For those of you who may struggle not knowing which park you want to go to that day, maybe consider doing all of them.
The Four Park Challenge has been attempted and completed by many, many people, including myself. Most of the rules vary from person to person, but there is one rule that is universal and essential to completing this challenge: you must visit all 4 theme parks at Walt Disney World in 1 24-hour day.
People approach this challenge in very different ways depending on what they’re going for. This may be one of those cast member challenges because we didn’t have to pay to go play in the parks, but I have heard of guests doing this challenge as well and some people even making it more extreme.
When I did the Four Park Challenge, my friends and I sat down and came up with a plan. It’s sort of necessary to come up with a strategy and goals before tackling this kind of endeavor. We decided that the smartest thing to do was go in the order of which park closed earliest to which one closed latest. On the date we chose, that order ended up being Animal Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, then Magic Kingdom. We decided that to consider ourselves successful, we needed to do at least 2 or 3 major attractions at those parks (or at least the ones we really, really enjoyed) and end the night with fireworks at the Magic Kingdom.
We were pretty successful.
Honestly, this is one of those challenges CP’s (College Programmers) always put on their bucket lists while they are on the program because, again, it’s pretty expensive to do this if you’re not a cast member. However, it still can be done by purchasing Park Hopper tickets instead of day passes. That’d cost a fortune if you did it that way! It’s pretty exciting to have an end goal and you feel a sense of accomplishment once you’ve completed it. It also forces you and your friends to figure out exactly what you’re going to do before you go, meaning you will be more organized and less prone to getting distracted and floating around and accomplishing nothing. That’s something I’m notorious for.
It was actually pretty stressful sticking to that schedule and trying to time everything so that we got to MK before the fireworks. We lost a few members of the group as the day went on and gained others. Honestly, what I always liked doing at the parks was wandering around and soaking in the magic and the fun. It was cool to do things that way once, but I don’t think I’d ever attempt it again. It’s pretty great if all you care about is the rides and the shows. But, if you’re like me and you like to capture the entire Disney experience in stride, strolling around until you know exactly what you want to do, watching all the little street shows and walking through the shops while lamenting that you’re too broke to buy that Mickey teapot, you might want to just keep doing what you’re doing. Four parks in one day is exhausting.
Photo Credit: © Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar, via Wikimedia Commons
Big Disney Dreamer 