Disney World With Toddlers

There is SO MUCH that goes into planning a Walt Disney World vacation with toddlers! There are 4 major parks with endless amounts of entertainment and great restaurants at each one so it’s hard to know exactly where to start when you’re trying to plan a trip to “Mickey’s House” as my daughters like to call it. We decided to go ahead and take a family trip this past February since the girls are still in preschool and we thought the parks would be a little less crowded than during their peak seasons. Little did we know Disney is ALWAYS crowded year round, apparently school age kids go there at all times of the year so we did not beat the crowds but we did manage to have a great time at Disney World with toddlers.

We decided to commit one full day to each park and not bother with getting any park hopper passes. I think this strategy worked pretty well because it’s a lot of work to transport young kids anywhere so going to more than one park per day just seemed way too ambitious to us. Rating our experience of all 4 parks in order from the best to worst is as follows:

1. Magic Kingdom
2. Epcot
3. Hollywood Studios
4. Animal Kingdom

We absolutely loved our time at Magic Kingdom and Epcot! These parks definitely have the most rides and character experiences for toddler/preschool age children. There are things for toddlers to do at every park but we enjoyed our experience at Magic Kingdom and Epcot the best.

Favorite Attractions at Magic Kingdom

A few of our favorite rides at Magic Kingdom included:

• Dumbo The Flying Elephant (pictured above)

• The Magic Carpets of Aladdin

• The Mad Tea Party

• The Barnstormer

• The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

• Peter Pan’s Flight

Definitely get FastPasses for all of these rides if you can! Dumbo and the Magic Carpet rides are very similar so you really only need to FastPass one or the other. You can start booking your FastPasses up to 60 days in advance if you are staying onsite at a Disney resort or if you have a regular ticket you can book up to 30 days in advance. Our kids also enjoyed the Swiss Family Tree House, you do not need a FastPass for this and there was never much of a line or crowd when we walked by. They also loved
Tom Sawyer Island which we did not need FastPasses for either. We also loved our dining experiences at all four of the parks. Here is a complete list of all of the best restaurants for young kids.

Favorite Attractions at Epcot

We were really surprised at how much we enjoyed Epcot, there are lots of attractions for toddlers and we had some of our best character dining experiences here.

Our favorite rides & attractions at Epcot:

• Frozen Ever After is a slow moving indoor boat ride with no height requirement, I was amazed that I was even allowed to bring our 5 month old daughter on this one. They have lots of special effects that the girls really enjoyed!

• We also went to a character meet & greet experience with Anna and Elsa at Royal Sommerhus right before we went on this ride so our Frozen obsessed girls were completely thrilled!

• Other rides they enjoyed at Epcot were the The Seas With Nemo and Friends which had a fun play area for the kids to enjoy after the ride.

• Journey Into Imagination With Figment also had an indoor area for kids to explore after the ride.

• Soarin’ Around the World was a favorite for my husband and I but our kids were not tall enough to go on this one with us, they have to be at least 40 in for Soarin.’

We also really enjoyed The World Showcase at Epcot which is mainly a bunch of restaurants & bars featuring cultural food from countries worldwide.

Favorite Attractions at Hollywood Studios

Some of the best attractions for toddlers at Disney are the shows! At Hollywood Studios our favorite attractions were:

• Beauty and The Beast – Live on Stage – the show only lasts about 30 minutes and there are lots of bright colored costumes, loud music and characters on stage to keep them fully entertained.

• They surprisingly also liked seeing the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular show that included lots of explosions, fire, a gigantic rolling stone, and a car flip over.

• Toy Story Land is supposed to be fantastic! We wanted to check out everything it has to offer but we ended up heading back to the room early for naps that day 🙂 I have heard it’s perfect for preschool aged kids too.

Favorite Attractions at Animal Kingdom

Overall we enjoyed our time at Animal Kingdom but it was not the best park for toddlers compared to the other 3 parks. At Animal Kingdom we did enjoy the following attractions:

• Mickey and Minnie at Adventurers Outpost – An indoor area to meet and take pictures with Mickey and Minnie as seen in the picture above.

• Kilimajaro Safari Ride, which has lots of animals that are very easy to see from the ride. We saw several lions, a cheetah, giraffes and flamingos to name just a few.

• The Festival of the Lion King Show was nice to go inside and escape the heat and we did not have to use a FastPass for it.

Other attractions I hear are a lot of fun that I wish we had been able to check out are the Hakuna Matata Time Dance Party and Finding Nemo The Musical.

Have you traveled to Disney with toddlers and loved an attraction that wasn’t mentioned above? Please let me know by commenting below or by reaching out to www.makingmemorieswithmyminis.com/contact.