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Planning | Exploring the Magic Kingdom | Top Magic Kingdom Spectacles
Whether you arrive at the Magic Kingdom via monorail, boat, or bus, it’s hard to escape that surge of excitement or suppress that smile upon sighting the towers of Cinderella Castle or the spires of Space Mountain. So what if it’s a cliché by now? There’s magic beyond the turnstiles, and you aren’t going to miss one memorable moment.
Most visitors have some idea of what they’d like to see and do during their day in the Magic Kingdom. Popular attractions like Space Mountain and Splash Mountain are on the lists of any thrill seeker, and the recently expanded Fantasyland is Destination One for parents of small children and seekers of moderate thrills like the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Visitors who steer away from wilder rides are first in line at the Jungle Cruise or Pirates of the Caribbean in Adventureland.
It’s great to have a strategy for seeing the park’s attractions, grabbing a bite to eat, or scouring the shops for souvenir gold. But don’t forget that Disney Imagineers—the creative pros behind every themed land and attraction—are famous for their attention to detail. Your experience will be richer if you take time to notice the extra touches—from the architecture to the music and the costumes. The same genius is evident even in the landscape, from the tropical setting of Adventureland to the red-stone slopes of Frontierland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
Wherever you go, watch for hidden Mickeys—silhouettes and abstract images of Mickey Mouse—tucked by Imagineers into every corner of the Kingdom. For instance, at the Haunted Mansion, look for him in the place settings in the banquet scene.
Much of the Magic Kingdom’s pixie dust is spread by the people who work here, the costumed cast members who do their part to create fond memories for each guest who crosses their path. Maybe the grim ghoul who greets you solemnly at the Haunted Mansion will cause you to break down and giggle. Or the sunny shop assistant will help your daughter find the perfect sparkly shoes to match her princess dress. You get the feeling that everyone’s in on the fun; in fact, you wonder if they ever go home!
Top Attractions
For Ages 7 and Up
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin
Haunted Mansion
Pirates of the Caribbean
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Space Mountain
For Ages 6 and Under
Dumbo the Flying Elephant
Enchanted Tales with Belle
The Magic Carpets of Aladdin
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid
Planning
Getting Oriented
The park is laid out on a north–south axis, with Cinderella Castle at the center and the various lands surrounding it in a broad circle.
As you pass underneath the railroad tracks, symbolically leaving behind the world of reality and entering a world of fantasy, you’ll immediately notice the charming buildings lining Town Square and Main Street, U.S.A, which runs due north and ends at the Hub (also called Central Plaza), in front of Cinderella Castle. If you’re lost or have questions, cast members are available at almost every turn to help you.
Park Amenities
Guest Relations. To the left in Town Square as you face Main Street, City Hall houses Guest Relations (aka Guest Services), the Magic Kingdom’s principal information center (407/824–4521). Here you can search for misplaced belongings or companions, ask questions of staffers, and pick up a guide map and a Times Guide with schedules of events and character-greeting information. TIP If you’re trying for a last-minute lunch or dinner reservation, you may be able to book it at City Hall.
Lockers: Lockers ($7 or $9 plus $5 deposit) are in an arcade under the Main Street railroad station. If you’re park hopping, use your locker receipt to get a free locker at the next park.
Lost People and Things: Instruct your kids to talk to anyone with a Disney name tag if they lose you. City Hall also has a lost and found and a computerized message center, where you can leave notes for your companions in the Magic Kingdom and other parks.
Visiting Tips
• Try to come toward the end of the week, because most families hit the Magic Kingdom early in a visit.
• Ride a star attraction during a parade; lines ease considerably. (But be careful not to get stuck on the wrong side of the parade route when it starts, or you may never get across.)
• At City Hall, near the park’s Town Square entrance, pick up a map and a Times Guide, which lists showtimes, character-greeting times, and hours for attractions and restaurants.
• Book character meals early. Main Street, U.S.A.’s The Crystal Palace, A Buffet with Character has breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and friends. All three meals at the Fairy Tale Dining experience in Cinderella Castle are extremely popular—so much so that you should reserve your spot six months out. The same advice goes for booking the full-service dinner at the new Be Our Guest Restaurant in the Beast’s Castle in Fantasyland.
Exploring the Magic Kingdom
Main Street, U.S.A.
With its pastel Victorian-style buildings, antique automobiles ahoohga-oohga-ing, sparkling sidewalks, and an atmosphere of what one writer has called “almost hysterical joy,” Main Street is more than a mere conduit to the other enchantments of the Magic Kingdom. It’s where the spell is first cast.
You emerge from beneath the Walt Disney World Railroad Station into a realization of one of the most tenacious American dreams. The perfect street in the perfect small town in a perfect moment of time is burnished to jewel-like quality, thanks to a four-fifths-scale reduction, nightly cleanings with high-pressure hoses, and constant repainting. And it’s a very sunny world, thanks to an outpouring of welcoming entertainment: live bands, barbershop quartets, and background music from Disney films and American musicals played over loudspeakers. Horse-drawn trolleys and omnibuses with their horns tooting chug along the street. Vendors in Victorian costumes sell balloons and popcorn. And Cinderella’s famous castle floats whimsically in the distance where Main Street disappears.
Although attractions with a capital A are minimal on Main Street, there are plenty of inducements—namely, shops and eateries—to while away your time and part you from your money. The largest of these, the Emporium, is often the last stop for souvenir hunters at day’s end. At the Main Street Bakery, you can find your favorite Starbucks latte and a sandwich or baked treats like cupcakes and brownies. If you can’t resist an interactive challenge while making your way through the park, head first to the Firehouse, next to City Hall, to join the legendary wizard Merlin in the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom role-playing game. For no extra charge, you can take ownership of special cards with “magic spells” that help you search for symbols and bring down Disney villains like Yzma and Kronk from the Disney film The Emperor’s New Groove. Don’t worry—you’ll have time between fireball battles and cyclone spells to ride Space Mountain.
The Harmony Barber Shop lets you step back in time for a haircut ($15 for children 12 and under, $19 for anyone older). Babies or tots get free Mickey Ears, a souvenir lock of hair, and a certificate if it’s their first haircut ever, but you pay $19 for the experience. At the Town Square Theater (formerly Exposition Hall), presented by Kodak, Mickey Mouse meets you for photos and autographs. And, for the first time in Disney history, you can pick up a FastPass+ appointment for such meet and greets. While you’re here, stock up on batteries and memory cards or disposable cameras.
Adventureland
From the scrubbed brick, manicured lawns, and meticulously pruned trees of the Central Plaza, an artfully dilapidated wooden bridge leads to the jungles of Adventureland. Here, South African cape honeysuckle droops, Brazilian bougainvillea drapes, Mexican flame vines cling, spider plants clone, and three varieties of palm trees sway. The bright, all-American sing-along tunes that fill the air along Main Street and Central Plaza are replaced by the recorded repetitions of trumpeting elephants, pounding drums, and squawking parrots. The architecture is a mishmash of the best of Thailand, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Africa, and Polynesia, arranged in an inspired disorder that recalls comic-book fantasies of far-off places.
Once contained within the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, Captain Jack Sparrow and the crew of the Black Pearl are brazenly recruiting new hearties at the Pirates League, adjacent to the ride entrance. You can get pirate and mermaid makeovers (for lots of doubloons) here. On a nearby stage furnished with pirate booty, the captain instructs scurvy dog recruits on brandishing a sword at Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Tutorial (several shows a day). And that’s not all! At “A Pirate’s Adventure: Treasures of the Seven Seas” park guests embark on an interactive quest with a pirate map and talisman to complete “raids” through Adventureland as they fight off pirate enemies along the way. Shiver me timbers—it’s a pirate’s life for ye!
Frontierland
Frontierland evokes the American frontier and is planted with mesquite, twisted Peruvian pepper trees, slash pines, and cacti. The period seems to be the latter half of the 19th century, and the West is being won by Disney cast members dressed in checked shirts, leather vests, cowboy hats, and brightly colored neckerchiefs. Banjo and fiddle music twangs from tree to tree, and snackers walk around munching turkey drumsticks so large that you could best an outlaw single-handedly with one. (Beware of hovering seagulls that migrate to the parks during cooler months—they’ve been known to snatch snacks.)
The screams that drown out the string music aren’t the result of a cowboy surprising an Indian. They come from two of the Magic Kingdom’s more thrilling rides: Splash Mountain, an elaborate flume ride, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, a roller coaster. The Walt Disney World Railroad tunnels past a colorful scene in Splash Mountain and drops you off between it and Thunder Mountain.
Liberty Square
The rough-and-tumble Western frontier gently folds into Colonial America as Liberty Square picks up where Frontierland leaves off. The weathered siding gives way to solid brick and neat clapboard. The mesquite and cactus are replaced by stately oaks and masses of azaleas. The theme is Colonial history, which Northerners will be happy to learn is portrayed here as solid Yankee. The buildings, topped with weather vanes and exuding prosperity, are pure New England.
A replica of the Liberty Bell, crack and all, seems an appropriate prop to separate Liberty Square from Frontierland. There’s even a Liberty Tree, a more than 150-year-old live oak, transported here from elsewhere on Disney property. Just as the Sons of Liberty hung lanterns on trees as a signal of solidarity after the Boston Tea Party, the Liberty Tree’s branches are decorated with 13 lanterns representing the 13 original colonies. Around the square are tree-shaded tables for an alfresco lunch and plenty of carts and fast-food eateries to supply the goods.
Fantasyland
Walt Disney called this “a timeless land of enchantment,” and Fantasyland does conjure pixie dust. Perhaps that’s because the fanciful gingerbread houses, gleaming gold turrets, and, of course, the rides are based on Disney-animated movies.
Many of these rides, which could ostensibly be classified as rides for children, are packed with enough delightful detail to engage the adults who accompany them. Fantasyland has always been the most heavily trafficked area in the park, and its rides and shows are almost always crowded.
The good news is that Fantasyland has undergone the largest expansion in the park’s history to offer several new attractions and experiences. Dumbo the Flying Elephant now is double the size, flying above circus-themed grounds that also include the Great Goofini coaster, starring Goofy as stuntman. There’s also a Walt Disney World Railroad station in Fantasyland. And a circus-themed Casey Jr. Splash ‘N’ Soak Station provides water-play respite for kids. Ariel of The Little Mermaid invites you to her own state-of-the-art attraction, Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid. Disney princesses welcome you for a photo op in the glittering Princess Fairytale Hall. You can be part of the show when you join Belle, Lumiere, and Madame Wardrobe of Beauty and the Beast at the Enchanted Tales with Belle attraction for a story performance. Meanwhile, Beast may be brooding in his castle, where the Be Our Guest dining room beckons to lunch and dinner guests. And the musical Seven Dwarfs Mine Train family coaster opened in 2014 to complete the expansion.
You can enter Fantasyland on foot from Liberty Square, Tomorrowland, or via the Walt Disney World Railroad, but the classic introduction is through Cinderella Castle. As you exit the castle’s archway, look left to discover a charming and often overlooked touch: Cinderella Fountain, a lovely brass casting of the castle’s namesake, who’s dressed in her peasant togs and surrounded by her beloved mice and bird friends.
From the southern end of Liberty Square, head toward the park hub and stop at the Disney PhotoPass picture spot for one of the park’s best, unobstructed ground-level views of Cinderella Castle. It’s a great spot for that family photo.
Tomorrowland
The “future that never was” spins boldly into view as you enter Tomorrowland, where Disney Imagineers paint the landscape with whirling spaceships, flashy neon lights, and gleaming robots. This is the future as envisioned by sci-fi writers and moviemakers in the 1920s and ’30s, when space flight, laser beams, and home computers were fiction, not fact. Retro Jetsonesque styling lends the area lasting chic.
Gamers who want a break from the crowds can find their favorite video challenges in the arcade attached to Space Mountain. SEGA race car, NASCAR, and Fast and Furious Super Bikes games draw tweens and teens; Lil’ Hoops give young kids a manageable basketball challenge. Though Tomorrowland Transit Authority (TTA) PeopleMover isn’t a big-ticket ride, it’s a great way to check out the landscape from above as it zooms in and out of Space Mountain and curves around the entire land.
Top Magic Kingdom Spectacles
Fodor’s Choice | Disney Festival of Fantasy Parade.
Who’d want to miss a parade that delivers in 12 entertainment-packed minutes a lineup of Disney characters and royalty, a Steampunk-inspired, fire-breathing dragon, elaborate towering floats, and handsome pairs of dancers twirling to some of Disney’s best tunes? This newest daily 3 pm parade celebrates Walt’s legacy with vignettes featuring the glamour, drama, and fun of classic films like Sleeping Beauty and Peter Pan while also catering to fans of contemporary box-office hits like Brave and Frozen. The colorful pageant of nine floats outperforms its predecessors with über-creative costuming, inventive float technology, a cast of nearly 100 gung-ho performers, and a musical score that invites singing along with familiar medleys. From the 50-foot-long topiary garden float of Disney royal couples led by dancers in swan-neck-collared ball gowns with iridescent feathers to the 32-foot-tall Airship float finale with Mickey and Minnie, the parade energizes spectators as it rolls past. A Lost Boy from Peter Pan may grab your hand and kiss it. A stilt-walker might lean into your camera for a snapshot. You’ll hear viewers gasp or shout when the towering 53-foot-long, green-eyed Maleficent Dragon, created with help from Tony-award-winning designer Michael Curry, rears its head and spews flames. For people with disabilities: There are viewing areas for guests in wheelchairs along the route; ask any cast member for guidance. A sign-language schedule is available at Guest Relations. TIP The parade runs from Frontierland to Town Square. Check your guide map for the complete route. Disney now distributes a limited number of FastPass+ reservations, but book as far ahead as possible. Otherwise, find shade beneath a Frontierland porch at least an hour before showtime. If you’ve seen the parade, this is a good time to head for popular rides while crowds gather along the route. | Magic Kingdom | Duration: 12 mins. Crowds: Heavy. Audience: All Ages.
Fodor’s Choice | Main Street Electrical Parade.
The Main Street parade, with 23 illuminated floats, 80 performers, and a half-million lights in all, first debuted at Disneyland in California in 1972. It lights up Magic Kingdom nights with plenty of power and its distinctive synthesizer-infused “Baroque Hoedown” musical theme. The lead float features Tinker Bell showering guests with 25,000 pixie-dusted points of light, and a finale float with a patriotic tribute that includes a majestic bald eagle shining with golden lights. Check Times Guide; the parade sometimes runs twice in one night and occasionally not at all. For guests with disabilities: Ask a cast member for best wheelchair viewing. TIP Use MyDisneyExperience.com to sign up before your visit for FastPass+ viewing, or take your place on the curb at least 40 minutes before the parade begins. | Magic Kingdom | Duration: 20 mins. Crowds: Heavy. Audience: All Ages.
Fodor’s Choice | Wishes.
When the lights dim on Main Street and orchestral music fills the air, you know this fireworks extravaganza is about to begin. In Wishes, Jiminy Cricket’s voice comes to life and tries to convince you that your wishes really can come true. He gets plenty of support from the Disney stars of classic films such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid. Portions of famous film songs play over loudspeakers, and you hear the voices of film characters like Peter Pan and Aladdin as more than 680 individual fireworks paint the night sky. Oh, and don’t worry that Tinker Bell may have been sealed in her jar for the night—she comes back to fly above the crowd in grand pixie-dust style. Check the Times Guide for performance time, which varies seasonally. TIP You can book a FastPass+ ahead of your visit for best viewing. The Castle forecourt and surrounding bridges offer great views; or find a place near the front of the park for a quick post-show exit. | Magic Kingdom | Duration: 12 mins. Crowds: Heavy. Audience: All Ages.