I had the opportunity to join a family on their VIP tours on Feb. 10th 2022. They were a party of 9 with 4 children under the age of 6, one teen and 4 adults, with me being the 5th adult making us a full 10 person tour. For those who are unfamiliar with the pricing, you pay a set price for the tour and can include up to 10 people on the tour. You pay the same price whether you have 1 person, 5 or max it out at 10 people for the tour.
Before the tour, I went to Ohana for breakfast. At this point I started my step count.
After my late breakfast, I took the boat from the Polynesian to Magic Kingdom and arrived at the park at noon. This left me an hour before I needed to meet up with the tour group. I took this time to take a few photos with the photo pass photographers. I also saw 3 cavalcades in that hour.
This family decided to stay in Magic Kingdom for the day and end with fireworks. The goal was to ride every ride (not do every attraction, no laugh floor for example) in that time. We met at 1pm just outside of Tony's town square. We did the 50th anniversary meet and greet with Mickey Mouse, then took a short cut to Tomorrow land and went on Buzz Lightyear, the People Mover and Space Mountain. One adult stayed with the smaller children for this ride. We used lightning lanes for the meet and greet and Space Mountain. We had pretty direct access for Buzz Lightyear and the People Mover. The Astro Orbiter does not have any special access and you would need to use the regular line for it so it was skipped at this point. The family had done a few rides prior to meeting the guide so we skipped Autopia, Mickey's PhilharMagic (show), Dumbo and the Tea Cups. Next stop was Seven Dwarves Mine Train and Winnie the Pooh rides, both using lightning lanes. After the meet and greet and 5 rides it was 2:45pm. We decided to ride SDMT a second time and the guide got us popcorn and drinks while we were on the ride.
After this we took a bathroom break and went on Peter Pan and It's a Small World rides followed by Haunted Mansion. For HM, we were able to go straight to the ride. We decided to do the pre-show and went right into it, skipping all lines and then had a separate line to get on the ride. We then walked to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad through the lightning lane. 3 of the children fell asleep in their strollers during this walk so the guide stayed with them while all the others rode the ride. We had planned to go to Adventure land next but littlest ones would want to do those rides so we went back to Space Mountain, and so the one adult who did not ride the first time could ride. We stopped for ice cream along the way that we each paid for. The guide again stayed with the younger children while we were in line and during SM. After this ride we got more drinks from the guide and more popcorn.
Next we finished up in Adventure land and rode Pirates of the Caribbean (LL) , Jungle Cruise (straight on) and Aladdins Flying Carpets (LL). At this point we still had 90 minutes before the fireworks so the group went to ride BTMR a few times before the show. I needed to do some shopping so I split off and got my items and got a hot dog at Caseys. After the fireworks I took the boat back to the Polynesian and checked my step count. I had about 15000 steps for the day. This is just over half of what I do on a normal day at Disney World.
I spoke to the guide about how other tours went and she said this was unusual. Most people who do all day at one park either don't get there until just before the tour or want to ride a few rides repeatedly. One group she had did SDMT 13 times before moving on to another ride. She suggested the ideal relaxed paced day is all the big rides at HS and MK. This hits all the big rides while not walking an excessive amount or feeling frantic. This did seem like a great day to me and what I would recommend for most people. Maybe add in Flights of Passage at Animal Kingdom because they can park very close to that ride so it's not hard to get in and out of AK for that one. She said it is a great to start your day at AK and do the other rides and then meet at FOP to ride with the guide, then proceed to HS and end at MK.
There are several ways to do a VIP tour and several types of groups who will benefit from this experience. For example, if you have someone who would normally need an ECV to do the trip but they refuse to use one because of pride, this might be a good compromise. I typically walk 25 to 30 thousand steps per day at Disney World. but only 15000 this day. That is a huge difference. Not crossing the parks makes it less stressful for everyone.
There are other suggestions she gave me and thoughts on how to make the most of a VIP tour. If you are interested in booking any Disney trips, I am here to help. Contact me at Marilyn@Polkadotsnwishestravel.com
