Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, is the perfect place for a family vacation. There’s something to delight the entire family, from kid-friendly rides to the biggest and best roller coasters for adults, and plenty of rides inspired by your favorite characters.
I recently visited Walt Disney World with my family, and I decided to book a Disney VIP Private Tour to ensure we enjoyed the best trip possible.
Walt Disney World VIP Tours let you enjoy a fully personalized tour with exclusive access to one of the park’s private VIP tour guides. You’ll receive VIP treatment on your escorted tour of the parks, including priority access to some of your favorite rides for the most magical experience.
Private Disney tours are also available at Disneyland in California and Disneyland Paris.
This was the first time I’d experienced a private Disney VIP tour, although we’d previously enjoyed the Universal Studios Hollywood VIP experience and Universal Studios Orlando VIP after our Disney Tour.
Read on to discover what I thought of our two-day Disney VIP Tour, including how to book your tour, the aspects that worked well for us, and what didn’t go so well.
Disney Private VIP Tours Logistics
The first thing you need to know is that Disney Private VIP Tours are an additional cost on top of your regular Disney park tickets.
You’ll need to buy a park ticket for each person in your tour group, and if you want to visit more than one park in a day, you’ll also need to pay for the Park Hopper ticket upgrade. That works out at around $400 per person for park entry, depending on how many days you’ll spend at Disney World.
You can’t book the Disney Private VIP Tour online, so you’ll need to call and book over the phone.
How Old Do You Have To Be For The Disney VIP Tour?
The Disney Private VIP Tour is a single charge for a group of up to 10 people. It’s important to note that every person counts as a member of your group, even infants too young to ride the rides.
How Much Does The Disney VIP Experience Cost?
The price of a VIP tour varies depending on the time of year, but it generally ranges between $450 and $750 per hour. You have to book for a minimum of 7 hours, and then if you want your day to last longer, they add the additional time to your bill.
This means the price per person can vary quite a lot, depending on how many people are in your group. If you’re only visiting with one other person, the cost per person will be much higher than if three families with children visit Disney World together.
Disney VIP Tour Change and Cancellation Policy
The Disney VIP Private Tour booking system is pretty flexible. You can change the names or even the number of people in your group or adjust the start time until 24 hours before your visit, and your credit card won’t be charged until then.
You can also cancel your visit without penalty up to 3 days in advance.
Our Disney VIP Tours Experience
Our Disney VIP Experience started with meeting our private guide, Jonathan, and taking a little time to get to know each other.
Jonathan was super-knowledgeable about Disney, the Orlando theme parks, and the company’s history. This felt very professional and reflected well on Disney, giving us a good feeling at the start of the day.
We kept the same guide for both days, but if you don’t click well with your guide, you can request a new one for the second day. We were happy to stick with Jonathan for our second day because we had gotten to know him and felt he understood our personalities and preferences.
Planning Your Visit In Advance
Having a plan helps ensure you have the best time at Disney World. You don’t need a detailed plan – that’s what your personal guide is there for, but it helps to know which different Disney parks you want to visit and the main attractions you want to go on.
Disneyland in Orlando has 4 parks, so we planned to do Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom on the first day and then Hollywood Studios and Epcot on the second day.
I planned it this way so we could end our first day with the Magic Kingdom fireworks show. One of the cool things about the Disney VIP service is that there are VIP viewing areas for the fireworks show, and the only way to get in is with a VIP guide.
That was a really special way to end a magical day, so I’d highly recommend ending one of your days at Disney this way.
I also researched all the rides in the different parks and decided which ones were too scary for our kids and which ones we definitely wanted to do.
You have access to a luxury SUV throughout your Disney VIP Tour. This makes traveling between the parks so much easier and means you’ve got somewhere to leave coats, backpacks, etc. but still have easy access to them.
This was a real bonus when we visited in January. We knew we’d probably need coats for the evening but didn’t want to carry them around all day.
Once we’d finished at our first park, Animal Kingdom, Jonathan drove us over to the Magic Kingdom. When we arrived there, another VIP guide was waiting for us with a selection of snacks like granola bars, pretzels, and bags of popcorn, which was a nice little touch.
VIP Merchandise
Magic Kingdom is also where you can buy special VIP merchandise. You can only get it while you’re physically at Magic Kingdom, and it’s not included in your tour price.
The VIP guides’ uniforms are made of red plaid, and you can get some souvenir hats and a backpack in the same red plaid. There are some shirts that have the VIP logo on the front and Disney World on the back, as well as a backpack with detachable Mickey or Minnie Mouse ears.
There’s also a cute pin box with one pin for each of the four parks and a VIP keychain.
I was sad, though, because the one item I really wanted was out of stock. I love to collect Christmas tree ornaments from every place I visit, but the VIP Tour ornament was unavailable, and you can’t order them after your visit.
Souvenir shopping at Disney World can end up being pretty expensive. If you don’t want to spend a fortune on merchandise, every member of your tour receives a Disney VIP pin at the end of the day.
A Flexible Experience
The Disney VIP experience is pretty flexible. You have access to your driver/guide throughout the time you have booked, and unlimited access to the park facilities for the entire day. So, it’s no problem asking your driver to drive you to a different location if you decide to end the day in a different park.
Jonathan knew that we’d made dinner reservations at Epcot, and he had pre-planned our day to ensure we were there in time for our reservation. As it turns out, we decided to cancel dinner as we’d eaten enough during the day and weren’t especially hungry.
It was very easy to cancel our reservation without penalties, which could be helpful to know if your day runs long.
At the end of our second day, we asked Jonathan to drive us back to our hotel. Although there was an extra cost to pay, it saved us from having to get an Uber, and the charge for the extra 15 minutes was simply added to our bill.
This all made a big difference to our experience and helped our visit end smoothly.
Going ‘Backstage’
Disney calls everything that the public can see ‘on stage’ and ‘backstage’ covers all the parts of the park that regular guests can’t usually go into.
Another cool aspect of the Disney VIP experience is that you can go into some of the backstage areas for a look ‘behind the scenes,’ although you can’t take any photos or video while you’re backstage.
It also means that you can take shortcuts through the park by entering some areas where only the workers typically go.
What Worked Well?
Overall, our tour ran smoothly, and access to our private expert guide helped us make the most of our two days at Disney World.
Maximize your Time
Jonathan, our guide, was able to use some secret tips to give us the best experience possible and reduce the time we spent waiting in line.
That was partly through using shortcuts through ‘backstage’ to the best attractions, and part of it was using the Lightning Lanes to cut down the long wait times. He could sometimes take us through back entrances to skip the line.
There seemed to be more opportunities to cut your waiting time in Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios than in the other two parks. It’s worth bearing that in mind when considering which parks to visit on your Disney VIP Private Tour.
Your guide can also get small snacks and water bottles for you at any time, although the rest of your food isn’t included in the tour fee.
Planning your Day
Jonathan was great at planning the day for us. When we were chatting at the start of the day, he got a good sense of our favorite attractions and our comfort level with roller coasters and thrill rides.
His expert knowledge of the parks meant he knew the best rides to keep everyone happy. It also meant he could plan a route around the park that didn’t waste time going between rides a long way from each other.
A Stress-free experience
The Disney VIP Tour service had a hidden benefit I wasn’t expecting at all.
Traveling around the parks with our expert guide meant we had a much more relaxing day than if we’d been on our own. Instead of having our phones out looking at the park map all the time, we could go on autopilot and let Jonathan take charge of which ride we were going to next and how to get there.
It all made for a stress-free day, which is probably one of the biggest differences between a standard Disney World visit and the Disney VIP Tour experience.
Extra Special Touches
Perhaps the best thing about our Disney World visit was all the little ‘wow’ moments that made our days extra special.
For instance, Jonathan was waiting for us when we got off the Animal Kingdom Safari with Mickey pretzels and gluten-free churros. These churros are the best gluten-free dessert in all the Disney parks, and they’re only available in a sit-down restaurant that we didn’t have time to visit.
Another time he got us ice-cream sandwiches for free. Both of these were unexpected surprises, and we all really enjoyed them.
Another time, I mentioned that I could really use a coffee pick-me-up. Jonathan texted a mobile order to the manager of the nearest Starbucks and collected our coffee while we were on a ride, so it was waiting for me when I returned.
What didn’t work well?
Although most of our trip went well, a few aspects weren’t so good.
Pre-visit service
I wasn’t so impressed with the pre-visit VIP planning services. They’re described online as a VIP concierge who can help you plan your visit ahead of your arrival, get restaurant reservations, and so on. Unfortunately, this part of the service fell really flat for me.
Some of our family members have food allergies, so I emailed the team for help with recommendations and reservations. I asked some specific questions about quick-serve restaurants, but the reply that came back was clearly generated automatically by a customer support bot.
So, I emailed again and got a reply from a human this time, but the information was still very generic. Eventually I had to turn to travel blogs and Reddit forums to get any helpful information.
I also hoped the VIP service could help with reservations for some of the most popular experiences like the Cinderella dinner. These always sell out quickly, and I hoped they might be able to pull some strings to get us in. They made it clear that they didn’t have that ability.
So, I think the level of pre-visit support was really oversold on the website. Maybe I might have had better luck if I’d called and asked someone my questions in person, but the online support was not impressive overall.
Skip the Line
Although your Disney VIP guide will try to ensure you spend less time waiting for rides, their ability to skip the line is pretty limited.
They can get you into the Lightning Lane for most of the rides, but if there are already people there, you can’t skip in front of them. And there are always people in the Lightning Lanes!
Even with the Disney VIP Tour guide, you’ll potentially be waiting around for quite some time, especially on the most popular rides.
For example, the first ride we went on was the Animal Kingdom Safari, and we had to wait about 15-20 minutes. That was partly because the vehicles often stop to let animals get out of the way, but we ran into this issue throughout our tour.
Tipping
This was a minor problem, but I found it hard to find any information on tipping the VIP guide. There’s no official guideline on tipping, so we had to turn to forums again to find out what other people do.
I thought about tipping 10%, but that would work out pretty expensive. Some people said they tip the cost of an extra hour, but at $750 per hour, that would be even more expensive.
Eventually, we ended up tipping $100 per person in our group, which we thought was reasonable. It’s an expensive tour already, especially when you add park tickets and Park Hopper upgrades to the tour price.
So, I would plan on tipping at least $200 for a small group and maybe $500+ if you’re visiting with a larger group.
Are Disney VIP Tours Worth It?
Disney VIP Tours are the best way to experience the magic of Walt Disney World.
Visiting the parks with an expert Disney guide is a great way to make the most of your time, cut down waiting times for the most popular rides, and ensure you have an unforgettable experience.
More than anything, our VIP guide helped make our two-day tour as stress-free as possible, from planning the perfect tour itinerary to fetching gluten-free snacks and even organizing an emergency coffee break.
At $5250 for 7 hours per day, a two-day Disney VIP Private Tour is undoubtedly expensive, but it will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most people. You can reduce the cost per person by visiting Disney World with another family or group of friends.
I would say our tour guide helped our family have the best possible Disney experience. We had a great time, and that was well worth the money.
