Planning Three Disney Parks in One Day

Both of our favorite day on this little getaway to Orlando was doing the Park Hopper at Disney. I had never seen Animal Kingdom, Epcot, or Hollywood Studios when I went so it was cool to experience all of that for the first time. My planning strategy really came in handy at Disney because it seems like Disney goers have it all planned out. For instance, people make food reservations l80 days in advance for the best places (you could starve in Magic Kingdom if you procrastinate), and if you don't book your three FastPass+ right away (60 or 30 days out depending on if you are staying on Disney property) then you won't get one for the busiest rides.

Taking all of this into consideration, here's what we did to hit up the most popular rides at each park the day we did Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood studios. The Disney App was amazing because it had maps and made it easy to use or cancel FastPasses. 

We started at Hollywood Studios where Jake was surprised to see the other planners like me (everyone really!!) raced (literally raced)  to get to Toy Story once they let us in. I admit it was a very fun ride and we only ended up waiting 5-10 minutes. This ride is over an hour wait by 9:30 a.m. and 75 min+ the rest of the day. Get a fast pass if you can - we couldn't.

Then at Hollywood Studios we did:

• Star Wars (Fastpass)
• Muppets 3D
• Met Buzz and Woody
• Rock and Roll Roller Coaster (FastPass)
• The Great Movie Ride

Then by my mistake we missed out on Tower of Terror but we had plenty of time to fit it in. (We had rode it in California but still that's kind of a bummer)

We left at 11:30 a.m. for Animal Kingdom using the Disney Transport and that was super easy to use! It took us no more than a half hour total from walking out of one park to entering the next.

Animal Kingdom was my least favorite but we did:

• Expedition Everest (FastPass)
• It's Tough to Be A Bug
• Kilimanjaro Safaris (FastPass)

We definitely had time for DINOSAUR but didn't feel like riding it because we wanted to do more at Epcot. Expedition Everest was so fun though. We were seated in the front and it was my favorite thrill ride at the Disney Parks by far! We had lunch and relaxed and watched some tribal dancing and looked around each area of the park and then left.

We arrived at Epcot at 4:00 p.m. and rode:

• Spaceship Earth (FastPass)
• Mission Space (FastPass)
• Sum of All Thrills

We had a FastPass for the Test Track ride (long wait) but when it was time for the pass we were in the World Showcase area and we had a great spot for fireworks so we decided to pass on this one. Realistically we could have done TestTrack and still watched the Illuminations show over the water but we were sat down with a cool drink on a bridge in Italy and so we decided to keep our perfect spot for the show.

Mission Space really freaked me out! You are launched into space with your crew in a tiny spaceship simulator and you get G forces put on you making it hard to breathe and compressing your chest. I really thought I was going to puke. (they have barf bags in there and emergency stops just in case)

Sum of All Thrills allowed us to design our own roller coaster and ride it and we really had fun with that. We went upside down four times in ours! The simulators looks like this:

Then we walked around the World Showcase, road a little boat ride in Mexico in the market, started a Beer Tour (one drink from each country) that we couldn't finish, had dinner at Vio Napoli (pizza is easy with food allergies) and then watched the Illuminations night show.