This review/itinerary is incredible! As a local, I’ve been to the park many times (all pre-Nintendo World) and your advice is spot on. I will add a few things from my experiences below. Also, your ride ratings are also exactly in line with mine, so that makes it easy to add my numbers here.
1. The King Fu Panda ride is the same type as Minions - a big theater with seats that rock back and forth a little while you watch a movie. It’s much less fun and not even that cute though, 2/10.
2. The walk-through Walking Dead experience is an actual nightmare if you don’t like scary things. Think of it like a haunted corn maze. I went through it as a grown adult with a couple friends and we were hanging onto each other so tight you’d think we were tied together. Then someone jumped out of the corner with a chainsaw and we all screamed bloody murder and fell on the floor in terror. Yes, actually sprawled out ON THE FLOOR in a giant pile of limbs. We ran through the rest like we were racing Usain Bolt to get out of there and into the sunlight again. -100/10, and NOT recommended for kids. That said, if you don’t scare easily (love a good horror movie and hit the corn maze every year without crying) you’ll probably enjoy this.
3. Younger kids are generally the ones picked for the Olivanders wand experience. I most often see 6-9 year olds get selected. But I took my 11 year old niece once and she was the youngest kid in the tour so she got picked. If you spot a ton of little kids in line for the next show and you’ve got a tween dying to test out wands, try to come back when the line skews older. Also, if your kid gets selected, just buy them the wand that they get in the choosing ceremony. They won’t hold it for you until later if you don’t walk it to the register right away, but I promise the kid is going to regret not getting it 15 minutes later and you’ll have to go back to the store and find the same one in the hundreds of stacks, but it won’t be the exact one they tested and they will be disappointed and you’ll still be out the $62. My niece and I learned this the hard way.
4. If you have the ability to pick an off-peak-time for your visit, I highly recommend it. Being local, I like to choose a Tues-Wed in the first or second week of the months of Feb, Mar (first week only), Oct, Nov, or Dec. you avoid the weekend travel crowds and school-break crowds, weekday tickets are cheaper, and the weather is perfect for theme park’ing (not too hot or cold). I’ve gotten a simple general admission pass the first week of Dec, after the Thanksgiving crowd leaves and Christmas crowd hasn’t arrived yet, and went on every ride in the park in the first 2 hours of the day. Then went back for more on my favorites for the rest of the day, interspersed with all the shows.
5. The animal show is super cute. They use animals from movies to do lots of fun tricks. And they take volunteers from the audience for a number of parts of the show. They even bring out the owls from Harry Potter and if it’s not insanely busy that day, they’ll let you take pictures with them on the way out of the show!
6. The Special FX show is a 3/10. The stunt person catching on fire is very cool, the rest is pretty boring.
7. Definitely know the park hours when you’re going. During school break times, it’s usually 8 am to 8 pm, with weekends in the summer maybe being until 9 or 10 pm. But the rest of the year the hours are 9 or 10 am to 6 pm, which is incredibly short for a theme park. If you’re planning to leave the park for lunch or a break like MU did, make sure you account for the early closing time and get back sooner than later. We always opt to grab something simple (like chicken strips and fries) for lunch, then wrap up the day at 5:30 to beat traffic out of the parking garage, and get a big dinner outside the park.
Hope that all helps in combo with MU’s awesome tips!!
I have no plans to visit in the near future, but wow, was this fun to read!! 😊 And looks like you forgot to include the part where you dropped into bed and didn't even remember your head hitting the pillow!! 😂
Perfect timing. Looking at a quick trip next week to get one more trip out of our season pass. As I read this I realized we did about 1/10th of the park on our two-day visit last year. And yes, we have the wands also.
This review and advice is 10/10. Only thing we couldn't swing was leaving and coming back since we were staying in Silver Lake with my bestie. One thing for Los Angelenos/frequent flyers - if you DO get PowerUp bands in MarioWorld they can be reset and re-used! My friend bought one for him and my daughter - they had a blast - and then will reuse when he goes back for a friend's birthday. We were there are the same time! I wish I would have seen you but with those crowds NOT surprising I didn't :)
This review/itinerary is incredible! As a local, I’ve been to the park many times (all pre-Nintendo World) and your advice is spot on. I will add a few things from my experiences below. Also, your ride ratings are also exactly in line with mine, so that makes it easy to add my numbers here.
1. The King Fu Panda ride is the same type as Minions - a big theater with seats that rock back and forth a little while you watch a movie. It’s much less fun and not even that cute though, 2/10.
2. The walk-through Walking Dead experience is an actual nightmare if you don’t like scary things. Think of it like a haunted corn maze. I went through it as a grown adult with a couple friends and we were hanging onto each other so tight you’d think we were tied together. Then someone jumped out of the corner with a chainsaw and we all screamed bloody murder and fell on the floor in terror. Yes, actually sprawled out ON THE FLOOR in a giant pile of limbs. We ran through the rest like we were racing Usain Bolt to get out of there and into the sunlight again. -100/10, and NOT recommended for kids. That said, if you don’t scare easily (love a good horror movie and hit the corn maze every year without crying) you’ll probably enjoy this.
3. Younger kids are generally the ones picked for the Olivanders wand experience. I most often see 6-9 year olds get selected. But I took my 11 year old niece once and she was the youngest kid in the tour so she got picked. If you spot a ton of little kids in line for the next show and you’ve got a tween dying to test out wands, try to come back when the line skews older. Also, if your kid gets selected, just buy them the wand that they get in the choosing ceremony. They won’t hold it for you until later if you don’t walk it to the register right away, but I promise the kid is going to regret not getting it 15 minutes later and you’ll have to go back to the store and find the same one in the hundreds of stacks, but it won’t be the exact one they tested and they will be disappointed and you’ll still be out the $62. My niece and I learned this the hard way.
4. If you have the ability to pick an off-peak-time for your visit, I highly recommend it. Being local, I like to choose a Tues-Wed in the first or second week of the months of Feb, Mar (first week only), Oct, Nov, or Dec. you avoid the weekend travel crowds and school-break crowds, weekday tickets are cheaper, and the weather is perfect for theme park’ing (not too hot or cold). I’ve gotten a simple general admission pass the first week of Dec, after the Thanksgiving crowd leaves and Christmas crowd hasn’t arrived yet, and went on every ride in the park in the first 2 hours of the day. Then went back for more on my favorites for the rest of the day, interspersed with all the shows.
5. The animal show is super cute. They use animals from movies to do lots of fun tricks. And they take volunteers from the audience for a number of parts of the show. They even bring out the owls from Harry Potter and if it’s not insanely busy that day, they’ll let you take pictures with them on the way out of the show!
6. The Special FX show is a 3/10. The stunt person catching on fire is very cool, the rest is pretty boring.
7. Definitely know the park hours when you’re going. During school break times, it’s usually 8 am to 8 pm, with weekends in the summer maybe being until 9 or 10 pm. But the rest of the year the hours are 9 or 10 am to 6 pm, which is incredibly short for a theme park. If you’re planning to leave the park for lunch or a break like MU did, make sure you account for the early closing time and get back sooner than later. We always opt to grab something simple (like chicken strips and fries) for lunch, then wrap up the day at 5:30 to beat traffic out of the parking garage, and get a big dinner outside the park.
Hope that all helps in combo with MU’s awesome tips!!
Holy forking shirtballs! How does anyone afford to take kids anywhere?!?!?!
OMG! Thank you for this post, this information is unbelievably helpful!
I have no plans to visit in the near future, but wow, was this fun to read!! 😊 And looks like you forgot to include the part where you dropped into bed and didn't even remember your head hitting the pillow!! 😂
Perfect timing. Looking at a quick trip next week to get one more trip out of our season pass. As I read this I realized we did about 1/10th of the park on our two-day visit last year. And yes, we have the wands also.
This review and advice is 10/10. Only thing we couldn't swing was leaving and coming back since we were staying in Silver Lake with my bestie. One thing for Los Angelenos/frequent flyers - if you DO get PowerUp bands in MarioWorld they can be reset and re-used! My friend bought one for him and my daughter - they had a blast - and then will reuse when he goes back for a friend's birthday. We were there are the same time! I wish I would have seen you but with those crowds NOT surprising I didn't :)