidden inside them that casual visitors walk right past. The Mexico pavilion is the biggest example, step inside the pyramid and you'll find an entire indoor market with shops and a restaurant, and in the back, Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros, a gentle boat ride through scenes of Mexico set to music. It's a walk on most of the day and a perfect air conditioned escape. The China and Canada pavilions have Circle Vision 360° films that put you in the middle of sweeping landscape footage, they're dated in format but genuinely beautiful and almost always empty. The American Adventure, in the center of the World Showcase, is a lengthy Audio Animatronic stage show tracing American history. It's one of the most technically impressive things Disney has ever built, and the theater is massive, air conditioned, and a lifesaver in summer.

EPCOT also runs festivals throughout most of the year, and there's almost always one happening in summer. These festivals add temporary food and drink booths all along the World Showcase, small plate dishes and specialty cocktails from cuisines that go beyond what the permanent pavilions offer. The festival booths are part of what makes "drinking around the world" a thing people actually plan their trip around. Most festivals also include a live concert series at the America Gardens Theatre near the American Adventure pavilion, typically three performances per evening, included with park admission. The specific concert lineup depends on which festival is running during your dates. Disney also offers dining packages that pair a meal at a participating EPCOT restaurant with guaranteed concert seating, which is worth looking into if a performer you like is scheduled. Check the Disney calendar for your dates to see which festival and concert series is running.

On the ride side, EPCOT has some of Disney World's best. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is a reverse launch indoor roller coaster set to a classic rock soundtrack that changes each ride. It's one of the newest and most popular attractions at Disney World, and the wait times reflect it, you need Lightning Lane or a rope drop strategy, there's no middle ground. Test Track lets you design a virtual car and then ride it through a series of tests, culminating in an outdoor high speed lap around the building. Frozen Ever After is a boat ride through Arendelle in the Norway pavilion, charming and well done, but the wait times are wildly disproportionate to the ride length because every family with small children makes a beeline for it. Remy's Ratatouille Adventure, in the France pavilion expansion, shrinks you to rat size and sends you through Gusteau's restaurant on a trackless dark ride. And Spaceship Earth, the giant golf ball that is the park's icon, is a gentle ride through the history of human communication. It's not a thrill ride; it's a long, air conditioned journey through beautifully detailed scenes, and in summer, that AC alone makes it worth a walk on.

The front half of the park has a few more attractions worth knowing about. The Seas with Nemo & Friends is a gentle clamshell ride through an animated undersea story that deposits you into one of the largest aquariums in the world, the actual exhibit space after the ride is enormous, with dolphins, sea turtles, manatees, sharks, and rays, and you can spend as long as you want walking through it. It's fully indoor and a great stop for families with young kids or anyone who wants to get out of the heat. Living with the Land is a boat ride through working greenhouses where Disney grows actual produce using experimental agricultural techniques. It sounds dry on paper but it's surprisingly fascinating, almost never has a wait, and the greenhouse section is genuinely cool, temperature wise and otherwise. Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana is an outdoor walk through trail in the World Nature area where you play and interact with water along the path, kids love the spots where they can splash and manipulate water features. It's not a ride; it's a self paced walkthrough, and in summer heat it's a welcome excuse to get wet. Note that some parts may close during storms, and there's a separate dry path for wheelchairs and service animals.

EPCOT handles summer heat better than any other park. The World Showcase pavilions have air conditioned interiors. Every headliner ride is indoors. The restaurants give you an excuse to sit in AC for an hour while eating something actually worth eating. The Seas aquarium, the American Adventure theater, and the pavilion interiors all serve as extended cool down zones that don't feel like you're killing time, you're actually doing something worth doing. The weak spot is the World Showcase lagoon walk itself, that long loop around the water is exposed, and at 2 p.m. in July it can feel punishing.

The best summer strategy at EPCOT is to ride the headliners in the morning, Cosmic Rewind at rope drop, Test Track next, then migrate to the World Showcase for lunch and the afternoon, ducking into pavilions, the American Adventure, and the festival booths when the heat peaks. Evening at EPCOT is arguably the best evening at any Disney park. The World Showcase comes alive after dark. Temperatures drop, the pavilions light up, and Luminous: The Symphony of Us, the nighttime fireworks and fountain show over the lagoon, can be watched from almost anywhere along the World Showcase with a drink in your hand. EPCOT also tends to have the latest park hours, often staying open until 10 or 11 p.m., making it the best park hop destination for evenings even if you spent the morning somewhere else.

EPCOT is the park most likely to surprise people who think Disney World is just for kids. If your group skews older, if food matters to you, or if you want a day that feels more like travel than a theme park, this is where you should be.

Continue Planning Your EPCOT Day

- EPCOT: Big Group (8+)

- EPCOT: Mixed Ages

- EPCOT: Young Kids

- EPCOT: No Kids

Hollywood Studios

Hollywood Studios is the smallest park by acreage but packs in the highest concentration of marquee rides at Disney World. It's built around three themed lands that each deliver something completely different, Galaxy's Edge for Star Wars, Toy Story Land for families, and Sunset Boulevard for classic thrills, plus a collection of headliner rides and shows scattered across the rest of the park. More must do attractions per square foot than anywhere else on property, and it's not close.

The problem is that everyone knows this. Hollywood Studios regularly hits capacity limits. Wait times for top rides can exceed two hours by mid morning. The park is small enough that it feels packed even on moderate crowd days, and there's less to do between the rides, fewer trails, fewer exploration areas, less room to breathe compared to Animal Kingdom or EPCOT. If Magic Kingdom is a full day of varied experiences, Hollywood Studios is a focused sprint through the best rides Disney has to offer.

Rise of the Resistance is the ride people travel to Orlando for. You're captured by the First Order, loaded onto a transport, and dropped into a full scale Star Destroyer hangar before a trackless dark ride sends you careening through blaster fire and a multi story drop. Even people who don't care about Star Wars come off this ride stunned. It regularly posts the longest wait times in all of Disney World.

Tower of Terror, on Sunset Boulevard, drops you in a randomized sequence inside a haunted hotel elevator shaft. It's been open since 1994 and still delivers one of the best atmospheric experiences at any theme park, the theming is immaculate, the pre show is genuinely creepy, and the drop profiles change every ride.

Also on Sunset Boulevard, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster is being transformed from its original Aerosmith theme into a Muppets themed attraction featuring the Electric Mayhem band. The Aerosmith version permanently closed in March 2026. The new version, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets, will include a new pre show with Audio Animatronic characters and penguin sound engineers, and a ride through Hollywood set to Electric Mayhem's biggest hits. Disney has announced a summer 2026 opening, so check the Disney website for current status before your trip, it may be open or still under construction depending on your dates. Separately, the old Muppet*Vision 3D theater and surrounding Grand Avenue area are walled off for construction and being transformed into Monstropolis, a Monsters, Inc. themed land.

Right next to Tower of Terror and the coaster, Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After is a stage show on Sunset Boulevard featuring Cruella de Vil, Captain Hook, and Maleficent singing on stage. It's just past the giant guitar to the right, easy to spot, and a fun sit down break from the ride lines.

Toy Story Land is the family hub of Hollywood Studios. The whole area is designed to make you feel like you've been shrunk to the size of a toy in Andy's backyard, oversized building blocks, giant Tinker Toys, and Woody and Buzz everywhere. Slinky Dog Dash is the land's headliner, a family coaster that looks mild but rides surprisingly well. It draws some of the longest waits in the park because it threads the needle between thrilling enough for adults and accessible enough for kids at 38 inches. Toy Story Mania is a 3D shooting gallery on a moving vehicle, you wear 3D glasses and compete for points by launching darts, rings, and balls at animated targets. It's pure fun, competitive, endlessly replayable, and one of the few rides in the park that works equally well for every age. Alien Swirling Saucers is the gentlest ride in the land, a spinning saucer ride set to music that's aimed squarely at younger kids. It's short and simple, but small children love it.

Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway is near the front of the park and deserves more than a passing mention. It's the first ride through attraction starring Mickey Mouse, and it's a trackless dark ride that sends you through cartoon scenes where the physics go haywire, walls stretch, floors tilt, and the car goes places you don't expect. No height requirement, no big scares, and genuinely fun for all ages.

Star Tours The Adventures Continue is the park's long running Star Wars flight simulator. You board a Starspeeder and get thrown into randomized Star Wars scenarios, the combinations of scenes change, so you can ride it multiple times and get a different experience. It's fully indoor, air conditioned, and rarely has the punishing wait times that Rise of the Resistance draws.

Galaxy's Edge, the Star Wars land, deserves its own section. It's not just a ride queue; it's a fully realized environment. The architecture, the ambient sounds, the cast members who stay in character, the shops selling genuinely detailed merchandise, you can easily spend an hour just walking through Batuu without riding anything. Oga's Cantina serves themed cocktails in an immersive bar setting. Savi's Workshop lets you build a custom lightsaber in a theatrical ceremony that Star Wars fans describe as a once in a lifetime experience. Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run puts you in the cockpit, pilots actually steer. The ride experience depends heavily on your role (pilot is best, engineer is least exciting), and the queue through the Falcon itself is worth the wait even if the ride is the weakest of the land's offerings.

The shows at Hollywood Studios round out the day. The Little Mermaid A Musical Adventure is a reimagined stage show in Animation Courtyard featuring live performers, puppetry, and projections retelling the Little Mermaid story. It's fully indoor, air conditioned, and a solid sit down break. Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular is an outdoor stadium show recreating action sequences from the Indiana Jones films with live stunt performers, real explosions, and audience volunteers pulled on stage. It's big, loud, and entertaining even if you've never seen the movies. The stadium is open air but the seats are shaded, and it's a solid break from the ride lines. Fantasmic! is the park's nighttime spectacular, a water, fire, and projection show in a massive amphitheater. If it's running on your date, build your evening around it. It runs late, the theater seats thousands, and it gives you a reason to stay in the park through the cooler evening hours when the ride lines thin out.

Summer at Hollywood Studios is tough. The park has the least shade of any Disney park. Many queue lines are partially or fully outdoors. The compact footprint means you're always near a crowd and there's nowhere to escape the press of people. The strategy that works is front loading your day: be at rope drop, hit the headliners in the first two hours when wait times are at their lowest, then switch to indoor attractions, Toy Story Mania, Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway, Star Tours, through mid morning. During the afternoon heat peak, Galaxy's Edge actually has better shade than most of the park, so retreat there, grab a drink at Oga's, or catch one of the shows, Indiana Jones and the Villains show are both good afternoon options. Save Tower of Terror for after 7 p.m. when lines drop along with the temperature.

Hollywood Studios is the right call for teens, young adults, Star Wars fans, thrill seekers, and anyone doing a shorter trip who wants to pack the most punch into a single day. It's the wrong call if your group is mostly small children who can't meet height requirements, or if you want a relaxed, wandering kind of day, this park doesn't do relaxed.

Continue Planning Your Hollywood Studios Day

- Hollywood Studios: Big Group (8+)

- Hollywood Studios: Mixed Ages

- Hollywood Studios: Young Kids

- Hollywood Studios: No Kids

Magic Kingdom

Magic Kingdom is the park. It's the one on the postcards, the one in the commercials, the one your coworker is talking about when they say "we're going to Disney." Cinderella Castle at the end of Main Street U.S.A. is the most recognizable image in theme park history, and walking toward it for the first time, or the tenth time, still does something to people. This is where the fireworks happen, where the characters roam, and where that hard to define "Disney magic" feeling lives most strongly.

It's also the biggest park by ride count. Over 25 attractions spread across six themed lands, each with its own personality. Adventureland is tropical and exotic, jungle vibes, tiki torches, and the sounds of steel drums. Frontierland is the rugged American frontier with log cabins and a riverboat. Liberty Square is colonial America tucked between Frontierland and Fantasyland. Fantasyland is the castle courtyard, fairy tales, spinning rides, and the heart of the park for young kids. Tomorrowland is retro futuristic, all swooping lines and neon. And Main Street U.S.A. is the entrance boulevard lined with shops and bakeries that smells like vanilla and nostalgia from the moment you walk in.

The big rides are spread across these lands, and each one delivers something different.

TRON Lightcycle / Run, in Tomorrowland, is a legitimate launch coaster and one of the fastest rides at Disney World. You lean forward onto a motorcycle style vehicle and launch through a neon lit environment. It's short but intense, and the wait times reflect the demand, Lightning Lane or early morning are the only strategies that work.

Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, in Fantasyland, is a family coaster through the diamond mine from Snow White. The ride itself is pleasant rather than intense, gentle swoops through beautifully detailed scenes, but the demand is enormous. This ride consistently posts some of the longest wait times in the park despite being relatively mild, because it hits the sweet spot of thrilling enough for adults and accessible enough for kids.

Space Mountain, in Tomorrowland, has been running since 1975 and still delivers. It's an indoor coaster in complete darkness, the track is rough by modern standards, but the disorientation of riding in the dark makes it feel faster than it is. A classic for a reason.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, in Frontierland, is the perfect family thrill ride. It's a runaway mine train coaster that's exciting enough for adults and gentle enough for kids who meet the 40 inch height requirement. Best ridden after dark when the theming comes alive and the rocks glow. Note: Big Thunder has been undergoing a major refurbishment with a full track replacement and new effects. Disney has announced a spring 2026 reopening, check the Disney website for current status before your trip.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure, in Frontierland, is the newest major ride, it replaced Splash Mountain and takes you on a log flume journey through the bayou with music and characters from The Princess and the Frog. Like any new ride, it can experience occasional closures, so check the app on your day for wait times and status.

Pirates of the Caribbean, in Adventureland, is a slow boat ride through pirate scenes. It's not a thrill ride, it's a long, air conditioned masterpiece. In summer, it's as much about the AC as the pirates. The craftsmanship in the scenes is decades old and still holds up, and the queue area is one of the coolest (literally) spots in the park.

Haunted Mansion, in Liberty Square, is a dark ride through a haunted estate in doom buggies. No height requirement, no real scares for most kids, and more hidden details than you'll catch in a dozen rides. The stretching room, the ballroom scene, the hitchhiking ghosts, it's been delighting people since 1971 and the queue itself is an attraction worth lingering in.

The Jungle Cruise, in Adventureland, was recently updated with new scenes and jokes. It's a guided boat tour through jungle rivers with Audio Animatronic animals and a skipper delivering a nonstop stream of puns. The humor is corny on purpose, the kids love the animals, and adults love making fun of the jokes. It's outdoor but shaded by the jungle canopy, and the wait times are usually manageable.

Beyond the headliners, Magic Kingdom has the deepest bench of any park for young children. Dumbo, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, it's a small world, Peter Pan's Flight, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (undergoing a major overhaul with new ride vehicles and gameplay, expected to reopen spring 2026; check the Disney website for current status), the list of rides with no height requirement is long, and character meet and greets are everywhere. Princess Fairytale Hall in Fantasyland, Mickey's PhilharMagic (a 3D film that's fully indoor and air conditioned), Town Square Theater for Mickey Mouse himself, if your kids want to meet characters, this is the park where it happens. No other park comes close to the volume of character interactions available here.

The shows and smaller attractions fill in the gaps and serve as critical summer survival tools. Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, in Adventureland, is a classic Audio Animatronic show with tropical birds singing in a fully air conditioned theater. It's been open since the 1970s, it's charmingly retro, and in 95 degree heat it's one of the best sit down breaks you'll take in the park. Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor, in Tomorrowland, is an interactive comedy show where animated monsters perform jokes, some sourced from the audience, on a giant screen. It's fully indoor, air conditioned, genuinely funny, and the kind of attraction you can walk into with almost no wait during peak afternoon hours. Country Bear Musical Jamboree, in Frontierland, is an Audio Animatronic musical revue that was refreshed in 2024 with classic Disney songs reinterpreted in country, bluegrass, and Americana styles. It's another indoor, air conditioned classic that gives you a chance to sit down and cool off. Carousel of Progress, in Tomorrowland, is a rotating theater show that walks you through a century of American innovation, it's long, it's air conditioned, and it almost never has a wait.

What catches first timers off guard is the logistics. Magic Kingdom is the only park where you cannot drive to the entrance. Every single guest arrives via secondary transportation, monorail, ferry, bus, boat, or walking from a nearby resort. This adds significant time to both your arrival and departure, and it means leaving the park is a commitment. You don't just walk to your car. You take a ferry or monorail to the Transportation and Ticket Center, then a tram to your vehicle. At the end of a long summer day, that commute feels very real. The detailed guides cover this in depth, but it's worth knowing before you choose this park for your day.

Summer at Magic Kingdom is the most intense version of any Disney park. It draws the largest crowds of any theme park on Earth. The heat is relentless, much of the park is open air with limited shade, and the hub area around the castle becomes a concrete heat sink in the afternoon. But those brutal summer days come with a silver lining: extended hours. Magic Kingdom often stays open until 10 or 11 p.m. in summer, and the last two hours of the night, after Happily Ever After, the fireworks and projection show on Cinderella Castle, are some of the best theme park hours you'll ever experience. Lines for headliner rides can drop by half or more after 9 p.m. The temperature falls. The park empties. You can walk onto rides that had massive waits earlier in the day.

The strategy that works in summer is a split day. Arrive before the park opens, use the first 90 minutes to hit one or two headliners while wait times are lowest, then pivot to indoor attractions, Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Carousel of Progress, PhilharMagic, Laugh Floor, the Tiki Room, Country Bear Musical Jamboree, and air conditioned restaurants through the middle of the day. If you're staying on Disney property, go back to your hotel for the 1 to 4 p.m. heat. Come back in the evening for Happily Ever After and the post fireworks golden hours of short lines and cool air. The families who try to power through from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. without a break are the families melting down near Frontierland at 3 p.m. Don't be that family.

Magic Kingdom is the right choice for first timers, families with young children, nostalgia seekers, and multi generational groups where you need something for every age. It's the weakest choice if you care deeply about food and drinks, the dining here is the worst of any park and alcohol is only available at table service restaurants, or if you're a group of adults who've already been and want intensity over nostalgia. But for most people making their first decision about Disney World, this is where you start.

Continue Planning Your Magic Kingdom Day

- Magic Kingdom: Big Group (8+)

- Magic Kingdom: Mixed Ages

- Magic Kingdom: Young Kids

- Magic Kingdom: No Kids