For a new Magic Kingdom experience, we decided to try out the Family Magic Tour on our last girls’ trip this past May. On the Disney website, the Family Magic Tour description reads “Take off on a guided scavenger hunt and collect a series of clues as an unforgettable adventure magically unfolds around you”. We were intrigued!

Highlights
Overall Fun Score – 5 out of 10
Audience – probably best for kids 5-9 years old
Cost – $39/adult
Pros –  New way to see the Magic Kingdom, I noticed a lot of little details I’ve never noticed before where clues were hidden. Nice to do if you’ve been to the Magic Kingdom several times and want to shake it up.
Cons – Group is too big (20 ppl in a tour group). All other gripes stem from this.

Breakdown

The basic concept is that a character loses some items in the Magic Kingdom and the group has to follow clues to go and find them. It sounds like they change the story of the tour in some rotation. In our case, Judy Hopps had some items stolen by Dawn Bellwether and we had to go find them. At first I got super excited that maybe Judy Hopps would be our character meet and greet at the end, but alas, she was not :(((

Our tour guide was awesome, she had the nicest, sweetest personality and really kept the group moving and engaged.

We started out in Town Hall, and from there we went to many different places along Main Street, Fantasy Land, and Liberty Square. I have been to the Magic Kingdom many, many times and in almost every case, I noticed things that I had never even seen before, even though they are in plain sight! For me, this was the coolest part of the tour. I won’t give them away in case you decide to do the tour too 🙂

Let’s talk about the tour group size. It was big. Too big. Way too big. In my opinion, they should charge more and have less people. There were 20 people in our group, the max number possible for the tour. You could get lucky and not have a sold out tour group, or, you could buy more spots than you actually need, which is what I’ll do in the future if we ever do this again. There was a range of ages with the children in the group, from 3 to 10 or so. This was a little difficult to manage when you are figuring out “group norms” with people you’ve never met. Luckily, after the first two or three clues the other adults held their older children back to make sure our little ones (we had two 4 year olds and a 3 year old) got the chance to get some clues. I was grateful for this, we could have had people that were clueless and didn’t control their older kids, which would have made for a very uncomfortable tour.

Some of the clues were complex, and our littlest ones didn’t really understand them enough to know where the next spot may be. This is why I really recommend this tour for ages 5-9, I believe this is the prime age group to fully enjoy this tour.

The other thing about the group size is that it was somewhat challenging to move throughout the busy park with that many people and stay together. Also, many of the places we went to for clues were tight spaces that made it uncomfortable to cram 20 people into. The worst was the small area where Peter Pan came for him surprise meet and greet, it was tiny and also smelled strongly of urine, where someone (or multiple someones) had sneaked in to pee. We stay in there for not only the meet and greet but a subsequent memory game. Not my favorite part of the tour, lol.

 

The end of the tour did get a bit exhausting for our girls. We ditched the strollers so we wouldn’t have to deal with them during the tour, which I do think was for the best but it was a lot of walking for the young ones. The website warns of this in the description, but we chanced it. It wasn’t awful, but the girls did get a little whiny about halfway through. They hung in there though.

We did get a chance to stop for a short rest, bathroom break, and a snack at the Cheshire Cat Cafe. I was really hoping we’d get to ride a ride during the tour since I had read from another blog that their group rode Winnie the Pooh, but sadly we did not.

At the end, we got to go into the fast pass line to meet Mickey at Town Square Theater, which was nice but chaotic because we went in there with the entire tour group, all 20 of us. It was a tight fit! I feel bad for the people who were in the fast pass line behind us, because we were in there for at least 10 minutes. I would have preferred if they let us go in one family at a time instead.

 

Overall, it was a cute experience. I am not sure if we’ll do it again simply because there are so many other tour options we want to try out on our visits, but maybe in a few years we’ll try it again when Maely is older.