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New Lightning Lane Updates for Fall 2026 · Ear Scouts Podcast

• Rob: In this episode of the Year Scouts podcast, we've got brand new rankings for fall for the most difficult to book lightning lanes in Walt Disney World. Plus, we're going to be answering lots of questions about lightning lanes and discussing ways that you can make the most of Lightning Lane multipass and single pass on your next trip to Walt Disney World. We got a lot to cover, so let's get to it. Hi ho everybody, this is Rob with Ear Scouts coming to you from our makeshift studio here in Celebration, Florida. With me, as always, here in Celebration is the other half of Ear Scouts Eric. Hi ho, Eric. Erick: Hi ho everyone. Rob: And Jessica, unfortunately, is not able to be with us this week. She is out of town, but we do have our dear friend and the resident Disney trivia guru here at Ear Scouts, Quizmaster Craig. Hi ho, Craig. QMCraig: I ho everybody, great to be here. Rob: Great to have you and welcome to everybody who's joining us live from Patreon. As always, Eric is going to be keeping up with the live chat on Patreon. If you'd like to join us live as we record each and every episode of the Ear Scouts podcast and take part in the Patreon exclusive after party, just head on over to patreon.com forward slash Ear Scouts. And With that said, we're gonna just jump right into the the discussion of lightning lanes today because we got a whole lot of stuff to cover. But I did want to start with just a quick introduction for those of you who are not familiar with our lightning lane decks. basically, we came up with this metaphor in order to make it easy for people who are not familiar with which lightning lanes they should book first when they come to Walt Disney World. They don't know. Which ones are the most popular that are going to run out quickly? So we came up with this idea of a deck of cards. And the ace of the deck is going to be the most valuable card, the lightning lane that is going to disappear the quickest. So if that lightning lane is important to you, you're going to want to get those higher ranked cards in your hand as quickly as possible. And it moves down the deck to the ones that You know, I'm not saying you don't need to focus on getting those attractions that they're important to you, but you can maybe put those off to book a little bit later in the day because they're still gonna have some availability. Now, the reason we have to update this deck is because things change a surprising amount, really, from month to month. We we tend to update the deck seasonally, but it makes sense when you think about it. Like water rides, for example, probably not as popular when it's chilly outside. Whereas in the heat of summer, those rides become really popular. Also, you know, rides get overhauls like recently we saw with Big Thunder Mountain or Rock and Roller Coaster, and that can affect the rankings as well. So before we get into the rankings though, there's a there's a couple of updates I wanted to share that we just discovered recently. number one relates to single pass lightning lanes. we just discovered quite by accident. You can no longer transfer a single pass lightning lane from one person in your party to another. That has been a long-standing thing. Going back to the beginning of single pass, now you've never been able to do this with multi-pass. But with single pass, if you had booked, say, Guardians of the Galaxy, Cosmic Rewind, and you decided you didn't want to ride it, you could pass that lightning lane to someone else in your party who had not ridden that attraction that day. that has been limited now. It's it is now a limitation. You can't do that on your own. You can always ask at guest relations, and it's possible they might be able to help you with it, but it's no longer a feature of the app that you can transfer those. And then the other thing I did want to mention, because this happened to us over the weekend, and this is kind of new to me. we're seeing some glitches with experience redemptions. What that means, whenever you have a lightning lane booked, and during that window of time when you're able to go experience that attraction, if the attraction goes down for weather or for maintenance issues, whenever it shows as temporarily unavailable in the app, that is supposed to trigger what's called an experience redemption, which basically means you're free to go experience that attraction or another attraction from the list that appears in the app whenever you want. Because the one you booked isn't available. What we were finding, our experiences it's time to go to go do them. We had this with Rise the Resistance, actually. It was time to go ride rise for 40 minutes of our return time. Rise was down, and it never turned into an experience redemption. After 40 minutes of waiting, I did check with guest relations, and that was just a glitch. But it's apparently a somewhat common glitch because they said they've been seeing more and more of that. So if a ride goes down when you have it booked and you're not able to ride it during that window because it is down and it doesn't turn into an experience redemption, head to one of those blue umbrellas or speak to someone in guest relations to make sure that that lightning lane gets turned into an experience redemption so you can free that slot up to book something else, and you get to ride that ride when it comes back up. With that covered. Craig, I know we have some questions about Lightning Lane that have come in on Patreon or YouTube. why don't we kick off by answering some questions that have come in? QMCraig: Sure, we got our first question, is from Noah Jacques on Patreon. And he asks a question about Lightning Lane Multipass. And he asks, would it be worth it to go to Animal Kingdom first, then park up to another park just so your multipass would be cheaper and save money? So for those who don't know, multi-pass is a one-price thing. You can buy it for a certain park, and it's got to be the park that you start your day in. Traditionally. It's the cheapest at Animal Kingdom. So as far as your question, would it be worth it? I think it just depends on what your second park is and how important those rides are. So one of the nice things about Animal Kingdom is they don't have the tiers. So attractions have two tier letters, just depending on how popular they are, how new they are, how much in demand they are. So things like Rock and Roller Coaster, Chest Track in Epcot. Space Mountain in Magic Kingdom. Those are The tier ones and Animal Kingdom does not have those, but they do have one single pass. So if you're going to buy multi-pass, you can buy it for a specific park. It's got to be the first park you go to, and you can park up with it. Now, Animal Kingdom is traditionally the least expensive. So, yes, you would save money if you went to Animal Kingdom first, either used your lightning lanes or just checked into one of them and high-tailed it out of there, not on a bus because you can't use Disney transportation that early in the day. But yeah, it just depends on your second park. I would say it depends if there's something that's really important for you at that second park that you don't want to miss. Cause that's the trade-off. Yeah, you it'll be cheaper. you can probably get whatever you need for Animal Kingdom, but you risk not getting what you want for the other parks. So Rob: Yeah. QMCraig: it just kind of depends on that. Rob: And really the if if your second park is Hollywood Studios, and it's a relatively busy day, Slinky Dog Dash, for example, if that's important to you, that's gonna be really hard to book. I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible. You can still get it, but it's just it it would make your life much easier if you started in studios and had that attraction pre-booked because As Craig was referring to, you start out with three lightning lanes that you can book before you even get to the park. And they all have to be in that starting park, right? So if you're starting an Animal Kingdom, you can't have anything booked for the other parks. Now, the good news is once you tap in somewhere, anywhere, doesn't matter where, as long as you tap in at a single lightning, not single pass, a multi-pass attraction, that's going to unlock and let you book attractions in other parks. And you could even change. ones that you have. So like once you tap in, say you tapped in at Kilimanjaro Safaris at Animal Kingdom right when it opened, you could then immediately go and revise your other lightning lanes that you had for Animal Kingdom and change them to your second park and and start trying to get those tough to grab rides. But I think Craig is right. It's really it's about how much of a headache are you willing to have if you've got some key rides in that second park that you you really have to do. and I think having said that, as someone who lives here and goes kind of frequently, I do this all the time because I don't, you know, for me it's not a a a deal breaker if I don't make it onto Slinky Dog Dash that day, right? So I save the money and I'll start at Animal Kingdom. Animal Kingdom also opens the earliest, but Craig is right, you're gonna be stuck at Animal Kingdom if you're using Disney Transportation until I think it's ten A. is when the buses start running QMCraig: Mm-hmm. Rob: to the other parks. And Animal Kingdom opens at eight. So you're gonna have two hours at least if you get there at open at Animal Kingdom before you can start hopping. QMCraig: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm literally dealing with this right now for our trip next week for the Jamboree. And I was like, okay, do I do Animal Kingdom quickly? And then what's gonna be my second park if I do multipass for Animal Kingdom? So I haven't decided yet, but yeah, it's it's not as easy as you think to to plan these things out, but I'm glad that's why we're here. Rob: Yeah, it's it's kind of sometimes it's a little bit a little bit of a game of chess, just figuring out, yes, you save money, but then your pieces are maybe not in the places that you necessarily want them when you're starting your day. Eric, are we hearing anything on Patreon? Do anyone does anyone have some some suggestions on that question or do they have some questions of their own about lightning? Erick: We have some questions the first one came from Lassie Scout we booked our lightning lane today and there was no Slinky. How do I modify Mickey Railroad for a Slinky? Rob: That's a great question. And number one, I'm glad you mentioned that you're modifying Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway because that is your tier one attraction. As Craig said earlier, you all can only have one tier one pre-booked. You're allowed to have two from the tier two group. If you modified something that wasn't your tier one, it wouldn't let you get slinky because you already have your tier one blocked by something else. So that's number one. Good that you're modifying Mickey and Mini. But the answer to your question is yes, you absolutely can turn Mickey and Minis into Slinky if you find it. And I I say this in a lot of my videos. When I have a park day coming and there's a lightning lane I'm looking for, I will just randomly throughout the day pop open the My Disney Experience app and I just look to see. Maybe it's there right now. and you would be surprised, just randomly. These things come back into play because people change their mind. Craig just said he's not sure if he's gonna keep his lightning lane where it's at, right? It is he gonna do Animal Kingdom first or different park. When people make those changes, the things they initially held get released and you can grab them if you catch it at the right moment. So yeah, just I I wouldn't spend a lot of time doing it, but whenever you got some downtime, you know, pull out the phone, check and see, see if there's something there. Well, with that, let us start with our very first deck update of the day. And we're going to start with Animal Kingdom. not a whole lot of changes here in Animal Kingdom. but the ace of the deck is Navi River Journey. It's basically been Navi River Journey since we started keeping up with the decks, and so that that one is gonna be the first one you're gonna want to book. The king in the deck right now is still Cali River Rapids. Probably are going to see that change once it gets colder in the winter, but for fall, Cali River Rapids is still a popular one. The queen in the deck is Kilimanjaro Safaris. The Jack is Expedition Everest. The 10 is Festival of the Lion King. The nine is Zootopia Better Zoogether. Eight is Finding Nemo, the Big Blue and Beyond. And the number seven is Feathered Friends. Friends in Flight. And I did just want to mention really quickly, we changed with this deck's how we rank shows. so in the last deck, Feathered Friends in Flight was surprisingly high in the deck. It wasn't because it was a very popular or useful lightning lane. It was just because that show ends really early in the day. So by virtue of that show not existing anymore for the day, there were no lightning lanes available for it later in the day. And that made it seem like something you needed to book early, which was not really the case. You don't ever need a lightning lane for feather friends in flight. You can walk into that show, any showing of the day, even on the busiest days, and you're pretty much guaranteed you're gonna get a seat. So, with the new rankings, if a lightning lane isn't valuable. for the show in question, we're just we're not, we're ranking it, you know, lower because there's no point in booking that lightning lane. So we didn't want to put in people's heads, that's an important one to grab. anything jump out to you, Craig, in that that update of the list. QMCraig: Mm-hmm. well, first of all, I I think it's great that we're doing the shows that way now. I think it's a far more good representation of what's actually going on. no, I recently learned I guess they're shutting down or they have shut down the single rider line at Expedition Everest. So it'll be interesting to see, because as someone who used that line a lot, if it's gonna be I wanna get a make sure I have a lightning lane for that instead. So 'cause that was always like Rob: Yeah. QMCraig: one, hey, I don't need to use up a lightning lane for that because I can always just jump on. So we'll s it'll be interesting to see if that moves up in the deck after a while this new process. Rob: I I it wouldn't surprise me if it if it does for that reason. probably it's gonna swap with Cali River Rapids is my guess. As it as it cools off, Cali's gonna be a little less popular. I think the combination of Cali River Rapids being less popular and Expedition Everest being more popular because of no single rider line, I think that's gonna cause a swap there. before we move on to our next question and our next deck, I just have a question for everyone here, including our friends on Patreon. Do you think you really need Lightning Lane multipass in Animal Kingdom at this point. Especially if you're if you're not playing to parkop. You're just gonna spend your whole day in Animal Kingdom. Do you need multipass right now? QMCraig: I I would say no. I mean, especially if you have early entry, if you're a Disney resort guest and you have early entry and take advantage of that, then I say no, you really don't. Again, the only one that's got a huge line is flight of passage. No, well, Navi River Journey is also another one that has generally a long line and it's not a very comfortable line to wait in. So Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: if you do have early entry, that's my suggestion. If you don't care about flight of passage, definitely knock that one out first. But yeah, in general, if you're gonna be the whole day, yeah. I I'd some of the cues in Animal Kingdom are some of the most gorgeous on property. So Rob: Yep. Kilimajar Safaris is another one that can get a long line, but if you know the right time to go, if you're gonna be there all day, my new favorite time to do Kilimajar Safaris when I'm not using Lightning Lane is a little bit before it closes, like closer to the end because it's cool then, it's comfortable. The animals are being fed again at that point in some time. So they tend to be out and about. And the lines are non existent. Everybody goes first thing in the morning, but once you get to late in the afternoon, it's kind of dead. Eric, what do you think? Do you think people need Lightning Lane for Animal Kingdom multipass specifically? Erick: I would say need no. You will not need it. You want to have an easy day? You should get it. I mean especially like if you're thinking about par hopping. Other than that, like if if if that's not your plan, if if your your plan is to stay in in in the park the whole day, I don't think you should buy it. Rob: Yeah, I I agree. I think for park hopping that's a totally different ball game and it and then it's probably is worth it. I actually have a suggestion that Jessica, who's not with us today, she she put this in the chat somewhere recently. Her new thing is she just likes to spend the money that she would have spent on multipass and spend it on the single pass for flight to passage. Cause in her mind, that's a much better use of the Lightning Lane dollars. And then she'll just, as Craig said, either use early entry or just go at the right time. to to get shorter weights on the other tractions. what are we hearing over on Patreon? Erick: Diana said no. Megan said if you have little kids, yes. This disrup said if you are in a hurry, yes. Brian, not really, no. There are only a couple lines that are bad and even those are fine. Laura, I only get it if I'm part hopping. The Brit family, not to multipass. Rob: All right. I think that yeah, that was a good point about kids. And you know your kids. If your kids can't tolerate, you know, long waits, then yeah, multipass might be a must for for your crew. All right. Well, before we move on to Hollywood Studios, which is our next deck we're gonna cover, Craig, can you share another question that we've gotten from YouTube or Patreon? QMCraig: Yes, this one's actually from YouTube and it's a single pass lightning lane question. It's from Kelsey Seib. And she asks, How does it work when you're first booking for single pass? Can you just choose a later time? And the answer is yes. so when you book your lightning lanes first, that's just going to assign you a time with whatever you've chosen. when you go to the next screen, it'll show the time that it gave you, and there will be a little Just words underneath it's not even a button, I don't think. It just says modify time, but it's in blue. And you hit that, and then it will show what other available times there are. and you can keep scrolling. If you don't see the time you want, But yeah, you can definitely do that. You're gonna run into issues if you have a bunch of other lightning lanes and you have dining reservations because they don't let you overlap during that part. So be Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: aware of that. But yes, if that's important and that's all you've got for the day, then yeah, go ahead and choose the time you want, if it's available. Rob: I did discover this past weekend though, while it doesn't allow overlap with multi-pass lightning lanes, it let me book Rise of the Resistance at the exact same time as my dining reservation. Complete overlap, but it was a single pass. QMCraig: Hmm. Rob: so I had them both for 830 right at Park Open. and it let me do that. So I think single pass, they are letting you put that wherever you want right now. Multipass, though, still did have the, it wouldn't let you overlap. And that might be a new thing because I don't recall things ever being able to overlap before. Eric, any other questions on Patreon before we move to Hollywood Studios? Erick: Yes. From Jessica P. Does Premiere Pass still work during parties? It did last year and I'm planning to test it out again this year, but we'll love to know if anyone has confirmed is still working. Rob: Hmm. I'm surprised it did work, to be perfectly honest. Erick: So I just yes, me too. I just went through Plant Disney and in Plant Disney.com this question came from on May 13, 2025. and they said it's important to note that your premiere pass is only valid during regular theme park hours, which conclude at six PM on the day of Mickey's not so scary Halloween party. Rob: Yeah. That's what I think the official rules say. is that there's no lightning lane. the only thing that the lightning lanes should be open for during a party, according to the rules, would be for folks using DAS, which is the disability access service. so I'm surprised that it let you do that before, but I'm curious to hear if it's gonna let you do that again. I know you can't. Book lightning lanes. If you know Premier Pass, for those who aren't familiar, you don't have to book anything with that one. You just get into the queue for whatever attraction you want to ride. And as long as you haven't entered that queue that day, then it just lets you go in as if you had booked it. yeah, I'm curious. Let us know if you if you test it out and it still lets you do that. That's that's interesting. That'll be good to know. Well, let's move on to our Hollywood Studios deck. and there's there's a few changes here. I think mainly rock and roller coasters cooling off a little bit, but the ace in the deck is Slinky Dog Dash. Incidentally, Slinky Dog Dash is also the most difficult Lightning Lane to book in terms of multi-pass in all four parks. So that is the ultimate ace. the king is Toy Story Mania, Queen is Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the Jack. Is now Rock and Roller Coaster starring the Muppets. Ten is Mickey Minnie's Runaway Railway. Number nine is Alien Swirling Saucers. Number eight is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Live. Number seven is Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. Six is The Little Mermaid, a musical adventure. All the way down in five. This is a tier one attraction. For some strange reason, Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run. is below a few shows there. just above number four is Star Tours, which is always a walk-on. So yeah. surprising that Millennium Falcon is still a tier one. number three is Beauty and the Beast live on stage. The number two in the deck is for the first time in forever. A frozen sing along celebration. Craig, anything in there jump out to you as a surprise? QMCraig: there's a couple, but the big one, yeah, Millennium Falcon all the way down there below. Alien swirling saucers and other things. yeah, I was shocked to see that. And I did a just a little research to see. Well, maybe it has, does it have like a higher rider per hour throughput? Do the they just get through people a lot faster? And it's not much different. It's actually Tower Terror and Toy Story Mania have higher capacity. So Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: yeah, that's I I don't know. I can't figure it out it it there's a big Millennium Falcon right there. You can't miss the ride. and if there's a low weight, why would you jump on it? So yeah, I cannot figure that one out. Rob: And I'm gonna add it's one of the few rides in Walt Disney World that has really huge rewritability because especially now there are three different quests that you can take, right? You can there's the new Mandalorian quests, so you can go to three different destinations. In theory, this should be a more popular lightning lane, not less. And yet, here we are. And and I confirmed this. I I actually went to studios this past weekend to test everything out and I actually shuffled the deck a little bit from my experiences in the park. And Millennium Falcon was available all day long. And it was almost always available at pretty much the moment that you booked it. It was just yeah. And it was a busy day too. QMCraig: Well, yeah, and one but Millennium does have a single rider line. So kinda like we were talking about Rob: Does QMCraig: with Expedition Everest. Maybe that is making people who wanna ride but have lightning lane but don't want to waste one on that, 'cause they can Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: just jump in the single rider line. So but still it it's dropped though. Rob: And and it is a it's a yeah, it has. It's a great single rider line too, because the the only downside to it, obviously you're not riding with your party. That's the whole idea of a single rider line. But the other downside is you don't get to pick your position, you know, you want to be a pilot. You're not gonna be a pilot, most likely. If you go through single rider, you're probably gonna be an engineer or a gunner. But because that each each ship, you know, gets a six folks, you know, seated in it. They pull from that single rider line constantly, to fill out each crew. And so that's a great single rider line to use. QMCraig: And the other one that surprised me was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. You're gonna Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: have to explain that to me. Rob: So I originally had Mickey Mouse Clubhouse really low because my assumption was, you know, I I had done this just to just to get some footage of it to test it out. And I never found that it was hard to book that lightning lane. And when I went in, I, you know, it seemed like I didn't even need a lightning lane. and then on this past weekend, it was very busy on Saturday. I couldn't book it. Like it was gone pretty early in the day. And so I went and I chatted with the cast members there. And I was like, I'm curious, is this normal? And they were like, lately, yes. So if you went there before the rest of animation courtyard opened, your experience would have been what mine was, which was this is not a hard thing to get. But there are so many people going into animation courtyard now for the the newly opened attractions back there. It's really boosted interest in that that show. Which I'm glad because, you know, obviously I'm not the target audience for that. It's not something I'm gonna go see when I'm there. But if you've got little kids, it's a very cool show. I was very impressed with what how they're doing that show in there. So it makes sense to me that it would be a very popular pick for families with little kids. And they said just on that one Saturday, for example, not a single show. was not completely sold out. Like they they had to stop people coming in. And in most shows, they had to stop people coming in 10 minutes or more before the showtime because it was full that early. So that one's turned around. And and who knows how long that's gonna last. You know, that's again why we update these things seasonally. It might drop, but as of right now, it's a pretty hot ticket. Eric, what are we hearing from our friends on Patreon about Hollywood Studios? Erick: So Wendy's asking you're going to have to explain Mickey Mass Clubhouse to me. Rob: I I'll be honest, I've never watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse the show on Disney Plus. I have seen it offhandily when I was waiting at the doctor's office. They they play it sometimes there for the kids. so I've I've seen like I've seen what it looks like from that. but I I went to go get footage of it. It is such a cool experience for little so they have all the little kids are up. Right by the stage. The parents are kind of all against the back wall. you know, so they the the kids can dance and jump and run around and kind of do whatever they want to do within reason. And on the stage, they've got, you know, your favorite characters, you know, the the Fab Five, I think we're all up there. You had, you know, Mickey and Goofy and Minnie and I remember Daisy and Donald. So the gang is all there. They do choreographed routines, but here's what makes it really cool. The whole backdrop is a giant screen. And when they when they do their choreography, like let's say they're running, the screen looks like, you know, it it's it feels like you're watching them run through an actual space. And sometimes they kind of spin around and the the the screen spins. It's a very dynamic presentation that kids. were, I mean, overjoy. Like they they were they were locked in for this show in a way that you don't always see at the shows at Disney World. They also have some cool effects that happen. Like at one point, Goofy is taking a a bubble bath or a shower or something and there's like bubbles come all over you know the theater and the kids get excited about that. So yeah, it's a great show for little kids. It's the perfect if they're hyper, you want to have them like burn off some sugar. That is the place to go. I do have one question for everyone, including our friends on Patreon. What do you think is the biggest challenge or the biggest challenges when it comes to using Lightning Lane specifically in studios? QMCraig: I'd say just the fact that there's a lot of heavy hitters and they generally do have long lines throughout the day. So yeah. It you you just kinda have to cross your fingers and hope you get all the big ones that you want. and that's where the strategy comes in. Rob: Agreed. Eric, what are your thoughts or do what are we hearing from our friends on Patreon? Erick: Paula getting a slinky line and lane. Jules picking a tier one is tough. Stephanie, the the tiers in studios make it tough. Laura, we always have a do we care about the slinky this visit? Talk before line and lane booking day. Rob: Yeah. Slinky is the toughest. I mean, that is that is the hardest thing. But I think Craig really hit the nail on the head, which is this park has so many heavy hitters and it doesn't have that many attractions, right? So that QMCraig: Yeah. Rob: combination is what makes it tough to use Lightning Lane, I think, in that park. Well, before we move on to Epcot, Craig, do we have another question from YouTube or Patreon. QMCraig: Yes, we do. It's question from YouTube. Julie Wend asks, How the heck do you plan for a bigger party? Like six people, some of whom don't think lightning lanes need to be planned. first Rob: Ha ha ha. QMCraig: thing, just they're wrong. Y you know, Rob: Yeah. QMCraig: you can cut this little bit out of this video or w whatever and show it to because they are wrong. personally I haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to do this with a big group, so but I know you have, Rob, and you've had like different makeups of all adults, some kids, et cetera. Rob: Yeah. So I mean that the I would say number one, you're you're gonna need to plan it because unless your group is just all of the same mindset, there's probably gonna be rides that some folks wanna ride really badly and other folks don't. Thrill rides come to mind. A lot of people, if they have motion sickness issues or they just don't do thrill rides, guess what? Those are often the hardest rides to book. But if not everybody in your party wants to do it, you need to have a plan, right? For what What are you gonna, you need to probably need to book those first. So what's everybody else doing? But the other thing, I have people will tell you, I've seen this in the comments on social media and in other YouTube videos, that it doesn't matter how many people are in your party. It's the same when you're booking lightning lanes. It's not harder or easier, depending on the number of people in your group. I can tell you that I have tested this. I have Taken two phones where I have a large group on one phone and a smaller group on the other phone, and I refresh them at the exact same time, and I see completely different return times on those different phones repeatedly. Now it only happens on the most popular rides. Like if you're looking at Dumbo, yeah, the same time is probably showing for the large party versus the smaller one. But when you're looking at Big Thunder Mountain or you're looking at, you know, Slinky Dog Dash for sure, you're gonna see different times because I Disney doesn't reveal their secret sauce. I don't know how they they they do this, but my theory is they have a bucket of lightning lanes for smaller parties. In my experience, four or less doesn't seem to matter. If you have one, two, three, or four, it's pretty much the same. Five seems to be that magic number where things l start to become more complicated. And I I don't know. My my my working theory is that maybe they have a bucket for small parties and then a different bucket of lightning lanes for parties larger than five or more. And those lightning lanes just run out, you know, because it's a smaller bucket. And and so but that's my theory. And I can tell you though. You need to have a plan for lightning lane, especially if you've got some of those heavy hitters that everybody wants to do, because you're gonna need to get them done quickly. QMCraig: Now, would you recommend the possibility if they feel comfortable doing this is kind of splitting up and having one person do two, Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: one person have four. Remem remembering you have that two hour window at the end of that. So you don't have to get the exact same time frame. Just keep that in mind as you're Rob: Yes. QMCraig: trying to get them. Rob: That's a great point, Craig. What Craig's referring to, we keep testing this to make sure it's still accurate. And as of this weekend it is, you have a one hour and fifty-nine minute grace period at the end of your lightning lane. Now you hit two hours, it is expired. It's gonna go blue, meaning you're not allowed to enter unless the cast member is nice and says you can go in. But If for an hour and fifty-nine minutes after the expiration of your lightning lane in the app, you've got it'll still glow green. So what Craig's meaning there is you could have a group of two or three that books for you know a slot, and then the other group books for a slot that's just close in time, because you have that extra wiggle room, you could probably still all ride together, but not have them booked. Here's the thing I'm gonna say about that though. That is a last resort. strategy because it's just a pain in the behind, right? To to try to get things close enough that you can overlap, especially when it's difficult to book. So always if everybody wants to ride together, try really hard to book everybody together. And it's just if you give up, then maybe try what Craig is saying and and split into smaller groups and see if you can get it. anything from our friends on Patreon. Erick: Christine just mentioned that I will up a five plus party Landing Lane video challenge. If anyone can do it It's Rob and Eric, so Rob: We we do need to remake that QMCraig: And Rob: video. It's been a long time. Yeah, I I would love to get a big group. like we did the first time we did a large party video. I think there were like eleven people in that group. And that was that was a fun challenge to do. So we we should do that again, soon. Alright, well, with that, let's move on to Epcot. and this one, we're probably not gonna have a lot to talk about here. It's pretty static. Not a lot has changed at Epcot. Ace is still Test Track, King is Frozen Ever After, The Queen is Remy's Ratatouille Adventure, the Jack is Soren across America, the 10 is Mission Space, the 9 is Spaceship Earth, 8 is Journey into Imagination with Figment. That one did rise, I think, just a Teeny bit. number seven is Living with the Land. The six in the deck is Turtle Talk with Crush, five, The Seas with Nemo and Friends, and at the bottom of the deck, the Disney Pixar Short Film Festival. I'm guessing nothing stood out to you in that list, Craig, because not much changed, but an anything that you wanted to chat about there. QMCraig: no, just the fact that it it just looks correct. it none of that doesn't make sense. You've got the the three big rides, the newest rides, the most technically advanced rides, test track, frozen and remi, at the tier one. So you kinda have to choose. And then everything else is very easy to get. But I will say just because it's lower in the deck does not mean it's a great attraction, like living with the land. Just because it's low on the deck, don't think, maybe we'll skip that one. because they're really some great attractions down there. Just because they're easy to get doesn't mean they're not worth visiting. Rob: For sure. I I'm one of the the rare birds who enjoys mission space. That's one of those polarizing attractions. But I love mission space. and that one has become a lot easier to get. but as Craig said, if you've never ridden it and you don't have an issue with motion sickness, that's important. Don't do it if you get motion sick. But Erick: Yeah. Rob: it's a really fun one, I think. Spaceship Earth. If Jessica was here, she would sing the praises of Journey into Imagination with Figment. Is anyone gonna sing the praises in Jessica's absence? QMCraig: I I do. I I think I'm getting the reputation that I don't like Fegment. I love Fegment. I just don't like this version of the ride. So I'm I'm excited it's getting a redo. Erick: He Rob: I'm with you, Craig. I love Figment. I just don't love the the the tour of the office building that is the current attraction. QMCraig: go I'll I'll sit through if someone wants to go on it, I'll go on it. It's not like I totally dislike it, so it's just yeah. Rob: Yeah. I I'm I'm gonna before we check in with our friends on Patreon, I'm just gonna throw this out there. I think Epcot is low key the toughest park for if you're trying to book everything in the park, Epcot is the hardest on a really busy day because you've got those three rides and if it's really busy, sometimes all three of those are gone early in the day. It's not hard to get everything else, but it's just getting all three of those those the big three is I think more challenging than the top three rides in any other park. what are we hearing on Patreon? Erick: Jessica just said the Figman is the best. Rob: Is that is that Jessica Walker? Is she is she joining us in the chat? Erick: Yes, that's our Jessica. Yes. Rob: Hi ho, Jessica. Erick: from Jessica P. gotta be honest, I've got this my sleeper pickup for PP. I think it's tough with multipass. Jen said that she agrees with you, Rob. Jessica Walker also said that Raimi Single Rider is good now. Rob: Mm-hmm. Erick: And Jules says that makes those single rider lines in Epcot so valuable. from Laura, Epcot just kills my cheap self with Lightning Lane Multipass. It's the only part where I find myself thinking, dang it. I have Linning Lanes today, but I'm totally out of things. I care about riding that are bookable anymore. QMCraig: Ha ha ha. Rob: Ha ha. I do think another thing that we didn't mention with Epcot that is important to mention, if you're planning on enjoying the festival, Lightning Lane becomes I mean, if you want to do both, right? You wanna enjoy rides and you wanna enjoy the festival, I think Lightning Lane is is easily worth it in that park for that purpose. All right. Craig, before we move on to our final part of the day, we have any questions from YouTube? QMCraig: Yes. actually this is a list of questions from you two from R and Gwyn. and they ask, can you modify your original times that you first get when you buy the multipass in advance of your park day? And the next question, do those times change much beforehand? And then the last question is also if you mentioned the whole family or group getting involved, is it not one person in charge of booking everyone's lightning lanes, or does everyone have the ability to book? Kind of already answered that and I think in the last one, but so first, yes, can you modify your original times that you get when you first buy multipass? pretty much the exact same way as I told you how to do single pass. After you purchase and it signs you a time, there'll be a little button that you can hit for modify time. And again, as I said before, that's when multi-pass really gets difficult because it won't overlap with. dining reservations or other multi pass. So Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: just be aware of that. now as far as the times changing, I I personally don't know much about that. So do you have something to say about that, Rob? Rob: so you can absolutely find better times for rides after you initially booked them with some patience. as a general rule, times continue to get worse. When I say return time, what I mean is when you book a lightning lane, it's say it's from ten AM to eleven AM is your window. that's your return window. It's generally the case that the longer you wait to book, the return windows. Get later in the day. But like we said earlier, if you're lucky, someone gave up a lightning lane, decided they wanted something else, it goes back into the pot. You can find it. And that's what I always do. The other thing I'm going to add, that overlapping limitation goes away at midnight on the day of your park visit. So if you're a night owl or you're an early riser, check after midnight or in the morning before your visit and see if you can modify your lightning lanes. to get them earlier, because they can then overlap, which frees you up a lot. And there's just a lot of volatility then. I mean, people come home late from Magic Kingdom, like, gosh, do I really want to get up and do Slinky Dog Dash at 8 30 in the morning? I don't think so. So they change it and then boom, there's Slinky Dog Dash, right when park open, you know, if someone's lucky enough to be there at that moment. So yeah, that's what I would say on that. And then there was another question at the end, right? QMCraig: yeah. Yeah. And so the last one's also you mentioned the whole family or group getting involved. Is it not one person in charge of booking everyone's lightning lanes, or does everyone have the ability to book? So yes, you everyone does have that ability. but as we discussed before, it might not be to your advantage to do that. Rob: Yeah, I mean, I think what I recommend, I think it's great for people to share the responsibility of booking lightning lanes, but don't have everybody trying to modify the same lightning lane slot because QMCraig: Yes. Rob: that causes problems. Because you might see an amazing time and you tap on it to get it, and poof, you don't get it because someone else tapped on a much worse time at that exact same moment. And that was what got grabbed, right? So Would I recommend you got three slots that you can book? Have your different members of your party focused on a different slot. So maybe one's working on trying to back up the time for test track, someone else is focused on Remy, and a third person's focused on trying to get frozen, right? Then that way you're not gonna mess each other up. Eric, what are we hearing over on Patreon? Erick: From Wendy Farrell, I find that people start dumping lining lanes right around the time the park opens. I think maybe they ride during rope drop and then don't need them anymore. I always have Rob: Mm-hmm. Erick: good luck improving my leather temps right at park opening time. Rob: Yep. And that's great because that's when you're free, right? Once you've tapped in at your first attraction, you're unlocked. You can have multiple tier one attractions. You can have attractions in multiple parks. So it's great when things come back into play then because you can really take advantage of. Erick: from Rachel, I totally recommend when you initially book have two people with the same plan book different parks on different days. I will tell my hobby to book Hollywood Studios and I book Magic Kingdom at the same time. Rob: Okay, so what she's talking about there is booking, let's say you're you've got a vacation that you're staying in a in a Disney resort hotel, you can book all of the days of your hotel stay on that first day of eligibility. Same thing happens if you have a multi-day date-based park ticket. On the first day of eligibility for your first park day, you can actually book all of your park days. So what's good there is if you have, you know, your husband or your kids helping out. Everybody can focus on booking one of the days in your trip at the same time so that you're getting, you know, you're getting in and booking things as quickly as possible by sharing the, you know, the responsibility of booking all the different days you're going to try to book for. I do recommend if it's just one of you or you're worried about like who's where you should focus on most first. I recommend start with the the earliest day because that's the most competitive day. more people are gonna have access to your first days than are gonna have access to your later days. And so, you know, it's it's important to to get those booked quickly because a lot of people are gonna be in there competing with you. Whereas, you know, six days in, it's probably not much going on there. So you can probably get the the pick of the litter. Erick: Another tip comes from Laura. Also, reminder that children younger than thirteen cannot have their own My Disney Experience account and therefore cannot assist in the Lining Lane multipass booking Palooza. my QMCraig: Ha ha ha. Rob: Good good point, yeah. QMCraig: Ha ha Erick: my twelve year old is counting down the days until they can assist in booking. Rob: I will say, and I've seen this being done, if you have another device that's capable of logging into My Disney Experience, you can be logged in on the same account on multiple devices and be booking from both of them. In fact, Eric was doing that just the other day. He had an iPad and he had his phone. And he was refreshing two different lightning lane slots at the same time. you can do that. and it's even easier if you have another set of hands. QMCraig: Mm-hmm. I I may have done that not for lightning lanes, but for reservations. Yeah. Had Rob: Yeah. QMCraig: multiple devices open. Rob: Yep. All right. Well, it is time for our final ranking of Lightning Lanes at the biggest park of them all, Magic Kingdom. And this very first ace in the deck is going to be a shocker to a lot of people I know. The ace in the deck at Magic Kingdom right now is the many adventures of Winnie the Pooh. I'm as shocked as you are. But I have triple-checked and I have tested it myself in the parks, and it is true. It is right now, as the day goes on, the most difficult lightning lane to book. The king is Peter Pan's Flight. The Queen is a Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger spin. The Jack is Big Thunder Mountain. The 10 is Tiana's Bayou Adventure. 9. Jungle Cruise. This one jumped up. It had kind of fallen pretty low in the deck, so I was glad to see Jungle Cruise rebound. Number eight. Haunted Mansion. Number seven, Pirates of the Caribbean. There's a tie in number six, Space Mountain. Believe it or not, tied with Tomorrowland Speedway. Didn't see that coming either. Number QMCraig: Mm. Rob: five, tie is between Barnstormer and Mad Tea Party. Number four, tie between Magic Carpets of Aladdin and Dumbo, the Flying Elephant. Number three, a tie between Under the Sea Journey, The Little Mermaid, and It's a Small World. And finally, tied up in the number two of the deck is Mickey's Philhar Magic and Monsters Inc. Laugh Lore. Both of those are lightning lanes. You just you just don't need. So they they fall low in the deck. Craig, other than Winnie the Pooh, which I think is a surprise probably to most everyone. Was there anything else in there that That surprised you about this deck? QMCraig: well, kinda the just the shuffling of the classics, like jungle cruise went up. I think Haunted Mansion was the ten and it went down to eight, Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: which I kinda was surprised at that. I expected it to either stay there because we're getting into spooky season. and it might go up. but yeah, and that jungle cruise was lower. but yeah, it I'm not surprised it's it moved back up. we can count on seeing Tiana going down as it gets Chillier as well, so Rob: Yeah, that surprised me too. QMCraig: Yeah, I didn't Rob: And I, you know, just to to pull back the curtain on how we figure these things out. we look at the data from our friends over at thrilldata com. thrill data.com. You want to go check out the raw data yourself. But they're that's an amazing site where every day they've got You know, they're constantly looking at what lightning lanes are available and what times are available for that attraction all day long, every day. And then you can plot that information. You can ask it to create essentially like a graph that shows when times are available during the course of the day. And so we're able to really look with precision at when do the time start to slip for each attraction. And yeah. Haunted Mansion, I'm not sure why it it's fallen. Cause you're right, Craig. This seems like the best time for Haunted Mansion being close to Halloween, but that's what we saw. Jungle Cruise jumped back up. QMCraig: Get that and the the Space Mountain Tomorrowland Speedway tie. That I I can't think of a reason for that one. Okay. Rob: Mm-hmm. So I can explain that one. So there's this unique thing that happens with the tier system. Your most popular tier two attractions jump way up in the rankings because if you think about it, people start their day with only one tier one, but they can have two tier twos. So the really popular tier twos get gobbled up twice as fast because people have twice the opportunity to book them. The reverse happens with an unpopular tier one. Whatever is the least popular of the tier one, people don't want to grab that one. They want to grab, they only have one to grab, right? They want to grab one of the others. And that causes this is the same thing that's happening with Millennium Falcon Smuggler's Run in Hollywood Studios. If it was a tier two, it would be more popular. I guarantee it. More people would start with it, but because it's a tier one, They don't want to book that. They want to book Slinky. They wanna book Rock and Roller Coaster, Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. And so it's it's the tier system that's creating an impediment for for Space Mountain to be higher. QMCraig: Yeah, I I was have to double check if Space Mountain is a one or a two because it really should be a two, in my opinion. Rob: Mm-hmm. Yep. Same with Millennium Falcon. yeah. And here's a hot take. I also think that Flight of Passage should no longer be a single pass. Not because it's not a very popular attraction, it is. They don't have enough multi-pass attractions in Animal Kingdom. And I think if you put Flight of Passage in as a multipass, It would make multipass a much more attractive proposition for that park. Until they get tropical Americas opened, they just get I mean it's like it's like four or five rides that have lightning lanes that are even remotely useful. and so I just I think they should do that. But that's a hot take. Probably not gonna happen, but it's what they should do in my opinion. Erick: I mean but with Tropical Americas as you mentioned, I mean they are going to have Casita and also they are going to Rob: Mm-hmm. Erick: have like the I forgot the name. this guy. Thank you. This guy with the hat I was gonna say. today QMCraig: Indiana Jones. Yeah. Rob: The guy with the hat. Erick: Yeah, I mean they're going to have a casita and they're going to have in the Indiana Jones. So I'm pretty sure like well, first maybe the virtual queue is going to come. And then like eventually I think lightning lane single pass is going to happen. may Rob: For sure, yeah. Erick: maybe that's when they are going to remove the one from flight of passage. Rob: But I I mean, for for my money though, this is when they need flight of passage in multipass 'cause they just got nothing. They don't have enough in there. But yeah, go ahead, Craig. QMCraig: Now in a battle between a tier one flight of passage and the tier one of Slinky Dog, do you think Flight of Passage would take over as the most wanted fr Rob: Hmm. QMCraig: on property? Rob: Very possibly. Very possibly. Because it's well, here's the thing. As of right now, there's no tier in Animal Kingdom. If you put if you put flight of passage in there, I could see them instituting a tier system. And they would probably have Flight of Passage and Navi River Journey and maybe Safaris or Cali as their tier ones. but yeah, then I think if if they did that, then I do think that yeah, flight of passage would just immediately be gone first in that park for sure. Yeah. I don't know. If you're listening, Disney, I I I I think that would be a smart move personally. I guess that they also are doing the math at how much money they're making off of the single pass for flight of passage. That might be why they're not gonna do it. But Eric, what are we hearing from our friends on Patreon? Erick: Christina said or cap the Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane multipass at fifteen dollars on the Tropical America's opens and make the single pass for five the passage cap at thirteen dollars. Rob: Yeah. So just make it more affordable since it doesn't have as much value as the multi passes and the other parks. Yeah. Erick: Jen, do I even dare say this? Has anyone been thinking we are due for Disney to turn the world upside down again? We have had this system for a while now, and that usually Rob: Yeah. Erick: means Disney is due to change the game again. Hopefully not, Jen. Hopefully not Rob: It's I don't know. I think that's a good point. QMCraig: Nah well Well considering the shutdown is what Erick: Yeah. QMCraig: prompted a major shift to Lightning Lane, but hopefully nothing like that happens. But yeah, I just see a lot of tweaking, maybe some updates, but I d I don't know if they do an overhaul or not at this point. Rob: I mean, there are a few things that could certainly be improved from the user experience point of view. the biggest one, if you've if you've got a park hopper ticket or an annual pass, how annoying is it when you're in any park other than Magic Kingdom that every time you refresh your view, it defaults to the Magic Kingdom attractions and you have to tap on the park you're actually in to see what attractions are available in the park that you're in. That's just Come on, Disney. How how have we not fixed that? Like that seems crazy that it that you have to constantly pick the park you're in every time you look for new lightning lanes or or revise one you have. so I would like to see some evol evolution of the system to just kind of fix those things. but no, I I hope we don't see a major overhaul unless we want to go back to making it free. We wanna go back to to fast pass. QMCraig: Well that well, that would be one of the most shocking things that Disney's ever done. So Erick: let let's go to our next question. Rob: Ha ha ha. Erick: Okay, since we were talking about flight of passage, this came from Mary McCarthy. What rides have the longest queue even with Linning Lane multipass? We bought single pass for flight of passage and I felt like the line was still like thirty plus minutes from entering the queue until riding and it came with two child meltdowns. Rob: that's unusual for flight of passage to take quite that long, but I guess if you're counting, you're probably counting the pre-show as part of the wait for that attraction. And if you do, then yeah, the pre-show itself, gosh, that's a long pre-show sequence on that one. Erick: Yeah. But which one do you think is longer? Guardians of the Galaxy of Light of the Passage. Tron also has like a long queue and it has the pre show as well. But I don't think it's as bad. Yeah. Rob: But Tr Tron doesn't really have much of a pre-show. I mean, and they and last time last few times I've gone through, they're not even running that little pre-show anymore. You just walk right through that room. You don't get digitized into the world of Tron. but I think the the worst in terms of waiting forever before you ride, yeah, if you're counting the pre-show, then guardians and flight of passage are rough. Trying think of there's another one that has a really long rock and roller coaster can I remembered Soren. Soren is the worst, in my opinion. Because if you catch it at the wrong moment, even with a lightning lane, if you I've I have waited close to 30 minutes with a lightning lane to ride Soren just because if you get into the queue right as The attraction starts its sequence. You can sometimes have to wait for another full show after that one before you actually get seated because of the way that they seat that attraction, even with a lightning lane. So that one, in my opinion, is actually the worst for waiting with a lightning lane. But yeah, flight of passage, you got the pre-shows. QMCraig: I just have to give it to Tron because it's the worst Q. It just feels Rob: Yeah. QMCraig: long. Rob: Yeah. I'm sorry, you're talking but you're talking about if you wait in the queue, not the lightning lane for the queue. yeah. Mm-hmm. QMCraig: Mm. either way, I mean, yeah, it still feels very long because you have to go through all the indoor stuff. But I mean, yeah, as long as it's great because you're missing the outdoor queue, which is gonna be miserable. So yeah. Definitely Rob: Yeah. QMCraig: do like the lightning lane for that. But yeah, it's just a it's not a fun queue, in my opinion. Rob: And the fact that the ride lasts like a minute. It's QMCraig: That too. Rob: when you wait so long for something so short, that makes it challenging. Yeah. All right. Craig, do we have any last questions to answer from Patreon or YouTube? QMCraig: Yes, Michelle on Patreon she says, we are going to Mickey's not so scary Halloween party on a Tuesday and also extended hours at Magic Kingdom on Wednesday. So we aim to be at the park around 10 30. I'm assuming she means the morning on Wednesday. Rob: Yes, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. QMCraig: Most strategies involve getting in early to unlock multipass. I'm curious to know what your strategy would be for a late start today. well for me 10 30 is not a late start. So but Rob: Ha ha QMCraig: but I hear what you're saying. but yeah, if you're gonna be up all night at the not so scary, yeah, take your morning off. so extra evening hours. If you're staying at a deluxe Disney Resort, twice a week, usually Mondays at Epcot and Wednesdays at Magic Kingdom, they have extended evening hours and that's two hours after closing. So that goes pretty late as well. so that's a long day. and here's the thing. What we talked about earlier as far as modifying your your three choices on multi pass either at midnight or that morning. and it sounds like you're gonna be up at midnight, probably. Anyway, Rob: Ha ha. QMCraig: but that's when you can modify them, hopefully get them closer together. I I think Magic Kingdom is kind of easier to get a lot of different attractions. Things don't sell out. quite as much except for like this I know the single passes do. I've never experienced where something was sold out that morning. you you may differ, but Rob: It's it's no, it's it's it's extremely rare for there to be an attraction 'cause there's just so many in Magic Kingdom. I mean, there's just so many attractions it spreads people out. That's a great suggestion though, Craig. I love that. when you're coming home from your late night, coming back to your resort, that's a perfect bust back to the resort activity is to modify the next day's lightning lanes. That's really smart. QMCraig: Yeah, I think I think people put a lot of focus on the burner traction that will unlock the rest of your tractions and getting that first thing, it's not a I don't think it's as important as you might think. Rob: Yep. that's another great point. Well look at look at our look at our deck. Ace, QMCraig: Mm-hmm. Rob: many adventures one epoo. That's a tier two, not a tier one. You can have that in your tier twos. Peter Pan's Flight is a tier one, but guess what? The Queen, Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger, Spin, that's a tier two. So you can have all three of the the most popular lightning lanes in Magic Kingdom if you wanted those, if those were important to you. You could have all of those without being quote unquote unlocked, right? Because you have one tier one, two tier twos. Same thing at Hollywood Studios. your your ace is slinky, but the the king and the queen are Toy Story Mania and Tower of Terror, both tier twos. really the only park where you have a problem with unlocking first thing is Epcot, 'cause all three of the the the heavy hitters are are tier ones. But other than Epcot, you're right, Craig. I mean Unlocking isn't that important. QMCraig: Yeah, and you are totally right about Epcot too. That's a hard one. is a hard one. Rob: Yeah. All right. Eric, any final questions or comments from our friends on Patreon before we move on to our final segment? Erick: I was saving this for the the last. this is from Stephanie. I would love your thoughts on the burner lining lane strategy. Do you recommend it and what are the best burner attractions to book in each park? Rob: since you were just talking about that, Craig, you wanna start that one off? QMCraig: Okay. So yes, I definitely recommend it if you're going to be the early riser, if you're taking advantage of early entry. I had an experience and I was planning on using a burner. I was I was testing a whole strategy at Hollywood Studios. So that did not include early entry, but I did have a burner on the frozen attraction on I'm sorry, the frozen sing along, not to be confused with the boat ride in Epcot. I got to that line. It was before nine o'clock, maybe t five, ten minutes before nine o'clock. And the guy was out there ready to start letting people in because it was going to open at nine. And he just saw me standing and say, Hey, do you have a burner that you wanted to tap in for? So it was like, yeah, thank you. So I actually got to do that before the park opened. normally you wouldn't be able to do that because they don't start, but he let me do it. That's not a guarantee. it's just a hint that you might be able to. Rob: So a burner attraction, for those who are not familiar, this is something that I don't know who came up with that term, but it's like it's essentially an attraction that you book first thing in the morning, as right as close as you can get to the moment you're gonna enter the park, that you don't really care about the attraction. It's just you care about the time because it's it's what allows you to unlock yourself and have multiple tier one attractions booked. Or if you're parkopping to book in in multiple parks, because initially you're limited to those three in in your starting park. I agree with Craig that if here's the thing: if you're parkopping, for sure a burner can be helpful. But my goal is always to have an attraction that I really care about. As early as I can possibly get it. So I don't need to book a burner. Cause those three, you got three lightning lanes, they're all valuable. So if you have a way of making them all three be things that you really want and have one of them early in the day, that's your best case scenario. But that's not always possible. Sometimes the best you can get for the rides you care about is going to be like two hours after park open. And in that case, absolutely take one of your slots. And book Fillhar Magic right at Park Open. You know, book, sorry Jessica, Zootopia Better Zoogether, right at Park Open. And you can just tap in really quickly and and unlock yourself and that's gonna make it easier to book for those second your second park of the day, or if you're in a park with lots of heavy hitter tier ones to grab those. QMCraig: think it's important to mention that some attractions have two tap points. And I'm not sure which ones those are right. I remember I I think they got rid of Star Tours, am I right? Or is that still two? Rob: No, Star Tours doesn't have two anymore. The there's QMCraig: Okay. Rob: a lot. What I usually say is if you tap in at a ride and it won't let you book your next attraction, it's usually because there's going to be another tap point up ahead. the most notorious ones that come to my mind immediately Space Mountain, Slinky Dog Dash. surprisingly, it's a small world, has a second touch point. It's I don't know why that one does. QMCraig: that's right. I really don't get that because there's no s I mean, it there's not a good way for someone to jump into that line. Rob: Yeah, I I and and it's not really one that I imagine that many people are like, my gosh, I gotta get to the front of that small world line, other than Jessica. QMCraig: Okay, I'm gonna speak for Jessica. I I I do too. I'm I'm a fan and I will use a lightning Erick: Yeah. QMCraig: lane to avoid a even a fifteen minute wait in that longer line. So yeah. Rob: I love it's a small world. I just feel like the weight is usually not all that unbearable. Usually, not always. QMCraig: I would also suggest if your second ride, if you put booked a burney, have a second one right about that you were managed to back up about that time, or try to make sure that your second ride is close to where your burner is. So you're not going all the way to one side of the park Rob: Yeah. QMCraig: and then your next plan is to go to the other side. So try to keep that in mind as well. Rob: Yeah, that's a good point. I in terms of though, I'm gonna go back to what we said earlier. You're if if you're trying to get everything, if your goal is to try to book as much as close to everything as possible, Magic Kingdom burner, not that important because you've got one tier one and two tier twos. You can have all three of the best rides, you know, in terms of rankings booked right away. Epcot, on the other hand, That is one where a burner is absolutely going to come in handy because you can only have one of those top three rides booked when you enter. and I would recommend the Disney Pixar Short Film Festival as an excellent burner attraction that you can always get right at park open. And then you just tap in there and then quickly try to grab Frozen and Remy. that's a good good use of that strategy. All right. Well, with that. We're we have some more questions that we're gonna cover in the Patreon exclusive after party. But for right now, we're gonna end with a segment we like to call happy thoughts. Because we always like to end with a positive note. Jessica actually shared her happy thought. She wanted us to share this on her behalf. her happy thought is that she was so grateful for all of the lovely birthday messages that came in. From everyone on social media and on Patreon. I just want to say thank you so much. She's actually sell she celebrated her birthday this past weekend, and so many folks reached out. So thank you. It really meant a lot to her, and that was her happy thought. Craig, what is your happy thought this week? QMCraig: Okay, so my happy thought is since we're doing the in-person jamboree next week, I think this will be published the day before we go to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party. But Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: I finally have all the pieces for my costume. And Eric, my boyfriend, whose has the same birthday as Jessica, by the way. we both got our costumes finalized. And I'm gonna give you all a hint if you can watch, and I'll just describe what I'm putting on after I do it. But so this this is a hint. Rob: Ooh. QMCraig: There are Clear or th they're plastic glasses, like cat eye glasses, and they're yellow. Rob: Mm-hmm. QMCraig: So that's that's my hint. Of course, by the time you see this, it'll be the party and everyone will see Rob: Who's QMCraig: it. But we'll we'll we'll continue that on Patreon if you guys are interested, if you want to try to guess who I'm gonna be. Rob: Yeah, I want to hear everyone's guesses in the Patreon after party on that. I'm trying to think of who has y I've rose colored glasses, I can think, but yellow tinted glasses. I'm curious. QMCraig: Yeah. Rob: All right. Eric, what is your happy thought this week? Erick: So as most of you know, like I'm also a cast member and I recently got a cast compliment that came from Guest Relations. longest story short, what it said it was a baby announcement and they wrote that just through now. When we look back on these photographs with our daughter, we will remember not only the joy of of announcing her arrival, but also the cast member who helped make the moment so magical. Eric demonstrated the kind of service, the storytelling, and genuine care that Walt Disney envisioned when he spoke about creating happiness for guests. and I think I was it really made my day just reading like this cast compliment and I just wanted to share with everyone, like if if you have the time, if any cast member goes out of their way, just please and and once again, if you have the time, go to guest relations, write something for us, we will receive it. And trust me, when when when we get these letters from you, it it changes our day. So Thank you so much for this family to take the time to do this for me. I've been having like tough, very like tough days lately and this just like highlight my whole week. So yeah, I just th thank you for for sharing that with with me. QMCraig: Mm-hmm. Rob: That's awesome. Yeah. QMCraig: And that's different from the cast compliments you can put in the app, correct? That just means a lot more if you do it from there. Rob: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Erick: Yes so like i yes, if if you have like something more to say, like again, if if you give a just regular cast compliment, like we're going to receive it. Like we're going to see it and it's going to say like how we turn your day. But if you want to be more specific, if you want to go like also above and beyond from recognizing a cast member, you can go to cast relations and just let them know that you you want to write something for for the cast member. QMCraig: Yeah, that's a problem. On the app they don't give you the opportunity to go much into detail. Erick: No. Rob: Yep. Erick: They don't. Mm-hmm. Rob: Which is strange. I don't I mean, how hard is it to just put in a little text box and let people write QMCraig: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Rob: what they want to write there, but they don't do that on the app. So on the app, if you go into the main menu and scroll all the way down, there's an option for cast compliments, but it kind of just gives you a a menu of things to pick from for how you want to compliment the cast member. You can't really give any specific feedback there. but if you go to guest relations, you can do that. So that's a lovely, happy thought. Thank you for sharing that, Eric. so my happy thought this week is I mentioned we went into Hollywood Studios and we were just kind of testing out the deck. And the the surprise I had was how popular the Lightning Lane for the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show was. and and my happy thought was just how joyful that new area. Of Hollywood Studios has turned out to be the new animation courtyard at Hollywood Studios. They've got the magic of Disney animation in there. There's Olaf Draws, which there's an animatronic Olaf that interacts with videos of animators who teach you how to draw a a Disney character live. and then there's A ton of meet and greets. If you are a character fan, if you love seeing characters or doing meet and greets with characters, this is now unquestionably the best place on all of Walt Disney World to see characters. There's just so many of them. if you've got little kids, Hollywood Studios has been a somewhat challenging park because so many of the attractions that are most popular there have height requirements or are really geared more towards the big kids. It's just it was it was packed with people, with families, with little kids having the time of their lives. There's this yeah, Alice in Wonderland themed play area back there. there's just so much to do. And and what made me so happy, we all get very excited when there's these big high-tech attractions that come in. You know, I'm excited about the door coaster that's coming in Monsters Inc. in Hollywood Studios. I get excited about those too, but this is just goes to show this is a very, it's it's it's very simple, you know, in terms of you know the technology of of attractions these days, but it's it's such a special place that they've built. They put so much love and care into it, and people are just responding in kind with with love and excitement for what they've done. So my happy thought is that there's a wonderful new place for you to go experience when you're at Hollywood Studios and plan to take some time to do that. especially if you got little kids. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for happy thoughts, but we will be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, don't forget to think happy thoughts, everybody. We'll see you again real soon.