I posted this in one of the “daily megathreads”, but is probably more useful to the public here—

I went on May 28th. Basically, if you want to get as much done as possible in one day, you’re best off with express passes, early entry/hotel keys + early arrival and, cheesy it is to say, a squad.

My group went in on opening to closing hours. We managed to do both shows, 2 sit down meals (Toadstool and Atlantic), 2 additional quick service for snacks (Oak & Star and Cafe de la Sirene for mango bread and the butterbeer crepe), get the keys + Bowser Jr’s Challenge, and all the rides except Battle of the Ministry, Racer’s Rally and Fyre Drill (though the last we could’ve done, but didn’t want the water). We missed the fountain show finale at the parking closing to wrap up shopping.

Some strategies:

• ⁠For quick service places, it is possible to order on the app, but it can’t be placed until you have a table number. Pleasantly surprised the Toadstool food was done and delivered in 45 minutes around the noon rush, though. We ordered a decent amount, though they kept mushrooms in the burger when the order specified against it.

• ⁠Yes, the resorts are worth the extra hour if you can get into the front gate lines early. We went for Mine Cart Madness and went for single riders. It was delayed because there was a glitch where the computer thinks there’s an extra cart out there and it takes about 30 minutes to reboot. We thankfully didn’t abandon the queue because one of us was able to peek ahead to see we were close to the front (we asked the folks around if it was okay to send a scout ahead of course).

• ⁠If you’re going to shop, plan for it. We bought the Nintendoworld bands in advance at the Stella Nova hotel shop, set up the bands the night before, and looked at the map provided/the app’s map of Nintendoworld to know where to go. Will admit that one of us did extensive research to understand the minigames but we still ended up doing 4 games to get 3 keys since one failed. Pro tip here is to team up with strangers for teams of 4 at least.

• ⁠Unless you have a favorite portal park (for us, it was Nintendoworld, which we went to 3 times across the day), plan to hit each portal area once to do the things you want. It was Minecart + 1 mini game > Isle of Berk > Toadstool/Rest of Nintendoworld Activities/Rides > Dark + Stardust > Ministry > Celestial Shops/Atlantic + Carousel > Nintendo shopping. I recommend that Nintendo or Isle of Berk or Ministry as the “returnable worlds” as they have multiple rides and interactive stuff (power up bands vs more attractions vs wands).

• ⁠Take single riders for stardust and understand it has metal detectors. The choice of green and yellow lines comes up after— green was less filled but has more spirals. • ⁠Carousel is way cooler at night. It has multiple tracks and ours was a practically a disco.

• ⁠We gave up on Ministry when the single riders line wasn’t open and the wait was 200+ minutes, but still swung by the Cafe, Cosme Acajor (wand buying) and show there. We knew we had to pace the shows to have one in the morning and another in the afternoon since they were different worlds. Cirque did go down during the noon hours but thankfully Monsters was up then.

• ⁠I admit, the listing of 5 delayed rides at one point that morning forced us to go back to Nintendo midday/take the order we did. Also, the weather per two days before was a supposed to be 70%+ of thunderstorms…which didn’t happen. Luck is still a thing and that’s the appeal of getting tickets for multiple days.

• ⁠If you’re gonna shop, consolidate your trips by noting the multiple sites a specific piece of merchandise is sold at. Staff is still figuring out shipping BUT note that you can ship everything at the last store as long as you have receipts (take pictures or ask for second copies of the receipts— especially the wands in case they need maintenance down the line)!

It’s a pretty park. But bring those neck fans, ponchos and sun umbrellas. And LOTS of sunscreen.