Disney Magic Kingdom Tips: What to Do When You First Arrive
Spending the day at Disney Magic Kingdom? Here are suggestions for what you should do when you first arrive at the Park.
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The Disney Magic Kingdom park is a world of adventure and fantasy. It’s the quintessential Disney experience starting with a stroll right down the middle of Main Street USA. There is a lot of ground to cover in this park and it’s important to start on the right footing.
There are quite a few things to do as soon as you get into the park before you leave Main Street, So don’t schedule your Fastpasses too early. I have five suggestions for things to do first as soon as you enter Disney Magic Kingdom park.
Pick up a Map and Schedule
Although the Magic Kingdom is ridiculously simple to navigate you should always have your map and schedule. Your map is more convenient to reference than the interactive one on your phone so you can readily identify restroom locations and other nearby facilities. The parade and show schedule is most important due to the parade route that runs from Town Square through Frontierland. It’s helpful to know when parades will happen so you can plan for them, or plan around them.
Meet Mickey at the Town Square Theater
Before you go anywhere else, you have your opportunity to meet Mickey Mouse at the Town Square Theater. At Park opening is one of the best times to get to the photo location and avoid the long lines that form. The Disney Magic Kingdom is the most popular place to meet Mickey outside of any character dining experiences. If you do this now, you can save a Fastpass for something else later in the day.
Sign Up for Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom
Save some time and take in Town Square while you are there. Although you can return throughout the day, it is likely that you won’t come back until you leave the park. If you stop by the Firehouse, you can sign up for a free game that will make your exploration of the Disney Magic Kingdom park more fun. Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom is an interactive game played on magic windows throughout the park. In the game, you help Merlin fight Hades and his villainous forces as they try to take over the Magic Kingdom. The game is a fun side quest for kids especially and missions usually are under a half hour.
Go West
If you are trying to get the maximum number of rides in your day, the best thing to do is go straight to the end of Frontierland. That is where you’ll find Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain right next to each other. If you can knock these out early, you can save Fastpasses for late morning or noon. While in the area, you can take on Pirates of the Caribbean and the Jungle Cruise before the lines get too heavy and you can use your midday Fastpasses at Haunted Mansion, Peter Pan’s Flight, and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. You can also do this plan in reverse, depending on where you plan to have lunch.
Eat Something
Assuming you’re not rushing to the rides, while you are still on Main Street grab a snack or a treat of some kind before moving on. There are too many good things to pass up all of them, and it just makes the whole Disney Magic Kingdom experience so much better. There is a confectionary, an ice cream parlor, popcorn, hot dogs, and more to choose from. Eating quick snack rounds off the Main Street USA experience.
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