A Book Lover’s Guide to Walt Disney World with a Dark YA Twist

Imagine riding through Walt Disney World’s It’s A Small World and all the dolls begin lurching to life and coming for your boat! Having read Disney After Dark, Ridley Pearson’s fist book in the Kingdom Keepers series, just before my recent visit to Orlando’s Magic Kingdom, this is exactly what I was imagining as I glided through the ride. I’d put a fun dark-YA twist on my park experience this time, and highly recommend you do the same next time you visit WDW!

The last time I visited the Magic Kingdom, I was eight years old and so much has changed about the park experience since then that it just made sense to find a new, more mature, perspective with which to enjoy the park now too. If you also haven’t visited WDW since the time of disposable film cameras and land-line telephones, and aren’t familiar with the various dark-YA series published by imprints of the Disney Publishing Company, settle in, because there is so much you need to know to make the most of a Walt Disney World vacation these days!

Pack A Book

This probably goes without saying, considering you’re a book lover, but bring a book with you to the park. You’ll definitely be stuck waiting in lines for rides or food throughout your day, and those waits are far less aggravating if you’ve got a book to distract you. I chose to do this via my iphone’s Kindle app so I’d have less to carry. If you’ve got a physical book, however, luckily taking a little daypack with you to WDW isn’t as problematic as it is at the Orlando Universal parks (but more on that later)! So what book should you take? I’d recommend enhancing your vacation with a Disney related read, of course! So let me suggest a book that takes place IN the park.

Now I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy the Disney classic tales while visiting the parks, especially if you’re visiting with children. Let them enjoy the princesses and the happy twists that Disney has put on the original stories. But as anyone versed in the original texts of The Brothers Grimm tales knows, they’re, well, grim. Along with Anderson’s Little Mermaid, and Barrie’s Peter Pan. None of them have happy endings! So before you tell me Disney is based on books so why go looking for others, I’m just offering an alternative dark story, but more fun because it takes place inside the rides!

Purchase Disney After Dark (Kingdom Keepers #1) by Ridley Pearson on Amazon or Bookshop or listen to it via Audible.
*Disclosure: These are affiliate links. If you purchase a book through these links, I’ll make a few cents at no extra cost to you. You’ll also be supporting independent bookshops if you purchase books through Bookshop.org.

If you’re not familiar with the Kingdom Keepers series (I apparently missed this in my childhood so I’d never heard of it until now), the books take place IN the Disney parks. The first book, Disney After Dark, takes place in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom as well as partially in the Hollywood Studios park. The second book in the series takes place in the Animal Kingdom Park and later books take place in the other parks, California’s Disneyland, and even the Disney cruise ships. The premise of the first book is that five kids are turned into holograms which appear in the Magic Kingdom after dark and have to battle ride animatronics that come to life and have an ultimate showdown with the classic Disney villain Maleficent.

I chose to read just the first book in the series because my vacation was limited to two days at WDW and one of those would be a full day in the Magic Kingdom. While reading, I kept a list of all the locations in the park where events in the book took place, and it turns out this list was very helpful later in planning our park day.

If you read the Kingdom Keepers books when they were first published, you might want to reread them because they’ve since been updated and republished as some of the Disney rides featured in the first editions have closed. I discovered, however, that even the newer edition of the book I read is now dated because Splash Mountain has been replaced! On the other hand, if you’ve already read the Kingdom Keepers series and want to read something new, check out my blog post for a list of other Disney classic spinoffs published by Disney.

Disney Bounding

Once you’ve picked out the book you’re packing, the next hurdle is to figure out what clothes to pack. Lucky for you, there’s a whole book to help you with that: DisneyBound: Dress Disney and Make It Fashion by Leslie Kay (Find DisneyBound on Amazon here*).
*also an affiliate link

Disney Bounding, for those not in-the-know, is a method of subtly dressing as a Disney Character but not running afoul of Disney’s rule that adults cannot dress in costume in the parks. This is for the very good reason that Disney does not want children mistaking park visitors for Cast Members. Cast Members have very strict rules for their interactions with children. A visitor in costume could potentially do or say the wrong thing to a child and ruin their otherwise happy holiday. So while you can’t wear an all-out costume, you can dress in normal clothes found in your wardrobe that match the colors of a certain character’s outfit.

For example, after rummaging through my summer clothes, I found a purple T-shirt which paired nicely with a green skort and together was giving Ariel the Mermaid vibes. I decided to Disney Bound as Ariel for my day in the Magic Kingdom because the Little Mermaid ride is in that park.

We spent our second day at EPCOT where I Disney Bounded as Belle with a white T-shirt underneath a blue dress. Unfortunately I missed my chance to get my photo taken with the Cast Member dressed as Belle that day, but we did visit the Paris of EPCOT and visit Belle’s cottage experience in the Magic Kingdom park.

If you’re looking for more Disney Bounding inspiration, check out @thedisneybound on Instagram, or there’s a whole Facebook support group for Disney Bounders.

And don’t forget to top off your look with Minnnie ears when you get to the park! Each store has a different selection of ears, so you might have to search several shops before finding the perfect ears. I found Pooh ears in Magic Kingdom’s FrontierLand, but couldn’t find them anywhere on Main Street. And if you’re visiting WDW for the winter holidays, the Christmas Store has Hanukkah ears! You can also find a selection of ears outside the parks at Disney Springs and on the Disney Boardwalk.

Disney Photopass

So why bother Disney Bounding? For the photos of course! After paying the exorbitant ticket price for days at the park, you may think you don’t want to pay more for the Disney PhotoPass, but trust me, it’s worth it! Instead of ending up with selfies showing just your faces squished together after your trip, you could end up with professionally posed photos showing your full outfit in front of the most prime photo spots in the park! And all the photos PLUS photos taken of you during rides will be magically beamed to the Disney App on your phone!

Photopass photographers can be found all over the park in easily spottable and recognizable neon green shirts. If you’re visiting the Magic Kingdom, you’ll first encounter them strategically lining Main Street, because everyone wants that classic shot in front of the castle! There were enough photographers in the park that we never had to wait in one’s line very long. At most we had one or two groups ahead of us for any one photographer.

As Disney After Dark begins with hologram characters appearing on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom, seeing the photographs lined up as I entered the park really made me feel like I had stepped right into the book! And speaking of futuristic technology, the tech behind the photo service honestly felt like magic! First of all, let me just say, I will use my Apple Wallet app any chance I get, so I’d managed to transfer my Disney entrance card to my Apple Wallet and somehow, I still don’t quite know how it happened, my Apple Watch engaged with the Apple Wallet card, and any time I would have needed to scan my Disney card, I was able to just hold out my wrist instead! So if you have an Apple Watch, you don’t need one of those Disney Magic Bands. Anyway, this meant that after getting our photos taken by a photographer, all I had to do was hold out my wrist for the photographer to scan my watch and the photos were instantly beamed to the Disney App on my phone! Some photos, though, took a little longer to appear because they had a little Disney Magic (photoshopping) done before arriving in the App.

Not only this, but you know those photos that you can sometimes stop at a desk and buy when you get off an amusement park ride? There were no more desks. We walked out of rides and our photo would appear in the app! Through some magic (facial recognition), the system is able to know what ride car you’re in and send you the photo of that correct roller coaster car. The system did fail us just once though. We were sent the wrong car from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but we just had to go to the Photo Pass service desk in the Main Street Theater by the park entrance and we were able to clear up the mistake and get the correct photo.

Speaking of the rides…

Plan Your Day. And Maybe Find a Disney Travel Agent.

In preparation for the Disney trip, I had watched a few TikTok videos and discovered that Disney Travel Agents exist. Thinking I could get through this trip without the help of one, I kept scrolling. Thankfully, however, after I’d casually mentioned in an Instagram post that I was planning a WDW trip, Ellen, the travel agent who put together the Enchanted Book Club England trip, reached out to offer some tips.

Ellen’s 1st tip: Stay at a Disney Hotel that gives you early access to the park.

One key strategy for getting on some of the rides you’d like to do is getting early access to the park. This will give you just enough time in the morning before the park fully opens to those not staying in Disney hotels to get to the front of a ride line. And some hotels offer late night park access on certain nights! Disney after dark tickets are sold in a limited capacity, so if you can go after dark the crowds are much smaller. And I’ve been told the Tron ride is better after dark. If you really want to do Disney After Dark properly, make sure you’re there on a night you can get an after dark ticket. Unfortunately for this blog post, I did not have an after dark ticket this time.

Ellen’s 2nd tip: Plan ahead which rides you want to go on.

This tip is important for many reasons, first and foremost because of Disney’s Lightning Lane system. Some rides are less popular so the lines are generally shorter and you can just walk up and wait in line. Some rides only have virtual queues! Meaning, they don’t even have walk-up lines you can wait in. They have virtual lines that you can only attempt to get a spot in at certain times in the day. Then there are the rides that you’ll want to get a timed entry pass (“Lightning Lane”) through the app because otherwise you could be waiting hours in the walk-up line. Thus, before getting to the park you should decide which rides are your top priority to try and get on while at the park.

Once you’ve picked rides and prioritized them, you’ll want to decide which ride you’ll run to first when the park opens (this is called “Rope Dropping”), which rides you want to pay to reserve an entry time for, set alarms for rides with virtual queues that only open at certain times, and which rides you’ll attempt to get Lightning Lane timed entries for by using the App throughout the day at the park (Don’t forget a backup-battery for your phone!). And on top of that you might want to consider where the rides are in the park because you don’t want to be running clear across the park for your next timed entry!

If this sounds confusing, it is. Thankfully we had Ellen as well as a Disney insider friend to text when we had questions. Ellen happens to be a certified Disney and Universal travel agent, and I highly recommend connecting with her if you’re thinking about a Disney World and/or Universal trip! You can find her on Instagram at @EllenTravelsWest.

Using Disney After Dark to Plan Our Day

Being largely unfamiliar with the rides in WDW’s Magic Kingdom before my visit, I decided to keep a running list of rides that make an appearance in Disney After Dark and use that to plan my day at the park. If you too want to visit WDW in the footsteps of the characters in the book, here’s the list of rides:

• Haunted Mansion
• It’s A Small World
• Space Mountain
• The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Splash Mountain (Unfortunately, Splash Mountain has been replaced by Tiana’s Bayou)

(I also added to my list a few more rides that I’d heard, thanks to Ellen, are currently popular, such as the Tron roller coaster.)

Haunted Mansion
I don’t want to give too much away, but although this is the first ride to appear in the book, the characters don’t make it all the way through, so I actually prioritized this lower on my list than the other rides. After having gone on the ride, I suspect the author teased us with this ride because it was just too easy for his plot in which ride animatronics come to life.

It’s A Small World
The Small World ride, being just a gentle boat ride through rooms of dolls dressed elaborately in traditional outfits of various countries, provided a nice break from the roller coasters (and the outside heat!). We ended up doing this ride twice despite the fact that after reading Disney After Dark, I definitely found the ride much creepier than it intends to be! I now thought the dolls, with their jerky movements looked exactly like they could start lurching forward like zombies at any moment. I also realized, in a delightfully sinister thought, that the dolls look like what my American Girl doll might look like if she started to come to life, so I’ll never be looking at her the same way again either!

Space Mountain & Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
In the book, certain events take place in Space Mountain in the areas around the track so in the moments the coaster slowed down, I found myself looking into my dark surroundings trying to see if there really was, for example, a trap door in the roof or a storage area beneath us. I couldn’t tell.

I am not a fan of roller coasters, but they were in the book so I wasn’t going to miss out on them. In the end my anticipation of terror of both Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was worse than the actual rides! Space Mountain took us on a steep climb up to the top then just slowly dropped us in lazy circles downward. The Railroad had a few short-lived accelerations forward and downward (drops), but in the end was also not as scary as I thought it was going to be. So if you’re not a roller coaster fan either, I recommend using Disney After Dark as your encouragement to step outside your comfort zone too, because it might not be as scary as you imagine.

“So if you’re not a roller coaster fan either, I recommend using Disney After Dark as your encouragement to step outside your comfort zone too, because it might not be as scary as you imagine.”

Another tip from Ellen: I want to mention daypacks here. As the Universal Parks don’t have a timed entry system she recommends taking ONLY a fanny pack (or bum bag, or hip pack, or whatever you’re calling them these days to try and make them sound cool again…) to the Universal Parks so you don’t have to waste time putting your bag in a locker in a ride line and fall behind many other people who didn’t have to stop. At Disney, the only ride that made us put packs in a locker was Tron. The other roller coasters, which include Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain, let us just put our daypacks between our knees!

Pirates of the Caribbean
Animatronic Pirates come to life are the first encounter in Disney After Dark that lets you and the main character know something is very, very wrong. So I was excited to get on this ride to see the animatronics for myself. Luckily this ride has been around forever so it had a very short walk-on line. And like the Small World ride, this is also a slow boat ride, with the exception of one drop in the dark during which you might get slightly sprayed with water. The other difference is that as you ride through Tortuga, you smell smoke and other somewhat disturbing scents that make you think, “yes, this is exactly what I think pirates and Tortuga smell like.” And I kept thinking, “What if the animatronics came to life right now?” This dark twist in my thoughts was putting a much more fun spin on the day than I had imagined it would!

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Sometimes rides break down. Although we’d had a Lightning Lane (timed entry) spot earlier in the day for this ride, the ride broke down and we got booted out of our reservation. Interestingly, due to this we were given one extra Lightning Lane to any ride! Luckily by the time we’d managed to do all the other rides on our list, Pooh had reopened and we jumped back in line. At which point it immediately broke down again! I was determined, however, to ride this ride as it was the last one to complete my list of rides in the book. So we stayed in line. After about 45 minutes, during which I pulled out a book and happily whiled away the time, the ride reopened. Wearing my Pooh Minnie ears I was having so much fun I actually forgot to look around for certain elements in the ride that had been important to the book plot! That was until we got to nearly the end of the ride and we stopped just before a set of doors that swung open. And again, the doors closed and opened and the honey pot we were sitting in stayed put. We were stuck! Just when I thought we’d perhaps be having our own behind the scenes ride adventure like in the book… would they come get us and let us walk through the rest of the ride to get out just like the characters walk through rides in Disney After Dark? The ride started again.

My Day Didn’t Quite Go As Planned

Despite all the planning and helpful texts from Ellen such as, “The bridge to Tomorrowland is a great photo spot, but DON’T STOP on your way to your first ride!” we managed to mess up our plan from the get-go! We had selected Tron as our first ride and ran into the park… only to discover Tron only had a virtual queue and we’d missed the 7am chance to get in it and our next chance was only at 1pm. We set an alarm and made sure we found a place to pause and have the app screen open to the right place at 1pm.

Being next door to Space Mountain, we ended up making that our first ride, or “Rope Drop,” of the day. And Ellen had suggested working our way around the park Land by Land but that plan also went out the window because using the Disney App, any time we weren’t on a ride, we were refreshing our Lightning Lane screen to see if we could modify our entry times for rides closer to the time it currently was. Then we’d run to wherever that next ride was in the park.

Although we’d been told that on a good day the Lightning Lane system (at the time, called Genie Plus- which only allowed scheduling one timed entry at a time) would maybe be useful up to 3 times throughout the entire day, we ended up using it six times and were able to get through most of the rides/attractions on our list before 10am! So you just never know what can happen at Walt Disney World!

The Perfect End to a Slightly Twisted Day

After a long, magically twisted day in the Magic Kingdom, the sky finally began to darken and we made our way back towards Main Street to find a place in front of the Castle where we could watch the fireworks show. Ellen had given us one last piece of advice for the fireworks: Try not to be behind anyone with kids because everyone stands up for the show and parents will inevitably put kids on their shoulders! So we found a curb and sat down to wait. What we didn’t know is last-minute arrivals for the show get packed into the street space that had been clear up until then. So in the end we were instructed to stand up and pack close together like sardines to watch the fireworks. Despite this, once the show started, everything else was forgotten. Classic Disney film scenes were projected on the castle front and fireworks lit the sky all timed with Disney music which everyone in the audience sang and danced along to. I suddenly realized there was nowhere else I’d rather be at that moment than standing on Disney’s Main Street USA after dark. This was the perfect end to a Disney After Dark inspired day.

And luckily we never ran into Maleficent (she’s not actually represented in the park anywhere!) but I do think I might have seen her briefly projected on the castle during the Disney Villains portion of the fireworks show.

Have you read any of the Kingdom Keepers books or any of the Twisted Tales Disney series? When was the last time you went to Walt Disney World? Do you have any good Disney twisted experiences you can share? Comment down below!

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