One of Magic Kingdom’s 1971 Opening day attractions, Peter Pan’s Flight, is the latest of the Magic Kingdom attractions to receive a shiny and new state of the art interactive queue experience. The interactive queue experience is a creation by Walt Disney Imagineering to redesign how park guests wait in line. Before the refurbishment, guests waiting for this extremely popular ride would stand outside in a covered open-air queue. During the busy summer months, wait times for Peter Pan’s Flight can reach up to a whopping 110-120 minutes. Waiting for long periods of time outdoors beneath the small covered space in the humid Florida heat, arguably made this the worst line at Walt Disney World, especially with young children. Other rides like Space Mountain and Soarin’ can reach the same extreme wait times, but these queues are conveniently located indoors with air conditioning.
Peter Pan’s Flight’s new indoor interactive queue experience opened in Mid-January of 2015. The new queue reutilizes space that once was used for guest restrooms, located adjacent to the ride building, and right behind Columbia Harbor House Restaurant. The new guest area inspired by Tangled, located diagonally to Peter Pan’s Flight, became the new location for the restrooms, as well as a new space for guests to charge their phones or just to simply sit down at a bench or table and relax.
As guests enter the new queue for Peter Pan’s Flight, guests will walk into a hallway and see new paintings inspired by Neverland and characters from the story of Peter Pan. The hallway ends and opens up to a small recreation of the outside of the Darling family home where guests walk into the home and then into the large Darling nursery. The Imagineers have recreated iconic pieces from the nursery that guests will be able to recall from the film. If you listen closely, you can hear the ringing sound of Tinker Bell in the distance as she flies from one side of the room to the other. As Tinker Bell appears in front of the guests, she creates mischief interacting with the toys and furniture in the bedroom. The highlight of the experience is the guests’ opportunity to interact with their own shadows and participate in a group with the guests around them. After you leave the Darling Nursery and before getting on the ride, Tinker Bell showers guests below with one last surprise before stepping aboard the Pirate Ship ride vehicles and head flying off to Neverland.
This is truly a great addition to Peter Pan’s Flight as guests are able to wait inside in a cool and exciting environment that brings in the story of Peter Pan. I felt like I was truly in the Darling bedroom. As a child, I thought of their bedroom and what it would like to live there. This experience brought my childhood to life in a way the ride was unable to do. I really like what Disney Imagineering is doing by creating these interactive guest queues. They have truly changed the way that we wait in line. I look forward to the continued changes and upgrades to other ride queues that Disney will design and develop.
This new interactive experience only goes through the Standby line and is bypassed for guests that use Fastpass+. For those that would like to see it for yourself, I highly recommend making this your first ride of the day, if you are in the park within the first hour of park opening, or attempt to ride before park closing to minimize your overall wait time. So, during your next visit to the Magic Kingdom and you decide you would like to experience the new interactive queue at Peter Pan’s Flight, be sure to wait in the Standby line. Off to Neverland!
Victoria Keech is a nursing student and regular at Walt Disney World. Her first trip to Walt Disney World was when she was 4 years old. In Middle School she started to study and write papers about Walt Disney and the theme parks that were born out of his dream. This led to a dream to visit every Disney Theme Park globally. She can be found on Instagram at: Lomographylilly Make sure and find and follow her and then say hi (also wouldn’t hurt to tell her how much you love her article)!
