Walking at Walt Disney World - The Parks

By: Anna Trosper
May 9, 2024 

In my last blog I covered how you need to be ready for the miles you are going to put on your feet. Here I am going to go over the theme parks and how each one is a different size, but you will still be racking up the miles in each one of them.

Magic Kingdom Park

Everyone loves Magic Kingdom! This park has the most rides and things to do and see. Don’t forget the castle and fireworks!!  This is the smallest park but don’t let that fool you. You can and will rack the miles up here, especially if you keep walking back and forth across the park to get your next Genie+ reservation.

It is possible to enter Magic Kingdom Park and walk right down Main Street, U.S.A. and then circle through all the other lands and wind up right back at Main Street, but this rarely ever happens. You will end up going back and forth all day and night long. So, you must be ready. Sore feet will take the magic away real fast!

Magic Kingdom Park is 107 Acres – not all of which can be walked…but you sure will feel like you did!

EPCOT

EPCOT is Disney World’s theme park where you will do the most walking!

While EPCOT is not Disney World’s largest park by acreage, it does have the most miles worth of walkways that you will need to tread to experience the whole park. At 300 acres, EPCOT is 3 times the size of Magic Kingdom Park.

For example, it is roughly 0.85 miles from the front entrance of EPCOT to the rear of the park. And it is 1.3 miles to walk around EPCOT’s World Showcase Lagoon alone. That’s almost as many miles of walkways as Magic Kingdom Park has in total.

There are several shortcuts available when walking around EPCOT. Always look for the shortest path.

There are 3 paths that lead to the World Showcase from the front of the park.

• The main path from World Celebration to the north end of World Showcase

• From Journey Into Imagination to a spot 300 feet to the west of where the main path ends

• From Test Track to a spot 400 feet east of where the main path ends

These side paths also connect to the main path and in some situations, it may be shorter to cross over based on your starting and ending locations.

You will find yourself walking from one end to another a few times if you are doing rides. If you are visiting just to see World Showcase, you can lower the miles you walk, but you will still walk a few miles.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Disney’s Hollywood Studios is the theme park with the worst layout in my option. Walking routes go out in all directions and dead end. This has gotten better since the addition of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land, which now meet in the rear of the park allowing you to circle back around. Previously there were dead ends in these directions causing you to crisscross the park continuously to get where you need to go.

At all the other theme parks, you enter through a main pathway and then can circle around through all the lands winding back up where you started.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios is 135 acres. The disorganized layout can take some getting used to but, if you are having trouble finding your way, just ask a Cast Member to point you in the right direction. After all, you don’t want to walk more than you have to.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park is 540 acres.

Note: Nearly half of Animal Kingdom’s size is wide open nature areas for the animals to roam (the Kilimanjaro Safari and other areas) and is not walkable by Guests.

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park is the largest of them all. But not all the area in the park is walkable; a sizable portion is taken up by Kilimanjaro Safari.

This theme park is the second largest in terms of walking paths, so you’ll also put a lot of miles on your feet here. It is also the most humid park with lots of trees and water!

Animal Kingdom also has a typical Disney theme park layout. You’ll enter through The Oasis and then be able to circle around through all the other lands winding up back at The Oasis.

You will find yourself walking from one end to the other to get to a ride or a show you want to see. There are a few short cuts in this park that help cut down on the walking…but not by much.

Since its opening, many people considered the Animal Kingdom to be a “Half Day Park.” They’d hit the big attractions in the morning and then move on to another park. While this was certainly one touring technique, for those kids (and big kids) who enjoy nature and animals, it is possible to spend the whole day there slowly enjoying the wonders of nature that others are just whizzing by. I love to take my time in this park. So many hidden gems can be found when you explore.

The addition of Pandora has created a huge draw and has increased Animal Kingdom attendance, which put an end to the idea of Animal Kingdom being a half-day park.

Disney Springs

While not a theme park, I’ll include Disney Springs here as well because you can sure do a lot of walking there. Disney Springs is Walt Disney World’s shopping and dining area.

Disney Springs is laid out stretching along the southern shore of Lake Buena Vista, and it can be quite a hike from one end to the other. Taking the shortest possible route from one end of Disney Springs to the other is 0.70 miles, taking the longest route from one end to the other is about a 0.85-mile walk. Not much of a difference!

Disney Springs has all kinds of pathways with lots of nooks and crannies which can each add quite a few steps to your day.

If you’re spending any time here shopping and/or dining, you will do a lot of walking. There’s just no way around this one!

As you can see, you need to be ready for your Walt Disney World vacation. Showing up in flip flops and expecting to hit the parks every day from opening to closing and not having feet problems is a recipe for disaster. You must put some thought into this. You have spent a lot of time and money planning this magical trip, and you want to enjoy every minute of it that you can.

I would be happy to help you not only book and plan your magical trip but help you with tips I have learned over my many years of going to Walt Disney World.

You can reach me at Annat@wishesfamiyltravel.com and you can follow me on Facebook also.

Hope to hear from you real soon!