Welcome to part two of our trip report on our October 2025 visit to Walt Disney World! Part one of this trip report covered travel and a great day at Hollywood Studios. In this part, we’ll cover a day mostly spent at Magic Kingdom. Here we go!

Starting Our Day at Magic Kingdom

My morning began with my second run around Hourglass Lake. My plan had been to hold back a little, but I wound up feeling stronger this morning despite the slightly higher temperatures, and I finished barely slower with a lot less effort. As I noted in the last report, it just takes time to acclimate to these conditions.

We were changing hotels from Art of Animation to BoardWalk Inn today. The split stay remains my favorite option for visiting deluxe hotels, and since this was a short trip anyways we had little to unpack / repack / unpack. We dropped off our luggage with bell services at 7:28AM. Despite Disney World trending cashless, you’ll still want cash for tips in situations like this (plus I’d just left some for housekeeping).

At least one of our bags had an AirTag in it, so I was able to track its progress to BoardWalk Inn pretty easily. It’s been years since I’ve had a bag just get left behind during a split stay, but it has happened.

We got lucky and walked right onto a bus for Magic Kingdom that departed at 7:35AM, arriving at 7:48AM. We were on Main Street by 7:53AM.

You might think “wow that’s early,” but it was actually late for today. We chose Magic Kingdom for today because it was hosting Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party in the evening. We weren’t attending, but party days tend to have low crowds during the day, as guests don’t want a day cut short and lacking in the nighttime entertainment.

As relatively frequent visitors, we don’t mind missing Happily Ever After or Disney Starlight on a given trip. With Lightning Lane Multi Pass purchased, we figured we’d have zero stress doing everything we wanted.

Not to spoil anything, but the time in Magic Kingdom did indeed wind up pretty perfect. The only downside was that we didn’t make it on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. I had a chance to buy a Lightning Lane single pass later in the day, but passed on it. And Zoe didn’t want to wait 40 minutes. But if you’re a more typical guest, you should definitely get in a 40 minute line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train basically any chance you get.

From a touring perspective, the party days pose the extra challenge of an early morning. While 9AM is the “standard” opening time for Magic Kingdom, the park usually opens at 8AM on party days. This means Early Entry starts at 7:30AM, hence why our 7:53AM arrival might be considered “late.”

That arrival did work out for us to watch the welcome show, Let the Magic Begin. Guests with Early Entry will often miss this short show in front of the castle. I took the opportunity to mostly be bad at taking pictures:

One nice thing about these easy days is that Zoe gets to take more control. This was something I enjoyed about our day with Lightning Lane Premier Pass, too. In this case, tasked with choosing the first ride, Zoe picked Tomorrowland Speedway.

It’s not the direction that I would have gone—Tomorrowland Speedway can be slow loading, a long ride, and slow unloading—not the quick experience you’d prefer to start the day while waits are still low. But it was a delight!

Our Giant

While waiting for Tomorrowland Speedway, I remembered we needed to check Zoe’s height. People often ask about the best “age” to take a kid to Disney World, but I’ve always felt the more important factor is height. At 40 inches, for example, your kid can ride 9 more rides than they could at 39.5 inches (see our Disney World Height Requirement post for more of this).

That doesn’t mean they will—I’m not telling you that your kid is necessarily ready for Tower of Terror just because they’re 40 inches tall. But to a large degree, your trip planning at 40 inches is way different from planning at 39.5 inches.

During our last trip, we failed to check Zoe’s height because our hunch was that we were still a ways from 44 inches. Then the doctor gave us a measurement of something right around 44 inches. Remembering this, we swung by Space Mountain and found Zoe was just, but clearly, 44 inches tall (with shoes on). This instantly had us thinking about changing the remainder of our trip.

The key thing here is that three rides at Disney World have the 44 inch height requirement:

Space Mountain (Magic Kingdom)
Expedition Everest (Animal Kingdom)
Avatar: Flight of Passage (Animal Kingdom)

Two of those are at Animal Kingdom. We had no plans to go to Animal Kingdom this trip, and we booked BoardWalk Inn in large part so we’d have easy access to EPCOT in the morning. But those two rides are also two of the best rides we’ve ever been on. To miss out on this chance to get Zoe onto them just wasn’t something we could do.

We considered trying to fit Animal Kingdom into this day, but between the early close at that park (6PM) and having our dinner at EPCOT already reserved, it just didn’t make sense. So we opted to change our departure morning plans and visit Animal Kingdom then.

Leisurely Touring at Magic Kingdom

And we still had this great day to get through. Somewhat surprisingly, Zoe gave a not-awful review to Space Mountain (which we boarded at 8:26AM) and even asked to re-ride it later.

This worked out well because of a small strategic decision—we waited standby for Space Mountain in the morning when it was only a 10 minute wait. This meant we could use the Lightning Lane to re-ride it later. Had we used the Lightning Lane in the morning, we would have faced a 40-minute wait in the afternoon if we’d wanted to re-ride.

On that note, our Lightning Lane lineup to start the day was:

8:05AM Haunted Mansion
9:20AM Peter Pan’s Flight
10:00AM The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

From Space Mountain, we headed across the hub to Haunted Mansion where we made the opposite strategic decision. Haunted was posting a 13-minute (i.e. close to zero) wait, but we tapped into the Lightning Lane anyways so that we could “unlock” Multi Pass and start booking any Multi Pass rides we wanted, including at our second park, EPCOT. We boarded at 8:48AM.

Since our morning had started so early, we didn’t have breakfast at the hotel. Our go-to morning treat at Magic Kingdom is the Waffle with Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread, Bananas, Berries, and Whipped Cream at Sleepy Hollow. We mobile ordered two of those with two cold brews (we prefer Starbucks to Joffrey’s, but we don’t always want to get back to Main Street so early), and we made the short walk over to the ample seating at Liberty Square Market.

As we ate, I browsed wait times and Lightning Lane times. Temperatures were mild and it was early in the day, so Tiana’s Bayou Adventure still had a short wait.

There’s always a risk it goes up during the long walk to it—it went from 10 to 25 a few weeks back when we made this same trip. But once you get there if it’s at all reasonable, it’s probably going to make sense just to wait it out (because of its relatively remote location). No such bad luck today, and the posted 5-minute wait actually took 5 minutes.

People love to talk about crowds. Crowd levels. “Feels like” crowd levels. Wait time fluctuations. Crowd calendars. I tried this discourse for a while when I started this site, but I just can’t do it with the passion that some can. Of course I pay attention to crowds—I already mentioned picking Magic Kingdom today specifically for low crowds. But I basically have two levels of crowds in my mind—“crowded” and “not crowded”. You might add a level for the peak 10 days of the year of something like “awful.”

I’m not immune to the stresses of crowds—peak festival EPCOT particularly strains me—I get to the Germany pavilion and worry I’ll never make it back to the front of the park. But by and large I feel that good touring strategy, including making use of rope drop, Lightning Lanes, and mobile order, is enough to dampen the feel of all but the worst crowds.

At worst (and this is worst), good Lightning Lane strategy means you’ll have more screen time on crowded days because you’ll be constantly refreshing and modifying Lightning Lanes.

This is a long way to get us to this picture:

I have a single, binary measure for crowds at Magic Kingdom. If you can walk through this corridor (it’s got Peter Pan’s Flight on one side and “it’s a small world” on the other) without bumping into anyone or deviating from your path, the park is “not crowded.” If you have to deviate or stop, it’s “crowded.” You can see from the photo that it was “not crowded” today, as expected.

Peter Pan’s Flight had a posted wait of 35 minutes at 9:57AM. We tapped into the Lightning Lane and boarded 5 minutes later. With our booking for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh available at 10AM, we were basically working with three Lightning Lane slots now.

I was working on getting something at EPCOT booked for the evening, and pretty quickly booked a 7PM Frozen Ever After. Then I stumbled upon a 1:45PM Pirates of the Caribbean, which would work well with our 1:10PM reservation at The Beak and Barrel. But even with just one open slot, we had little trouble working through Fantasyland.

Here’s how the rest of the morning went:

10:14AM Barnstormer (posted 10, actual 3, saved LL for possible re-ride)
10:28AM The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (posted 25, 7 via LL)
10:39AM Prince Charming Regal Carrousel (4 minute wait)
10:50AM Mickey’s PhilharMagic (4 minute wait)
11:12AM Under the Sea (posted 10, 5 via LL)
11:29AM Dumbo (posted 15, 8 via LL)
11:44AM Mad Tea Party (posted 10, 5 via LL)
11:55AM Barnstormer (again) (posted 15, 5 via LL)

This area of the park—and you could throw in Tomorrowland, too—should basically always be handled like this. You want to ride all of these rides in quick succession at some point in the middle of the day. (The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the exception—it’s a popular Tier 2 Lightning Lane so you’ll fit it in when you can.)

I’m sure there are days when it’s tough to get an immediate return time for Mad Tea Party, but they’re rare. More common, you’ll have a hard time getting an immediate time for one or two of these, so you’ll have to take what you can get and then work a bit on improving the times while walking between the rides or waiting in line. But you’ll usually be able to get these done quickly, possibly with a lunch break in the middle.

Once we wrapped up Fantasyland, I grabbed a 12:20PM time for Magic Carpets of Aladdin. This meant our current lineup of Lightning Lane and dining reservations looked like:

12:20PM to 1:20PM Lightning Lane for Magic Carpets of Aladdin
1:10PM reservation at The Beak and Barrel
1:45PM to 2:45PM Lightning Lane for Pirates of the Caribbean
5:35PM reservation at Biergarten (EPCOT)
7:10PM to 8:10PM Lightning Lane for Frozen Ever After (EPCOT)

It was noon now, so I placed a mobile order at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe. The menu here was revamped a while back, and I absolutely love the plant-based rice bowl. After lunch we had a quick ride on Magic Carpets of Aladdin (posted 15, 9 via LL) before heading over to our reservation at The Beak and Barrel.

The Beak and Barrel

In case you missed it, The Beak and Barrel is a pirate-themed bar that opened at Magic Kingdom on August 29, 2025. This is the first proper bar in Magic Kingdom, which previously had alcohol (mostly) only inside table service restaurants.

While the theming of the bar is “pirate”, you might say that the ethos is something more like Oga’s Cantina at Disneyland. Disneyland is also notable for being mostly alcohol-free, and the addition of a bar there was met with a lot of commentary. (This is in contrast to the mostly identical Oga’s Cantina at Hollywood Studios, since that park has long served alcohol.)

However much people may be hyped for a pirate-themed bar, I think it’s reasonable to say that some of the hype just stems from this being the “only” bar in Magic Kingdom. And that hype is at least somewhat practical—having to sit through a lengthy table service meal just to have a beer at the Magic Kingdom is an unwelcome hassle for some people.

We’re not the type to particularly crave alcohol while at the parks, so our visit to The Beak and Barrel was mostly in search of “vibes.”

We checked in for the reservation in the app at 12:56PM and quickly received two text messages:

The Beak & Barrel: You’re checked in! Please make your way to The Beak and Barrel to the right of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction and remain close by for your crew to be called.

and

Please see the host at the location. Additional information is needed to seat your party.

The “additional information” seemed mostly to be confirming that our whole party was here. This is basically a second check-in, and they made repeated announcements that if you were in the waiting area (just outside the door) but hadn’t spoken to a Cast Member, you should do so. At 1:15PM, we got the “We’re ready to bring you inside!” message, and we were inside and seated by 1:17PM.

As a reminder, this is a “visit report”, not a full proper review of the bar, which I’ll leave to people more learned in such things

Let’s start with the standout part of our visit—our server was absolutely amazing. He did a great job checking in on us and was super friendly with Zoe.

Of course, part of the reason he checked in on us so much is because The Beak and Barrel has a 45-minute and 2-drink maximum. This means by the time you’re seated, review the menu, place your (first) order, and start your first drink, it’s basically time to order the second. The group next to us did get a few visits from the host asking them to speed up once they overstayed their time.

For beverages Emily had the Siren’s Whisper, I had the Cursed Treasure (non-alcoholic), and Zoe had the Treasure Trove (non-alcoholic, accompanied by treats). None were really standout, but I won’t pretend that speaks to the whole menu (as for the non-alcoholic options, having had both—yes, I think they could be improved upon).

In terms of theme, the bar is pretty clearly a pirate tavern. Minimal investigation reveals the bar appears to exist in the ride and film universe of Pirates of the Caribbean. Even with some time talking around, you probably won’t be able to take in and appreciate every detail—there’s a lot here. The overall density of…stuff…is a bit heavy-handed, but this is coming from the person who complained that Hyperspace Lounge felt a little bare. If you love detail and easter eggs, the bar should be right up your alley.

Over the course of our 45 minutes, we got to see a handful of the theatrical elements involving the Cast Members and Rummy shouting in various directions. There was one tavern-wide singing of “Yo Ho (A Pirates Life for Me).” It was a fun atmosphere.

I’m torn on going with “Yo Ho” as the shanty of choice. I’m reminded of a lot of the discourse around Batuu and Oga’s Cantina. Batuu was, controversially, a new place for the Star Wars universe, and Oga’s Cantina went with a brand new “Una Duey Dee” song to bring the crowd together. I think “Una Duey Dee” works really well, maybe better than “Yo Ho," which just feels a bit too cheeky. It’s maybe tough to balance freshness and nostalgia, but when you come to a place like The Beak and Barrel you don’t want to just rehash old content.

Finally, let’s close with the layout of the place. There’s basically three rooms I’d break into four sections. First, there’s the main room with the bar (The Mess).

This is where we were seated, and it’s the best for participation in the theatrics. Above the bar is where you’ll see the animatronic bird, Rummy. Second, there’s a small room just off The Mess, but on the bar side without a view of the bar. That room—the Mapmaker’s Room—would keep you adjacent to the vibes without a direct view of the bar.

Then there’s one big room opposite the bar that breaks into two sections, the Captains’ Quarters. One half of it is attached to The Mess and has some views of the bar. But it’s a long room, so the other half is not connected to the main room at all, and it doesn’t have views of the bar. Here’s Captain’s Quarters:

You can walk around and check out the scenery if you wish, just keep in mind that there are a lot of Cast Members zipping back and forth trying to get guests in and out as happily and efficiently as they can.

I assume people generally don’t want to be seated in the back part of the Captains’ Quarters, where they’re most removed from the atmosphere. But it seems to me there’s more seating back there, and the Mess and Mapmaker’s Room both have more standing room.

On this topic, if you’re opposed to standing or sharing a table with others, The Beak and Barrel is probably not going to be fun for you. Particularly in the early, very popular days, Disney is packing the place, and that means standing for some and sharing tables for others.

Overall, we enjoyed our visit to The Beak and Barrel, but we won’t be rushing back. It’s the sort of reservation that I’d be glad to have but not fixated on getting. Or, I’d search a bit for one, but probably not buy a MouseDining subscription just for it.

I’ve seen it compared to some of the other legendary Disney bars. I wouldn’t put it in the same tier as the Trader Sam’s bars, or Haunted Mansion Parlor on the Disney Treasure. I’d probably put it a tier below, alongside Hyperspace Lounge and Oga’s Cantina—all great bars.

Wrapping Up Our Time at Magic Kingdom

Leaving The Beak and Barrel, we headed right next door to Pirates of the Caribbean, where we waited 3 minutes with a Lightning Lane versus the 15 minute posted wait time. Finishing the ride just after 2PM, we were just in time to head over to the Liberty Square area to catch the Festival of Fantasy parade.

After some browsing the stores, we rode PeopleMover with a short wait. While on the ride, Zoe surprisingly talked about enjoying Space Mountain a lot. Since we hadn’t used a Lightning Lane for it yet, I offered to try and get one, which wasn’t a problem on this low-crowd day. After the second ride, Zoe, laughing, said something along the lines of “that was not how I remembered that…my stomach does not feel good.” Which is a reasonable reaction.

With a little bit of work, I was able to nab a 4:05PM Test Track Lightning Lane, setting us up for a nice evening in EPCOT.

The monorail line heading out at 3:36PM was pretty long, but with lots of guests parking at TTC for the Halloween party, the monorails were running really frequently. With a short transfer at TTC, we arrived at EPCOT at 4:08PM.

That wraps up part 2 of this report. Part 3 will cover our evening at EPCOT and the final morning of our visit!

All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered

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Just starting out? Check out our Walt Disney World planning guide! If you're still picking dates, we've got everything you need to know about Disney World crowd calendars. For picking your hotel, check out our Walt Disney World hotels guide.

When it comes time to book we’ll help you find discount Disney World tickets. Decide whether you need a dining plan in our Complete Guide to Disney World Dining Plans! And don't forget to book those Disney World Advance Dining Reservations!

Don't forget to master your Disney World Lightning Lane Guide and Strategy a few months in advance. We'll keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, Epcot Lightning Lane Strategy, Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, and Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane Strategy.

Know what to ride with our guides to: Magic Kingdom rides, Hollywood Studios rides, Epcot rides, and Animal Kingdom rides! Plus learn about the water parks with our guide to Blizzard Beach and our guide to Typhoon Lagoon! And for some some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World.

Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip. And if you're interested in saving, there's no better list than our 53 Ways to Save on your Disney trip from start to finish.