Why Disney Adults Are Suddenly Booking a Lightning Lane for Walk-On Rides

How familiar are you with this sneaky Lightning Lane hack?

Kilimanjaro Safaris Lightning Lane

If you plan on using Lightning Lane Multi Pass, Lightning Lane Single Pass, or Lightning Lane Premier Pass before your next Disney trip, it’s CRUCIAL that you know the ins and outs of each skip-the-line service before dropping a dime on your selected choice. Since the new Lightning Lane system debuted, we’ve been testing it out nonstop in order to discover the best tricks and info to help YOU master it during your Disney days. While there are now plenty of tried and true tips, there’s one specifically relating to Lightning Lane Multi Pass that Disney Adults use — and it can be confusing until you really sit down and consider what’s actually going on.

Lightning Lane Multi Pass is an excellent way to get onto some pretty high-demand rides. Lightning Lanes bypass the standby line in favor of a modern-day FastPass, and Lightning Lane Multi Pass gets you access to most rides (the biggest ride at each park is usually slotted into the Single Pass eligibility). Nowadays, you get to book your Lightning Lane Multi Pass selections in advance, and you can select up to three. Most people will focus on the rides that have the longest waits, but this can sometimes be a mistake.

Slinky Dog Dash Lightning Lane

Instead, Disney Adults and Disney experts suggest using ONLY TWO advanced Lightning Lane reservations for those big-ticket attractions. The third can actually be used strategically elsewhere.

Haunted Mansion Lightning Lane

Picking an attraction that typically has walk-on wait times as your third Lightning Lane selection can actually give you a leg up later in the day!

Mad Tea Party

One of the rules of Lightning Lane reservations states that once you use a reservation, you can continue to book new ones, one at a time! So once you use a Lightning Lane reservation on something like Mad Tea Party early in the day, you can immediately start to book some more serious rides.

Lightning Lane at Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure in EPCOT

The reality of a Disney day is that you’ll try to get on more than three rides. In this case, being able to book more and more E-ticket attractions as early as possible is a game-changer.

The most popular attractions can run out of Lightning Lane availability by 11 AM, especially during peak seasons. By going with this suggested Lightning Lane method, you can use your less-in-demand reservation almost immediately, early in the morning, giving yourself ample time to keep stacking popular attractions or to just knock out as many rides as possible. Even with Lightning Lanes, the popular rides can still have a bit of a wait, so making reservations where you solely prioritize them days in advance might not bode well for your park experience in the afternoon and evening.

Lightning Lane at “it’s a small world”

The Disney Parks are a game of time. Wait times for rides like The Barnstormer or “it’s a small world” may not seem like much — and they’re not. But if you’re using Lightning Lanes on these kinds of attractions, you might be able to simply walk on. If the standby lines were each 15 minutes and you skipped each one, congrats — you just saved yourself an EXTRA HOUR to spend as you like.

Doing this earlier in the day — especially — gives you the freedom to try to tackle one of those Single Pass rides with a long wait later in the day. And — as an added bonus — you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your entire day in queues. Trust us — this method has saved our sanity on more than one occasion.

Lightning Lane Sign

Have you tried this hack before? What are some other Lightning Lane tips you feel aren’t talked about enough? Let us know in the comments and continue to follow us here at DFB for more Disney World tips, tricks, updates, and reviews!

I’ve Tried Every Lightning Lane Hack in Disney World, and I’m Sharing the 2 That Work Every Time

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