My whole life, I’ve been crippled with an inability to properly estimate timing, usually far underestimating just about everything. What I think will take five minutes takes five hours, and what I think should be a simple task ends up being my Everest. This holds especially true when I create my Disney itineraries, as I like to think, “the Magic Kingdom is only a five minute drive from the hotel!” and forget all about the walking ten minutes to the bus stop, waiting 20 minutes for a bus, making four other stops along the way, and then standing in a line to enter the park. No wonder my usual Disney travel companions think I run them ragged — most of the running is to make up for the travel time estimates I fucked up on.
Yet the strangest thing kept happening over the past four days; I was early to everything, and nothing took as long as I assumed it would.
My initial Thursday schedule looked like this: Land at 5:00, be walking into Hollywood Studios by 7:00.
If you’ve ever used the Disney Magical Express and stayed at a Disney Resort before, you can see how that’s a pretty dumb estimate. But I was sticking to it, because I didn’t want to believe in the alternative: that it would take 3.5 hours and I’d be standing in more lines outside of the theme parks than in them. Add to that the fact that my flight was delayed 40 minutes.
But through the magic of Disney, the angel Walt sprinkled pixie dust down upon me, and I somehow landed at 5:25 (time made up in the air), had no wait for the Orlando airport tram, walked onto the awaiting Magical Express, waited all of 30 seconds before it departed, was the first of five possible stops it was making, arrived at my hotel to find no one in line for check-in, dropped my stuff off in my room and changed, and walked out to the bus stop to wait all of two minutes for a bus to Hollywood Studios where I arrived at exactly 7:00 p.m. Cue the heavenly choir singing Zippity Doo-Da.
Not every transportation event worked out so perfectly, of course; I had my bad moments as well. Thanks to a Monorail hold-up, I missed the pin board at the Polynesian by all of five minutes (and they would not bring that fucker back out; they take those pin boards seriously). I waited almost 30 minutes for a bus home at the end of the night at Downtown Disney and ended up with standing room only. And at least 60% of the buses I was on had people who insisted on using power chairs to traverse the parks, meaning an extra five minutes of load time to get the damn scooter on and secured.
More to the point, even without magic pixie dust, things seemed to move a lot quicker by myself (this is not a complaint at all toward my fellow Disney travelers! If anything, I probably moved faster because I was not deep in an enjoyable conversation or pausing to notice something I would’ve completely missed had it not been pointed out to me). Nevertheless, I slotted eight hours for the Magic Kingdom on Friday; I was done in six. Eight hours were given for Animal Kingdom on Saturday; done in four. Five hours given for an evening in Epcot; my newfound travel companion, a ceramic Dia de los Muertos skull I bought at the Mexico pavilion and named Pablo Jean, and I were done and on our way to a new adventure within three hours.
Hola!
And I promise, I wasn’t even speed-walking! I was just… faster. I don’t know. I wasn’t even more efficient; if anything, my foot pattern around the parks resembled that of a very lost person. Or someone trying to lose a tail. My mileage count was as follows: Thursday — 4.81 miles (only three hours in the park), Friday — from noon until 9:45 p.m. it was 8.15 miles (I kind of had a snafu with the pedometer being on AM instead of PM, so it reset at noon. I have no idea what was done prior to that, but seeing as I left my hotel room at 8:00 a.m., I think it’s safe to assume at least 4.5 miles in addition), Saturday — 14.54 miles, and Sunday — 12.63 miles. Why so scattered? Well, why not? I didn’t have to worry about annoying anyone else or needing to explain my logic or whims, so I just walked… here, there, and everywhere.
Craziest thing? I was back to my hotel room no later than 10:00 each night. That is unheard of for me.
I will leave you with this, however: one important key to my timing success was that I did two things on this trip that I’d never done before (well, more than that, but for the sake of this chapter, we’re going with two): I actually listened to crowd calendars to help dictate which parks to visit on which days, and I arrived just a few minutes before the park was even open. I can’t tell you how much of a difference this made. I was walking on to rides over and over for the first hour of each day. No waiting, no nothing. In one hour at the Magic Kingdom, I’d walked onto Buzz Lightyear, Goofy’s Barnstormer, Winnie the Pooh, and Space Mountain and still had time to shop, pin trade, and eat a free sample of a candy apple for breakfast. That’s how it’s done, son.
The following day at Animal Kingdom? I went on Everest twice in a row with no wait. I could’ve gone again another couple of times, but I forced myself to branch out and move along. I know setting an alarm and getting up early can be a buzz kill on a vacation, but I think it’s less of a buzz kill than missing out on your favourite rides or waiting in line for them for over an hour.
My Disney Addiction 