Lightning Lane at Disney World is a great option for guests that want to maximize their day. In this post I share my strategy and detailed guide to show you how to use Lightning Lane at the Disney Parks.
Walt Disney World offers three options for guests to use the “ride skipping” system. These are all paid upgrades that allow you to reserve times to ride select attractions with a shorter wait time than the stand-by queue.
I find Lightning Lane to be very helpful in maximizing our time at the parks and I want to share my Lightning Lane strategy to help you plan your trip. This can be used for all 4 Disney World theme parks.
Lightning Lane at Disney World
Lightning Lane is a paid ride reservation system that allows guests to reserve ride times before they arrive at the parks. This means you will have shorter wait times and ideally ensure you will get on your favorite rides and attractions.
There are three options for Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World. They are Lightning Lane Multi Pass, Individual Lightning Lane, and Lightning Lane Premier Pass.
Lightning Lane replaced Genie+ on July 24, 2024 and before that was known as FastPass+.
Lightning Lane Multi Pass
Lighting Lane Multi-Pass includes many attractions and you can book 3 rides before you arrive at the parks. Parks have different tiers that you can choose from.
Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane cost more than Animal Kingdom Lighting Lane. Guests may reserve 3 experiences before you arrive and then make more inside the park.
Once you use your first experience you can book another one from any tier. This is one entry per attraction per day. Digital Downloads of select on-ride photos are also included in Lightning Lane Multi Pass.
Individual Lightning Lane
Guests may reserve a one-time ride for specific attractions. This is a separate paid fee and these attractions are not included in the Lightning Lane Multi Pass.
Lightning Lane Premier Pass
Lightning Lane Premier Pass allows guests a one time entry to all Lightning Lane Experiences (includes multi-pass attractions and individual attractions) at one park. This pass can be booked 7 days from check-in date.
Cost for the Lightning Lane Premier Pass will range from $159.00 to $449.00 per person/per day. This is in addition to park admission ticket.
Lightning Lane Premier Pass will also include digital downloads from select attractions.
What Does Lighting Lane Cost
Prices will vary by date and theme park and will be on the My Disney Experience App.
- Individual Lightning Lane: $14.00-$27.00 (depends on attraction)
- Multi Pass Lighting Lane: $19.00-$39.00 (per person/per day)
- Lighting Lane Premier Pass: $159.00-$449.00 (per park/per person/per day)
How Does Lightning Lane Work
Guests staying on-site at a Walt Disney World resort can purchase passes up to 7 days in advance of their stay. If you arrive August 1st for a week, you can purchase Lighting Lane for all of your park days for that trip (up to 14 days). Off-site guests can purchase 3 days in advance of their day of visit.
You will need a theme park admission ticket prior to booking and can start purchase at 7:00am EST 7 days in advance on the My Disney Experience App, not on a desktop-mobile only as of now.
Guests can purchase BOTH Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass. The Lightning Lane Single Pass attractions are not part of the Lightning Lane Multi Pass tiers.
Be sure to download the My Disney Experience App and connect everyone in your Friends & Family to make sure when you book everyone is included. You will need to purchase a Lightning Lane Multi Pass and/or Lightning Lane Single Pass for everyone in your travel party that plans to ride the attraction.
My Lightning Lane Strategy
My Lightning Lane strategy has successfully gotten us on all the most popular rides at all 4 parks during our Disney vacations.
Steps by Step:
- Before 7 days from check-in or park day: Connect tickets to My Disney Experience App, Family Members are on my account and accurate. I check this every visit to make sure it is all correct.
- Brainstorm and list the 3 rides I am going to reserve for each park, do this before reservation day.
- Log in to My Disney Experience App around 6:55am and wait for 7:00am EST.
- Start with the park and day that will sell out of attractions first.
- Do not always book the order of the days you are going to the park. For example if I am going to Animal Kingdom on Day 1 and Hollywood Studios on Day 3 I will book my Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane first because Slinky Dog is more likely to run out.
- You can book the duration of your vacation 7 days from check-in day, up to 14 days in advance.
- This can change depending on new attractions. For example on our last visit to Epcot Test Track had just reopened. That means it will me more popular than typically and I would book it as early as possible.
- Book 1 Tier 1 attractions and 2 Tier 2 attractions.
- One of the tier 2 attractions should be between 9:00am-10:00am if possible. This will be your “burner” reservation that will help you secure tier 1 attractions later in the day.
- The other tier 2 should be an attraction on your must-do list. I usually try for around 11:00am-12:00pm for this, but it doesn’t always happen that way.
This may seem like a lot but if you take it step by step it is worth the time before you arrive at the park. The important thing is to know which attractions run out fast, these are the most popular, and which are good to use as a “burner” reservation.
I go into all the details for each park below to help you plan!
Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane
Below are your Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane Multi-Pass options. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Tron Lightcycle/Run are Individual Lightning Lane and not included.
| Choose 1 from Group 1: | Choose 2 from Group 2: |
| Jungle Cruise Peter Pan’s Flight Space Mountain Tiana’s Bayou Adventure | The Barnstormer Dumbo the Flying Elephant Haunted Mansion “it’s a small world” Mad Tea Party The Magic Carpets of Aladdin The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Mickey’s PhilharMagic Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor Pirates of the Caribbean Tomorrowland Speedway Under the Sea ~ Journey of The Little Mermaid |
My Lightning Lane Itinerary for the Day:
- 9:20am-10:20am Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (Booked before arrival)
- 10:35am-11:35am Haunted Mansion (Booked before arrival)
- 4:05pm-5:05pm Tiana’s Bayou Adventure (Booked before arrival)
- 11:10am-12:10pm Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (Booked as soon as I scanned Buzz Lightyear)
- 7:20pm-8:20pm Peter Pan’s Flight (Booked after I scanned in for Haunted Mansion)
- 11:45m-12:45pm “it’s a small world” (Booked after I scanned in for Big Thunder Mountain)
- 12:55pm-1:55pm Under the Sea-Journey of the Little Mermaid (Booked after I scanned in for “it’s a small world”
- 1:30pm-2:30pm Monsters Inc Laugh Floor (Booked after I scanned in for the Little Mermaid)
- 1:50pm-2:50pm The Barnstormer (Booked after scanned in for Monsters Inc Laugh Floor)
- 6:40pm-7:40pm Space Mountain (Booked after scanned in for The Barnstormer)
- 7:45pm-8:45pm Pirates of the Caribbean (Booked after scanned in for Space Mountain)
It is important to understand that all of these attractions might not be available as you go through your day. Guests can have 3 lightning lane passes at a time and passes start to run out as early as 11:00am.
The best way to approach this is to know your priorities when booking and understand what rides run out quickly.
At Magic Kingdom Jungle Cruise, Peter Pan’s Flight, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh were gone by 11:00am when I checked November 18, 2025.
Busy days will have Lightning Lane passes go faster than slower days. Individual Lightning Lanes can also run out so consider purchasing them before you arrive if it is important to you. You can modify Lightning Lane passes throughout the day so if something does run out keep checking.
It is still worth it to use Lightning Lane at Magic Kingdom but I recommend reading my 1-Day Magic Kingdom itinerary to help plan your day.
Epcot Lightning Lane
Epcot can be a tricky park to plan because the group 1 attractions are very popular and run out quickly. I have never had any success securing a Lightning Lane for all of them but I have been able to arrive early, use single rider line and include them all in my day.
| Choose 1 from Group 1: | Choose 2 from Group 2: |
| Frozen Ever After Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure Test Track | Disney and Pixar Short Film Festival Journey into Imagination with Figment Living with the Land Mission: SPACE The Seas with Nemo & Friends Soarin’ Around the World Spaceship Earth Turtle Talk with Crush |
My Lightning Lane Itinerary for the Day:
- 9:20am-10:20am Mission Space (Booked before arrival)
- 10:40am-11:40am Soarin’ Around the World (Booked before arrival)
- 4:45pm-5:45pm Frozen Ever After (Booked before arrival)
- 6:30pm-7:30pm Test Track(Booked as soon as I scanned Mission Space)
- 7:10pm-8:10pm Living with the Land (Booked after I scanned in for Soarin’)
As you can see I didn’t use nearly as many Lightning Lane reservations as I did at Magic Kingdom and this is because they would run out (like Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure) or were not at great times.
We did end up riding everything at the park, but it meant we waited in a few lines and didn’t have as many Lightning Lanes as we would like. The most popular lightning lane attractions at Epcot are Frozen Ever After, Test Track, and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.
I am still trying to figure out the best way to approach Epcot and the above was the best day we’ve had, even though we didn’t secure as many Lightning Lane as I would have hoped.
If you want to ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind and do not want to purchase an individual lightning lane it needs to be the first attraction you do at opening. For our 1-day itinerary at Epcot we used Mission Space as our early reservation.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane
Below are all the attractions included in Lightning Lane Multi-Pass at Hollywood Studios. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance uses an Individual Lightning Lane or guests can wait in stand-by line.
| Choose 1 from Group 1: | Choose 2 from Group 2: |
| Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith Slinky Dog Dash | Alien Swirling Saucers Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage Disney Junior Play & Dance! For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular Star Tours – The Adventures Continue The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror™ Toy Story Mania! |
My Lightning Lane Itinerary for the Day:
- 9:10am-10:10am Star Tours (Booked before arrival)
- 1:05pm-2:05pm Tower of Terror (Booked before arrival)
- 4:40pm-5:40pm Slinky Dog Dash (Booked before arrival)
- 12:10pm-1:10pm Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run (Booked as soon as I scanned Star Tours)
- 6:25pm-7:25pm Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway (Booked after I scanned in for Millennium Falcon)
- 9:10pm-10:00pm Alien Swirling Saucers (Booked after I scanned in for Slinky Dog Dash)
When booking from home, I booked Slinky Dog Dash first because it is most popular. A lot of advice goes against what I did with Star Tours.
Star Tours is kind of a wasted time slot because wait times don’t get very long, but I wanted to risk it to see if I could get another higher tier attraction and it worked for us. Don’t book a show for this strategy because they take too long, save those for later in the day.
We ended up riding 13 rides that day, some more than once. Read my full 1-Day Hollywood Studios itinerary to see how it worked.
Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane
Animal Kingdom only has 1 group for the attractions. This may change when Tropical Americas opens in 2028 but until then it really is a park you don’t need Lightning Lane for.
| Choose 3: |
| DINOSAUR (closing February 1, 2026) Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain Feathered Friends in Flight! Festival of the Lion King Finding Nemo: The Big Blue… and Beyond! Kali River Rapids Kilimanjaro Safaris Naʻvi River Journey Zootopia: Better Zoogether! |
If you choose to you can purchase it as well as the Individual Lightning Lane for Avatar: Flight of Passage. I do not recommend Lightning Lane for Animal Kingdom especially after Dinosaur closes.
If you arrive for early entry and ride the 2 Pandora: World of Avatar rides and then follow my 1-day Animal Kingdom itinerary you should be able to see and do everything without spending the extra money on Lightning Lane.
My Final Thoughts
Lightning Lane, Genie+, FastPass have gone through a lot of changes over the last 6 years. It feels like the dust is settling and Lightning Lane is comparable to FastPass+ except it includes a fee now.
The cost has not stopped people from using it and it is still a very popular tool to use when touring the Disney World parks.
As much as I try to save on our Disney trips I lean towards buying Lightning Lane for every park except Animal Kingdom at the moment. This does add an extra $100-$130 expense to our day but it is worth it for us to avoid the lines.
If it is not in your budget do not be discouraged. All of the rides and attractions have stand-by lines that are open to all guests of the park. You can visit the Disney parks without the upgrade.
Lighting Lane is just an added perk to maximize your day at the park. The best way to decide if it is right for you is to consider what you want your day to look like, how old are the people in your group, and do you have must-do rides or are you open to a more relaxed schedule.
I hope this has given you more clarity on how to use lightning lane for your next trip to Disney World.
Leah has been a Disney fan her entire life. From growing up with the movies to planning amazing Disney trips. She loves sharing her passion for Disney and helping others plan amazing Disney trips.
