What You Need to Know About Security at the Disney’s Magic Kingdom

There are a variety of ways to get to Walt Disney World’s most popular park: the Magic Kingdom. If you’re staying at one of the Disney resorts you can take the bus and then walk from the bus stop. If you’re staying at one of the Magic Kingdom resorts you can take the boat from all, the monorail from some and walk from the Contemporary. If you’re visiting from off site you can gain access to the park via riverboat or monorail. Because of these various ways of entering the Magic Kingdom there are a variety of different security points. So if you find yourself visiting one of the Magic Kingdom resorts and using the monorail you can expect to be searched. Here are the security locations you can expect to find.

Monorail

At any boarding for the monorail you will find security. So that’s at the Contemporary Resort, Transportation and Ticket Center, Polynesian Resort and the Grand Floridian. Here you’ll be expected to go through the metal detector, and have your bag searched.

Pathway

If you’re taking the pathway from the Contemporary to the Magic Kingdom you have your very own security spot, where you’ll be expected to go through the detector and allow a security guard to go through your bag.

Main Entrance

The biggest security section by far is the main entrance. The guests that have to use this security section are all the non resort guests choosing to travel via riverboat and all guests staying at Disney resorts outside of the Magic Kingdom resort area, with the exception of the Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness. This is a large security area, with a large amount of staff on hand to go through all the things you’ve brought with you to the park that. Now this section is even before your ticket entry. This creates two bottle neck areas. The first one at the security entry and then when guests are scanning their MagicBands or passes to gain access to the park.

So the takeaway here is if you can choose the monorail entrance to the Magic Kingdom over the main entrance than you’ll have less time waiting to get into the park. The only exception to this would be if you’re taking advantage of early park entry or are there for park open. Any time in the morning between 9:30 and noon, it’s going to be slamming busy so if it makes any sense choose to arrive via monorail.

If your using Magic Kingdom bus transportation from your resort to get to a dining reservation at any of the Magic Kingdom resorts you are going to have to go through this security. We were going to take the boat transportation from the Magic Kingdom to the Wilderness Lodge when we were moving resorts last January but when we realized the security would have to go through our luggage, we opted to grab the Wilderness Lodge bus.

Disney takes security seriously, so expect this part of your arrival by having everything open and at the ready to make this process quicker and simpler. Happy Planning, Friends.