Early morning at the Magic Kingdom. Arriving early during spring break is one key to beating the crowds!

Spring break is here!

Whether your trip includes Disneyland and the new Cars Land on the west coast, or Walt Disney World on the east, there are a couple of keys to beating the crowds:

1. Have a game plan (OK, you knew I’d say this, and yes, it’s a shameless plug — RideMax can help.)

2. Arrive early

If you’re an “old hand” at Disney and are already convinced of these two points , go ahead and quit reading now. If not, then this post is for you! I’ll even share some pictures to help illustrate this for you.

The thing is, you really need to consider BOTH of these tips for a successful day at your favorite Disney theme park. One without the other just doesn’t cut it.

For example, if you arrive early but don’t have a plan, you could waste your early-morning time visiting attractions that you could see later in the day without much wait (maybe with FastPass), but then you find that some attractions have huge waits by the time you get to them.

And, if you have a plan but don’t arrive early, well, there are some attractions that are just plain hard to see without a wait unless you’re in the park right when it opens. FastPasses for some attractions can also run out early in the day (Radiator Springs Racers, anyone?). No plan — not even RideMax — can save you here if you’re not in the park early when the lines are short and FastPasses plentiful.

Consider some pictures that I took yesterday at the Magic Kingdom to help illustrate the importance of arriving early.

The park opens at 8:00am today, and here I am at 7:51am in line to board the monorail. You can see that the crowds are already starting to build, but this is nothing compared to the masses you’ll see here in a few hours (more on this below).

I don’t actually recommend arriving this late, but I got lucky and was able to board the monorail quickly. I arrived at the front turnstiles just as Disney had opened the park for the day.

Here I am making my way through the entrance tunnel into the park, at 8:02am. As you can see, there are large crowds ahead of me. It would have been better had I arrived earlier!

Fortunately, I’m a fast walker, and was able to make it to the end of Main Street quickly. (I was also by myself today, so I’m sure I walked faster than most families with children would.)

A largely-deserted Fantasyland right after the park opened. Folks, this is why you arrive early! (Below I’ll show you a striking comparison photo taken later in the morning.)

I was mostly focused on Fantasyland today. And even though I was slightly delayed getting into the park, I still had time to get a FastPass for Peter Pan, and then make my way over to the current big bottleneck in the Magic Kingdom.

Enchanted Tales with Belle, posted at a 15-minute wait. My actual wait would be shorter.

This is where the importance of PLANNING comes in, and my RideMax plug. If I didn’t have a RideMax plan with me telling me to go here early, I might have visited one of the “big” rides instead, even though the lines for the big attractions don’t build nearly as quickly as the line for Belle does. This would have resulted in a crazy wait here later, or maybe even caused me to miss this altogether.

The line for Belle’s Cottage isn’t bad at all. Yet.

We go through the Magic Mirror…

And of course, Belle is charming as always.

By the time I exit the show, the lines here are already huge. I’d estimate about a 45-minute wait, and it’s not quite 8:45am!

Next stop for me was the new Little Mermaid attraction. It’s posted at a 20-minute wait, but it was still basically a walk-on.

This is where having RideMax helped. Had I visited Little Mermaid first, and then Belle next, my total wait for these two rides would have been close to 50 minutes, as opposed to the 10-minutes or so total I waited by following the plan.

The line for Ariel’s Undersea Adventure takes a while to build in the morning, thanks to it’s rather large capacity. No need to rush here first thing, and RideMax knows this.

It’s 9:07am, and the wait for Barnstormer is posted at just 10 minutes. The real wait is actually shorter. (Have I mentioned the importance of arriving early? It’s likely that some folks visiting today are still in bed!)

It’s around 9:15, and the Teacups are still very do-able!

Here is Fantasyland at around 9:20am, or one hour and twenty minutes after the park opened. The crowds are starting to build, but it’s still somewhat do-able here.

Still around 9:20, there is virtually no wait for “it’s a small world,” but as you can see here, you’d have to wait a while for Peter Pan now. (Thanks to RideMax, I’ve already got a FastPass for this one.)

OK, it’s later in the morning, but still not quite 10:00am, and it already starts getting crazy. The wait here for Belle is now posted at 60 minutes.

Aren’t you glad you got yourself out of bed early this morning, AND you followed that RideMax plan?

OK… Here’s that comparison photo I promised earlier, taken just before 10:00am. Please don’t do this to yourself, folks!

Even the line for the Haunted Mansion is getting a little ridiculous, and it’s still just 10:00am! (And if you were wondering, I’m not waiting in this one, just taking the picture. )

It’s about time for me to leave the park, but I couldn’t resist stopping for a picture of the Liberty Belle. What can I say? The light here is nice this early in the morning!

It’s just after 10:00am, and I’m on my way out of the park, while the crowds are pouring in!

Finally, here is the monorail entrance, at 10:30am. I know everyone has different tastes and opinions, but why would someone spend $1,000′s on a Disney vacation and then do this to themselves!

Spring break is survivable, but my advice remains:

Arrive EARLY, and have a PLAN!

OK, I’d be curious to see your thoughts on this. What are YOUR favorite strategies for surviving spring break at Disneyland or Walt Disney World?  Tell us about it in the comments below.

And have a great spring break!