Every Princess in One Day at WDW

By: Minnie Diva

A lot of people ask me, “What’s your favorite thing about going to Disney World?” This is a very loaded question, because I love it all. That being said, I would say my favorite thing to do is meet characters. I love Space Mountain, and I love the shows, but they don’t change. Each time I meet a character, however, the interaction is different, and always magical.

By far my favorite meet and greets are ones with the princesses. They’re all so sweet and love to fill me in on castle gossip. So last summer, my mom and I dedicated a day to meeting every single princess. We made a game out of it, and by the end of the day, we had won. Meeting all of these ladies in one day was not easy, but we did it. Here’s how!

Before we started, we came up with two rules:

1. Character meals with the princesses do not count. I wanted it to be a challenge anyone could do, and some people cannot afford character meals, plain and simple.
2. There are 13 princesses to meet, and we had to meet all 13. They are as follows:

• Snow White
• Cinderella
• Aurora
• Ariel
• Belle
• Jasmine
• Pocahontas
• Mulan
• Tiana
• Rapunzel
• Merida
• Anna
• Elsa

Once we had our list figured out, the next step was to plan. There are several parts to this.

Part 1: Meeting Anna & Elsa

This is the most important part. We knew our biggest hang up was going to be Anna and Elsa, it was the busy season and lines to meet those sisters were much longer than we had time for. We believed we had two options: Fastpasses, or getting up super early to be the first ones in the park. Originally, our plan was to get Fastpasses. We’re passholders, so we only are allowed to book 30 days out. Our 30 day mark came and went and we didn’t even realize. So by the time we checked, the only available Fastpass was at 11:30 pm. Instead, we decided that we were going to get ourselves up at 6 am, be at the park an hour before opening, stand really close to the gate, and then pray that we were able to be in the first wave of people in their stand-by line, and, it worked! We ended up waiting 15 minutes in line to meet them. In fact, I would recommend this method, as opposed to trying to get one of those coveted Fastpasses. It actually worked out better for us in the end.

Part 2: Order of Parks

There are currently only three parks with princesses at them: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom. All that matters is you go to Magic Kingdom first, and go early. (Like, be there before opening early.) After that, it’s really up to you. We went to Animal Kingdom first, and waited in the most humid weather of my life to meet Pocahontas. Then, we hopped on a bus to Epcot to finish our challenge. Eugene’s Diva wrote a great article on where princesses are and best times to meet them.

Part 3: Fastpasses

What’s any Disney challenge without strategical fastpassing? We actually only used two princess fastpasses in the Magic Kingdom: Ariel in her Grotto, and Cinderella and Rapunzel in Fairytale Princess Hall. You have to get these, and you have to get them early in the morning. So book as soon as you can! (And use your third on Anna and Elsa if that’s what you so please)

Now that you have figured this out, here’s a few more tips if you’re interested in taking this on!

Tip 1: Check the times constantly for the Epcot princesses.

The times for meet and greets vary, much to my annoyance. It feels like you never exactly know when a character is going to be out, especially at Epcot. The My Disney Experience app can help with this, but sometimes it glitches, or is just plain wrong. So ask the cast members near the meet and greet location! We had the handler working with Snow White tell us exactly when every Epcot Princess would be out, and he even let us in on a little known secret: the app lies.

Let’s say for instance, that the app says Snow White’s last meet is from 6:30-7:10. Joke’s on you, because she’ll be back out at 7:30. There’s an unadvertised meet at the end of every day. According to this cast member, that’s true of every princess at Epcot.

Tip 2: Post pictures as you go! Blow up everyone’s newsfeed so they know how crazy you are.

Tip 3: Be polite. Just because you’re in a hurry does not mean everyone else is.

And lastly, here is a breakdown of our day, for those curious.

We started very early at Magic Kingdom, and after beelining to Anna and Elsa, we made our way over to Merida. Her line was very short that early in the day.

Then, it was back over to the Fairytale Hall for Rapunzel and Cinderella for our Fastpass. After that, we headed over to Liberty Square to see Tiana.

(Naveen wasn’t with her and I only pouted about that for like, 10 minutes.)  After which, our Ariel Fastpass was almost past its time, so we, ahem, walked briskly, over to her grotto, where we waited for much longer than anticipated due to technical difficulties.

After heading out of there, with five princesses under our belt, we took a bus over to Animal Kingdom to meet Pocahontas. This was the least stressful leg of the trek, by far.

Next, was Epcot. First, we met Mulan. At this point, things were going well. No stress.

Then, after lunch at Akershus, which didn’t count towards the tally, we headed over to France to meet Belle. Right after we finished, it started pouring. Things turned a little unpleasant here. With ponchos adorned, we made our way over to Morocco for Jasmine and Aladdin.

Their line had closed when we got there, so we started an unofficial one to wait in. By the time we met them, the rain had ceased and we made our way back to France to meet Aurora. We again waited in an unofficial line until she came out. I made a friend in that line, so that was cool.

Next was the scariest part of the day, we had one princess to go, the one that started it all: Snow White. We walked up just as the line for her last advertised meet closed. And we were worried that her secret last one of the day would be cancelled due to weather. Still, we waited in yet another unofficial line. Snow White had maybe five guests left, when the cast member working with her came over to us and told us that he and Snow White had heard about our special challenge, and she had room for a couple more. With rain filled shoes and humidified hair, we made our way over to Snow White, completing our day and once again proving there’s no magic like Disney magic.

The day was at times stressful, at times rainy, and at times seemingly impossible, but it was by far the best day I’ve ever had at Disney and if you take this challenge on, I hope you have the best day too!